FAAS 3108 Term Paper

Cheung Po Yi
1155144473

Title: Stuart Brisley: The Nature of Performance in 60-70s

Performance is a medium of expression used by artists from different generations who had a
common purpose to provoke the cultural, political, social, and economic status quo. Performance is a
language present within avant-garde movements, an instrument for disturbing and activating the public,
for expanding the art sphere. 1 In 1960s-70s performance was used to produce a dematerialized objects
in response to the society threatened by the technological development. Artists aimed to develop a
friendly communication with the participants that can create social values, such as neighborhood and
consensus.

Stuart Brisley’s study on performance art was to challenge the nature of law and the sense of
existence of institutions under the rise of western capitalism in late 19th century. As a republican, he
was searching for the relationship between ancient rituals and social customs, and how these traditions
formulate law and social structures. Influenced by Marxist cultural appraisal, his concepts and ideas
were driven by a strong political perspective, to avoid the self-centred approach used by the capitalist
artists in the late seventies. Through the examples of Brisley’s works and his video essay: “Being and
Doing”, this essay will examine the nature of performance art in 60-70s.

1. Dynamics of performance in 60-70s

Performance art has been a hit in art fields in sixties. The outbreak of Paris May 1968 marked the
symbol of the new aesthetic. Artists were optimistic and iconoclastic during the Fluxus movement;
everyone was extending the medium by deconstructing objects or performance. Threatre became a
putative source of freedom—something outside the production of art market. Participation artists
included John Cage, Jean Jacques Lebel, Michael Kirby and many others. 2

One of the specific influences on Brisley was Ronald Hunt’s essay on primitivism (The Savage Mind
published in 1966 in English version) in which he was finding a pre-scientific status for contemporary
performance. What attracts Brisley is not simply a matter of transposing the look of primitive rituals
into contemporary form, but understanding how rituals have functioned in society, stated by the
scholar. The mandate of art was to find an art that reached out to an audience without the intermediary
classifications of high-culture and professionalism as a combative act to British elitism and

1
Nedelcu, L. (2020). Performance art after the 1990s. 10(1), 74-87. doi:10.2478/tco-2020-0005
2Roberts, J. (2019, February 21). Stuart Brisley. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.domobaal.com/resources/stuartbrisley/stuart-brisley-john-roberts-ica-domobaal-1981.pdf. p.11
bureaucracy. 3 His collaborative projects The Peterlee Project (19776-77) and The Georgiana
Collection (1978-86) demonstrated how materials collected in the sites were anthologically used for a
social act out of an institutional boundary.

In his archival report of the project, he called it a new “return” of the past because it returned in an
“archival impulse”—historical re-enactment, re-enactment of the previous artworks or performances.
4
Meanwhile, the act of re-enacting required a stance, perhaps a new dimension for the researchers,
including all mining workers and villagers in Peterlee (the witnesses), historians and the artists to
actively intervene and interpret the past. Here, performance became a stance of act, with meaning and
connection to the original content (history) which could be rather rapproachment or antithetical. Stuart
Brisley explained the concept of performance in an anthropical approach.

Performance in the sixties emphasizes on site-specificity where spaces provide a platform and
linkage for any “act” happened in the location. The material traces, remains, networks, the phenomena
are the focus of attention, rather than historical representation. 5 Brisley was treating performance as an
ongoing historical practice opposing to the dead history in response to the archival system in the 19th
century Europe—the way of periodizing the historical events were the problem of detachment that it
intended to obliterate the past in an impartial manner. The process of performance was an act of
“shuffling”—reshaping the pace of progress and way of dissemination. On the one hand, the
performance of history is cognitively empty that no knowledge could be verified in the act. On the
other hand, it offered an attractive access to the past by objects, uncanny acts, and repetition. It also
carries a means of breaking the “icicle” of the past and present created by the bureaucratic archival
system while relinking the past with the present in an incessant basis.

3
Roberts, J. (2019, February 21). Stuart Brisley. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.domobaal.com/resources/stuartbrisley/stuart-brisley-john-roberts-ica-domobaal-1981.pdf. p.11
4
Brisley, S. The Peterlee Project 1976-1977, Museum of Ordure, 2014, from
http://www.stuartbrisley.com/media/201720772354b65ae19c3767.38276457.pdf p.7
5 Same with above
 1.1. The Peterlee Project – History Within Living Memory (1976-77)

Brisley’s Peterlee Project – History Within Living Memory (1976-77) was an act of “perform history”
and an acknowledged pioneer of the archival art projects of the 60s. The project was a political
intervention in Peterlee, a town in Northeast England with no history. The major objective of the
project was to retrieve the memory of the town. During the project, Brisley appealed the case of urban
planning project Farewell Squalor designed by the government in 1947 where he pointed out the
problem: the planning was poorly designed without putting peoples and geographical characteristics
into concerns.

