Hans
Dieter Huber I The experience of art is a form of
self-experience. In experiencing art, the viewer discovers something about himself. The
aspect of otherness in art can provide occasion and stimulus for an experience of the self
that under certain circumstances may lead to profound inner change. While in static image
media the work of art stands like an impenetrable wall between the artist and the viewer,
in performance the performer interacts directly with the audience. He integrates his own
person into the process of viewing his work and becomes the interface between work and
viewer. In traditional art, in contrast, the artist and the viewer do not interact
directly with one another, but rather indirectly through the work of art as a shared point
of reference. The artist, who communicates with the audience through the work of art, can
only attempt to imagine his partner in the process. With his art he approaches a
generalized other, to cite a phrase coined by the American social philosopher George
Herbert Mead.(0) Similarly, the viewer can conceive of the artist only in a very general
sense. In becoming involved with the work of art the viewer in turn communicates with the
artist as a generalized other, a hollow form for his subjective projections. In performance, however, this indirect reference
becomes a direct and symmetrical interrelationship. The relationship between artist and
viewer has become one of social interaction. The viewer reacts directly to the behavior of
the artist, and the artist can, in turn, respond to the reactions of the audience.
(1) Dan Graham titled an early performance from the
year 1972 PAST FUTURE SPLIT ATTENTION. This title suggests that, in principle, a person's
awareness can be focused upon two different areas: upon oneself or upon the other.
According to this thesis, art is always experienced in a state of divided awareness and
can be comprehended adequately only if both aspects of the II The 1972 performance INTENTION INTENTIONALITY
SEQUENCE (3) comprises three different phases of social interaction between the artist and
the audience. (4) In the first phase, Dan Graham attempts, by describing his intentions,
to achieve a state of complete concentration while eradicating his awareness of the
presence of the audience. In doing so, he speaks My intention is to do a piece that has to do with
my intention. I sense that the word, i n t e n t i o n, can be broken down or used in two
different ways. One way is subjective, and the other is objective. The subjective is what
I see; my intention - intentionality - is everything I see in the world. Just the way
things appear to me. Or, my intention could be an attitude in my movements, appearing as
my behavior. So I wanted to do a piece where I would arbitrarily split myself and time
into these two facts of intention. Now I want to do something where the audience and I
would be in a kind of a cause and effect relationship, each other's cause and effect at
nearly the same moment of stimulus/response. I might be doing something where I affected
the audience, where they were the cause of that effect, and they would be able to see it
in me as a consequence . . . (6) In the second phase Graham goes on to describe the
audience: I see just about everybody in the front row in an absolutely static, almost
timeless kind of a statue-like expression except that the girl in the front row is fooling
with her fingers, scratching on her legs and smiling, laughing, coming very, very close to
my time, just sort of natural. And everyone else is very close to me now, except for Max,
who is deliberately looking to the side, but out of the corner of his eye . . . Everybody
is focused directly on Max . . except Marta who turns to look behind her at other people
in the audience looking . . . . There is a man behind with a beard in the third row who is
turning at an angle and chewing. Everybody else now is doing identical displacement
gestures either with their legs, chewing or smoking, and, for some reason I can't really
figure out, Max is a little bit looking away and lighting a cigarette. Everybody is doing
that; one person, two people, everyone looks at him and back at me . . . it hasn't
happened before in that sequence, people doing that - not looking at me. (7) In the third phase of the performance, Dan Graham
talks to the audience, discussing, among other things, the alternatives and While the performer is describing himself, his
full attention is concentrated on himself. He perceives himself as an object of
observation. He appears entirely unaware of his surroundings. He takes no, or very little,
notice of the audience that is watching him. When he describes the behavior of the
audience in the second phase, however, his awareness is deliberately focused outward, upon
the others. In other words, he moves from a state of inner-directed awareness to one of
outer-directed awareness. He divides his attention between two different areas - himself
and the others: SPLIT ATTENTION. III In 1972, the very same year in which Dan Graham
first presented this performance, the American social psychologists Robert Wicklund and
Shelley Duval published a book in New York entitled A theory of objective self-awareness.