There are a few characteristics of the village. First, the village was named after the miners’ leader
Peter Lee. It is one of the few places in British Isles to be directly renamed after a recent individual.
Second, the mining villages in Peterlee were cheaply built by the landlords though the geology of the
area was unsuitable for housing due to war and overmining. 6 Here shows two major problems of the
town: it carried a past of colonial history that the name of the town was borrowed from the outsiders;
there was an extension of economic imperatives in Northern England after the second world war.

Brisley’s project operated into two modes. The first part was collecting first-hand information of the
site to form a “living memory”. The collections included personal experiences, oral memory and
historical statements relating to Peterlee and nearby villages. The second part was collecting historical
materials of the local government and the proposals of the development of new town Peterlee in
Farewell Squalor for the preparation of future debates—the sustainable and ethical concern of the
development of Peterlee and memorabilia of the town. Most importantly, it became major evidence for
the negotiations between the Peterlee management firm and the Easington District Council. 7 The

7
Brisley, S. The Peterlee Project 1976-1977, Museum of Ordure, 2014, from
http://www.stuartbrisley.com/media/201720772354b65ae19c3767.38276457.pdf p.8
direction of the project implies the information collected are treated as interconnected social tools
provided for any action taken in the region, rather than an archive of local history.

The Peterlee Project offers an opportunity to resituate the position of art in the late 19th century.
Performance was not only about happening but also about to what extent the scale could reach the
society. Brisley’s project was participatory, socially conscious, and active in nature that it involved a
socio-political context or a geopolitical framework. Unlike most of the avant-garde performances in the
early 60s, Brisley suggested that the process of the performance was under manipulations with a certain
scale and depth of referencing, archiving until it evoked a political act. Thus, the nature of event-based
performances has shifted from “ephemerality” and “artistic” to “long-lasting” and “practical”. The
contents of “performance” and “history” are more closely related because of its “immediacy”,
‘presence” and site-specificity of act.

1.2. Ritual practice in modern alienation

When performance is in a contemporary form, the power of the act comes from how the body (of an
individual or a community) is subjected to social tasks and rituals. Ritual provides an index of social
relations. It ‘demarcates, emphasizes, affirms, solemnizes, and also smooths over critical changes in
social relationships’. 8 Rules of ritual often contained in modern society in forms of social customs and
hierarchal values. However, when it was practiced in performance, the rituals offer a drama where the
division between performer and audience has not been institutionalized. 9 The situation would be: “in
environmental work, the public is confronted by potential experiences which in evading known forms in
art may not be recognizable as art and may be exposed to totally unexpected and uncatered for
responses’. 10 The similar situation has been found in a modern ceremonial ritual of Haxey Hood
appeared in Brisley’s video essay Being and Doing (1984).

Here is the description of the event celebration.

At four o’clock in the afternoon things took on a serious turn as the darkness closed in. The
Hood, a two foot long piece of rope encased in leather was thrown by the Lord of the Hood himself.
The crowd, between 200 or 300 has gathered so close to him that he could hardly move his arms.
When it was thrown, as many man as could got both hands to it and held it, others then clasped
around the waist till all had direct or indirect contact with the Hood. 11

8
M. Lewis: Social Anthropology in Perspective, Penguin 7976, p.l:36.
9
Brisley, S. (n.d.). 80sTextTranscript of film text: Being and doing, a film by Stuart Brisley and Ken McMullen,
1984. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
http://www.stuartbrisley.com/pages/40/80s/Text/Transcript_of_film_text:_Being_and_Doing,_a_film_by_Stuar
t_Brisley_and_Ken_McMullen/page:4
10
Stuart Brisley: 'Environments’, Studio International, June 1969, p.268.
11
Brisley, S. (n.d.). 80sTextTranscript of film text: Being and doing, a film by Stuart Brisley and Ken McMullen,
1984. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
 The ritual rose to climax when the observers and the participants lost their sight in the total
darkness. 12 The observers were part of the chaos since they unintentionally collided with the rest who
clasped around the waist. Whether they had intention to participate or not, the act intervened the rules.

In Britain there still exist communal rituals, which resist intrusion. For intrusion produces
self-consciousness. And self-consciousness destroys the very essence of the ritual.

Brisley’s analysis tells the relationship between individual and collective consciousness in
performance. The analysis criticizes how performers manipulate themselves between authority and
personal freedom. 13

Performance art is a term used to describe a live art activity that fits uneasily into critical
14
categories. It is ephemeral and often dangerous.