(9) In this work they proposed the thesis that a person's awareness constantly moves back
and forth between aspects of his or her surroundings and the self. Any stimulation capable
of calling one's attention to oneself is sufficient to produce self-awareness and
therefore leads to self-experience; thus a mirror, a photo, a scene from a film or even
the sound of one's own voice is capable of generating an Let us take a look at 'Max', for example. The
performer's description causes Max to enter a state of heightened self-consciousness. He
suddenly experiences himself as an object of observation. The description by the performer
thus mirrors his own behavior for him. Perhaps Max is not even aware that he is avoiding
the artist's gaze. Increased self-consciousness is The performer's self-description in the first
phase emphasizes certain aspects of his own self that are called to his attention by the
situation existing at that particular moment. (10) At the same time, the person becomes
aware of a social standard or a societal norm that pertains to his or her actual behavior.
For every social situation there is a certain range of behaviors that are regarded as
socially appropriate. The standard may reflect personal values or a particular level of
expectation with respect to such a social situation. But it may also exist as a part of a
generally accepted norm. Thus for every social situation there are both personal standards
and generally binding conventions. (11) In a situation of heightened self consciousness,
standards of behavior are compared with actual behavior. When the actual behavioral state
does not correspond to one's own standards or to the societal norm, the resulting
discrepancy initially leads to avoidance of the state of self-directed awareness. (12)
When Dan Graham determines in the course of his description of the audience that everyone
is avoiding his gaze, it is clear that this behavior is motivated by a desire not to be an
object of the performer's description. Where it is impossible to avoid this situation,
the discrepancy between the social standard and actual behavior can be diminished by
adjusting behavior to conform more closely to the standard. Thus objective self-awareness
can also serve as a corrective that brings behavior in line with desired or acceptable
patterns. This possibility for correction and adjustment of cognition or behavior in
keeping with existing standards and norms serves an important function in the process of
experiencing art. Even in the static pictorial media it has always represented a
significant disciplinary mechanism. According to Anselm Leonard Strauss, language plays an
important role in the stabilization and transformation of social identity. (13) The
analogous question should be posed with respect to art as well: What role do
non-linguistic symbol systems play in the development, stabilization or transformation of
socialidentity? IV In an adaptation of this performance entitled
PERFORMER AUDIENCE SEQUENCE, presented in 1975 (14) Dan Graham defined the relationship
between self-awareness and the awareness of others more precisely, articulating the
following premises: I face the audience. I begin continuously
describing myself - my external features - although looking in the direction of the
audience. I do this for about 8 minutes. Now I observe and phenomenologically describe the
audience's external appearance for 8 minutes. I cease this and I begin again to describe
the audience's responses . . . The pattern of alternating self-description/description of
the audience continues until I decide to end the piece. (15) In this passage, greater precision is applied to
the change of perspectives. Self-observation and self-description alternate with
observation and description of the audience. We can distinguish among four different
perspectives in the process: 1. The performer's perspective on himself. In Mead's view, the ability to assume another's
perspective is a necessary prerequisite for the development of a person's social identity.
Dan Graham addresses this idea in a written note on PERFORMANCE AUDIENCE SEQUENCE: When looking at the audience and describing
myself, I am looking at them to help me see myself as might be reflected in their
responses. In the initial stage of my apprehension of the 'understanding' of 'me' will be
imprecise as the meaning, for me, of their gestures is more or less unclear. Similarly my
initial description of the audience in term of their behavior may appear to them as at
variance with the self-awareness as a group. (16) Here, Dan Graham actually uses the term
self-awareness in his own formulation. Although his response to my question as to whether
he was familiar with the theories of Duval and Wicklund at that time was evasive - 'It was
just everybody and everything.' (17) - the parallels and analogies in the conceptual basis
of this work are astonishing. In both the developmental psychology of Jean
Piaget and the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson and Jacques Lacan, the
ability to assume the perspective of the other - taking the role of the other - is an
exceptionally important element in the development of a person's social identity. When it
hears the performer's self-description and sees him at the same time, the Thus by projecting aspects of his personal
identity onto the audience, the artist is better able to understand it. For this
self-image projected onto the audience is reflected back to him in the responses of his
interaction partners. In this way, personal identity becomes social identity. Performance,
however, also enables the audience to experience itself as the object of the observation
and description of an other, i.e. the performer. This process establishes a relation-ship
between those components of personal identity (the I) that are not based upon the other's
perspective and the social identity (the me), composed of the descriptions and reactions
of the others to one's own person. This makes it possible to compare the two perspectives
or identities with one another. The discrepancies between ideal norms and empirical
behavior can be observed and a correction of one's own self-concept, which is literally a
very general concept of one's self, undertaken. If we examine the specific forms of interaction
that take place between the work of art and the viewer, we recognize that the viewer of a
painting or a sculpture is fully capable of perceiving himself as the object of his own
awareness. In this state of heightened self-awareness on the part of the viewer, generated
in the encounter with the work of art, discrepancies between personal identity (the I) and
social identity (the me) can be brought to the level of conscious-ness. V In 1977 Dan Graham completed this series of
interactive performances. In an incredibly simple and at the same time complex manner, he
defined the problem of differing perspectives and their appropriation more precisely by
placing a large mirror at the rear wall of the stage. With this approach, he supplemented
the direct interaction between performer and audience by adding a reproduction of that
interaction. An image of the self, i.e. the mirror reflection, took a part of the function
of externalizing one's own perspective. The personal self (the I) enters through the
mirror into a relationship with the social self (the me). It enters into a PERFORMER AUDIENCE MIRROR 1977, (18) presented in
1977, consists of five different phases of social interaction. In the first phase, the
performer stands facing the audience. He begins, for about five minutes or so, a
continuous description of his external movements and of those attitudes of which he is
convinced that they characterize his behavior. He uses a mixture of Holding the microphone with two hands cradling it
with, one hand on the top, as if it's a very important object. I'm holding it upright, and
now I straighten my head up, wearing, wearing a kind of plain, green shirt, and as I stand
very straight, I make a V-shape, with my . . . I make a shape with a V, with my two legs
and feet apart, and now I'v rocked backwards and almost lost my balance, leaning now the
my right, the audience's left side, all my balance on my right foot, and the other foot
walks this side of the stage as I walk more regularly, holding the microphone now with two
hands, but the hand lower, looking somewhat down but not completely down now, started to
walk backwards and stopped, as I said the word now. In the second phase the performer faces the
audience again. Now, however, he looks at the spectators directly as he describes their
visible behavior for about five minutes. Facing the audience. In the first two rows, the
audience appears very serious, and now everyone laughs the same kind of laugh, and as they
laugh they make a phhh-type of a sound, and the sides of their . . . , it's a laugh, where
they don't show their teeth, and now just the opposite, everyone showing their teeth,
particularly in the center, and they are laughing a little bit more loudly. This is true
in the first two rows, all the way back. But there's some, there are people who are
looking down and trying to maintain some seriousness. And now their laugh is much louder,
and people smile and chew gum, and people look at each other now and there're many people
who are moving their heads likely, which they hadn't before, or scratching themselves, as
they laugh immediately after that, they are usually . . . , if their hands were on their
faces, they change after that laugh. Now they look at each other to see if that's true,
perhaps, it's hard now, and they laugh again; and again there's someone looking at each
other, everybody tends to be smiling, as if at a, uh, as if it's a kind of humorous
performance . . . Up to this point, the interaction proceeds
according the same scheme used in the two performances described above. Now, however, a
significant change takes place. And this change, which I would like to examine more
closely, leads us to the heart of the experience of art. The performer turns around and
faces the mirror. If we view the mirror in metaphorical sense as an image or a picture,
then we can say that the artist faces a picture that presents him and the audience from
the same perspective. Through this reversal, the initially opposing perspectives of
performer and audience are brought into parallel. Both become joint observers of a third
party, i.e. of a medium: the depiction of a social community. In the mirror, both see a
reversed representation of their public selves and thus have the opportunity to experience
themselves, in a static and momentary sense, as a portrait of a social group. At first, the performer faces the mirror as he
describes the gestures and movements of the various parts of his body reflected in the
mirror. Thus he describes his own, reversed mirror-image from the perspective of a
third-party, as if he were an other. The audience sees only his back, however. It cannot
observe his gaze. By describing himself from the perspective of an other, so to speak,
which is at the same time the perspective of the audience, he brings about a change of
perspective, a taking of the role of the other. Graham describes himself from a
perspective that could also be taken by the spectators in the audience. In this mirroring
process, he takes the audience's view of himself and describes his own social, public
identity. Now I'm looking at myself, and what I see is the
microphone, an enormously large microphone, held very close to a mouth which is moving
rather rapidly, and the eyes are looking down, and I see a contrast between the green,
very green shirt that I'm wearing, and a very reddish face. Some hairs are white on the
brown, blackish-brown hair of head and beard, and as I stare I look very, very naive as if
I don't know precisely why I'm looking at myself, and as I move further back and drop the
microphone I see more natural and I can see more of my teeth, it could have something to
do with the microphone being very large, that produces the self-consciousness, now I
notice my foot is kind of going back and forth as if it's playing with the image of
itself. In the last phase of the performance, Dan Graham
describes the appearance of the audience. Remarkably, no one laughs, and the spectators in
the back rows tend to be rather inattentive. Looking at the audience on my right. In the front
row, everybody seems fairly serious, in the second row, some people are talking, the third
row, everybody seems basically serious but they're smiling, smiling just a little bit.
Behind that seriousness which is a kind of, well now people are making gestures as if
they're, let's say, acting, showing off a little bit. And now everybody is changed, now
people are blinking, talking to each other, making gestures, usually with their hands, to
attract attention and the other side is very noisy, the left side, hey look there, they
are noisy, because they are all talking to each other and they are not looking at me. This
is again in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth row, people are very much
like a kind of an unruly gang of people over there. These are the least well behaved
people. By the way, people in the first row have been fairly serious and now they're
making somewhat nervous, on both sides, yawning or nervous gestures as if it's a little
difficult to continue. The best behaved people, I'd say, are in the second row, up to this
point. But beyond that it gets pretty bad. Well, there's a change here as people are
smiling and laughing, and in the second row, very self-conscious. Other people are talking
to each other and weren't mentioned before, in the sixth row, seventh row, all the way
back, people are turning and talking to each other in a group, as if conspiring to do
something totally different. (19) Theoretically, one could imagine a painting in
place of the mirror, being examined and described by the performer. This would make him a
kind of art historian or art critic. Looking at art history and art criticism as a kind of
performance strikes me as an especially amusing idea. (20) In the Stuttgart interview, Dan
Graham himself characterized the mirror as a sort of Renaissance painting. I asked him
about his reasons for introducing the mirror into his performance: So the audience could
use the time-situation. So as I was giving a kind of continuous present time. More like a
Gibson time which wasn't static. The audience can see itself in static present time. Also
they have a reference to what I said. In other words, after I described them they could
look at themselves. And also it gives them an idea of themselves as a social group. So it
was the social group that I was giving them that was continuous and then they could look
at themselves and see themselves in another social group as a portrait. That also goes
back to the Renaissance idea of the portrait. (21) Graham mentions that with the help of the mirror
the audience can make use of the time situation. He distinguishes between a continuous
present time and a static present time. The continuously expanded present is a time of
consciousness - that is, the time he creates through his description in the consciousness
of the audience. It permits the spectators to develop the idea of a continuous self as a
social group. The static present as an image, on the other hand, is represented by the
mirror. Graham compares it with a Renaissance portrait. He allows his audience to
comprehend itself as an other, i.e. as a static, social body. In his famous 1954 essay entitled 'The mirror
stage as formative of the function of the I' the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called
attention to the importance of the mirror image in the development of a person's social
identity. Like George Herbert Mead, Lacan distinguishes between two aspects of self, the I
(je) and the me (moi), as it is reflected in the mirror. The two are not identical. The
moi is understood as an I alienated from the subject because it is an external, an other,
an unknown I. (22) It is interesting to note that the first English translation of Jacques
Lacan's writings was issued in New York in 1977 - the year of Graham's performance. (23)
In his essay, Jacques Lacan makes the following statement: We have only to understand the
mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term:
namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image ...
(24) Through the observation of his mirror image a
profound change takes place in the viewer. Everyone has an experience of self in viewing
his mirror image which alienates him from himself. He sees himself as an other. The
experience of the I as an other, as difference, can lead to an objectifying
self-transformation, to a permanent process of development, stabilization and change of
social identity as social difference. VI For much too long, the experience of art was
viewed as a kind of one-way street in which the 'message' of a picture was passively
'received' by the viewer. If we regard the experience of art as a form of social
interaction, then we are better able to understand the complexity of the perspectives
involved and the reciprocal identification of artist with viewer and vice versa. If we
accept the experience of art not as a singular, individual experience but as a social
process, then it also becomes clear that experiencing art can shape, strengthen or change
viewers' social identities by reflecting them back from the perspective of the picture and
offering them the experience of a social difference. An individual's continuous concern
with art, as an uninterrupted tradition of art experience, can bring about profound
changes in the social identity of a viewer whose life and convictions remain amenable to
change. I consider this the primary social function of art in our society. It explains why
the experience of art is always 0 George Herbert Mead, Die objektive Realität
von Perspektiven. In G.H. Mead, Philosophie der Sozietät. Aufsätze zur
Erkenntnisanthropologie. 1 The amenability to direct influence through the
behavior of another in a communicative situation is thus referred to as interaction. In
this context the terms 'reciprocity' and 'interdependence' are often used to characterize
the reciprocal opportunities for influencing the behavior of the other in the course of
interaction. 2 Furthermore, the relationship between the work
of art and the viewer in the static media can be more precisely defined on the basis of
the particular form of interaction that takes places between artist and viewer in a
performance. Compare with a similar conception of self-observation (based, however, on
different premises) articulated by Niklas Luhmann: 'Die Evolution des Kunstsystems' in
Kunstforum International, Vol. 124, Nov/Dec. 1993, p. 224): 'Thus the viewer himself also
remains invisible in his operations - although with a different operation (for which
nevertheless the same applies) he is, unlike all other viewers, able to view himself as
well.' 3 Presentations in (among others) the Lisson
Gallery, London, March 1972; the Protetch-Rivkin Gallery, Washington, D.C., May 1972;
Projects, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., December 1972. 4 The title relates to Graham's concern with the
phenomenology of Husserl, to which he became acquainted through his reading of Sarte. See
Interview with Dan Graham, p. ... 5 The focus of attention is on the difference
between his observations, his behavior and the observations and behavior of the audience
and the possibilities that he might have had and the audience might have had. 6 Dan Graham, Theater. Gent: year not given
[circa 1982], p. 16. 7 Dan Graham, Theater. Gent: year not given
[circa 1982], p. 18. 8 Dan Graham, Theater. Gent: year not given
[circa 1982], p. 19. 9 Shelley Duval, Robert A. Wicklund (eds.), A
theory of objective self-awareness. New York: Academic Press, 1972. 10 Wicklund and Duval contend that in the state
of self-awareness, attention is directed to certain specific aspects of one's self-image. 11 Each of us knows exactly what standards are
relevant to behavior in church, at a funeral, at a party or at an art exhibition. 12 This kind of experience of art occurs
frequently. Due to a discrepancy between an ideal self-concept and concrete action, one
tends to react with annoyance to art that one does not understand. 13 Anselm L. Strauss, Mirrors and Masks: the
search for identity. London: 1977. 14 Presented (among other locations) at: San
Francisco Art Institute, December 1975; Artists Space, New York, January 1976; New
Gallery, ICA, 15 Dan Graham, Theater. Gent: year not given
[circa 1982], no page given [p. 21]. 16 Dan Graham, Theater. Gent: year not given
[circa 1982], no page given [p. 21]. 17 See Interview with Dan Graham, p. . . . 18 Presentations (among other locations) at: De
Appel, Amsterdam, June 1977; P.S. #1, New York, December 2nd, 1977; Riverside Studios,
London, March 1979; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, February 20th, 1981. 19 Transcription of a video recording of the
performance PERFORMANCE AUDIENCE MIRROR presented on February 20th, 1981 in the
Städtischen Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. I would like to take this opportunity to
thank Ulrich Wilmes of the Lenbachhaus in Munich for making the video documentation
available. 20 See Robert Filliou in this context: Lehren und
Lernen als Aufführungskünste. Cologne: 1975. 21 See Interview with Dan Graham, p. . . . 22 The relationship between je and moi reveals an
astonishing similarity to Mead's distinction between I and me. I have not been able to
determine whether Lacan ever concerned himself with Mead's work during his lifetime. In
any case, the name George Herbert Mead does not appear in his own writings or in secondary
literature about Lacan. 23 It should be noted, however, that Dan Graham
had already been introduced to the use of the mirror indirectly in the British film
journal Screen. His own answer when asked by me when he had first read the essay was that
it had been shortly before PERFORMANCE AUDIENCE MIRROR. It could well be, then, that his interest
in Lacan's mirror theory, a theory about the formation of the social ego, led to the
introduction of the mirror in his performance. Certainly, Lacan's theory enjoyed great
popularity during this time, particularly in intellectual circles in Great Britain and the
U.S. 24 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits. A Selection.
Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications 1977, p.2 |
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