It is because performance originated from rituals, when the rules and context have not yet been
introduced to the audience, what they are experiencing is the sense of detachment and alienation within
the situated environment. It is risky because the audience had no idea when they accidently broke the

http://www.stuartbrisley.com/pages/40/80s/Text/Transcript_of_film_text:_Being_and_Doing,_a_film_by_Stuart_
Brisley_and_Ken_McMullen/page:4
12
Same as above
13
Roberts, J. (2019, February 21). Stuart Brisley. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.domobaal.com/resources/stuartbrisley/stuart-brisley-john-roberts-ica-domobaal-1981.pdf. p.11
14
Brisley, S. (n.d.). 80sTextTranscript of film text: Being and doing, a film by Stuart Brisley and Ken McMullen,
1984. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
http://www.stuartbrisley.com/pages/28/80s/Works/Being_and_Doing,_a_film_by_Stuart_Brisley_and_Ken_McM
ullen/page:6
rules of the rituals in a real-time setting. Here shows how power is made manifests between individual
and institution as Michael Foucault written in Discipline and Punish: 'The body is also directly
involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, train it,
torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform cere- monies, to emit signs'. 15

1.2.1. Rules of Ritual: purification ritual and rite de passage

Brisley was not interest in the historical form of rituals, but the rules of ritual as a principle of
performance that shows obedience, obligation, and duty in an act. Brisley divided the rules into two
types: purification ritual and rite de passage. 16 Purification ritual is an act of faith by lowering personal
comfort to erase the boundary between oneself and the environment.

In And For Today… Nothing (1972), Brisley put himself into a territorial struggle that he lay in a bath
of black cold water surrounded by offal and rotten meat. His head was positioned just above the water
to create a border between water and air. The riskiest act of this performance was to reduce the
inevitable bodily breathing movement into minimum until “almost nothing” had changed in the site.
During two weeks of performance, flies laid eggs on the meat which hatched out into maggots.
Subjecting his body in an almost intolerable situation, Brisley’s intention was to invite audience to
observe the fragile line between life and death. 17 The whole process gave audience an unescapable
feeling of illness and decadence. The title ‘And For Today’ was echoing an underlying fatigue of the
social movements in the sixties aftermath. The body in the bathtub was used to describe the social
stagnation—a moribund system co-opting and denaturing experimental art. 18 Here, the purity of act
examines how body exercised its power in a situated conditions and how emotional disengagement
gives power to the visual impact.

15
Roberts, J. (2019, February 21). Stuart Brisley. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.domobaal.com/resources/stuartbrisley/stuart-brisley-john-roberts-ica-domobaal-1981.pdf. p.12
16
Same as above
17
Lesso, R. (2020, June 05). 10 most shocking & controversial art ever made. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.thecollector.com/controversial-art-history/
18
Westerman, J. (n.d.). Unscheduled Action 1968, Retrieved December 14, 2021, from
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/perspectives/stuart-
brisley#footnoteref12_ipitdnc
You Know It Makes Sense (1972) and 10 Days (1978) were rather fertility rituals or rite de passage.
The phrase rite de passage means transition or liminality, the reintegration into society with a new
status. 19 Brisley’s works appeared in the same pattern that his initiation always symbolizes a cultural
or political change. 10 Days was first performed in Berlin in 1972 and later in London in 1978. Brisley
refused to eat over the Christmas period while watching the meals ritually served to him. Meanwhile,
audience were invited to join the meal. The juxtaposition of two act – consumption verses denial could
be seen as a binary opposing choice of selection of will. The former is showing a cultural phenomenon
of eating while the latter demonstrates how oneself rejects social conformity and establishes a new
state from the old rules.

The title You Know It Makes Sense (1972) comes from an election slogan of Harold Wilson`s Labour
Government 1964-70. The setting took reference from government’s allegations of banning torture
methods (the five techniques) used by the British Army after arresting 14 Irish republicans in 1971.
The met-hods were condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as being inhumane and
degrading. 20 The situation is intended to be an aggressive reaction to the British monolithic-political
system. In the play, each participant was assigned to do different acts. They could also respond to the
actions of others. The resulting scene was chaotic and violent, but no acts of brutality occurred. 21

19
5. Rite de Passage. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/5-rite- de-
passage/
20
Stuart Brisley. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://aestheticamagazine.com/stuart-brisley/
21 Same as above
 The outline of the performance, ‘You Know It Makes Sense’

2. Relationship between audience and performer: observer as the observed

Brisley regards performance behaviors as an artistic and social phenomenon, where different
ideologies mask the common destruction of cultural values. Thus, performance is to reactivate the
relation to the past by contemplating body as a site. When an act was referencing the past, it generates
an alienated conversation between audience and performer. As mentioned in the previous paragraphs,
the observers would unintentionally fall into the rules of rituals designed by the artists because there is
accident in performance.

We are not trying to change the system; we are trying to change the way the system works. If you
look at the institutions which we had in the past and how they should work according to the laws,
what we are trying to do is, we are trying to return to the real meaning of our law and the sense of
existence of the institutions.

It is no doubt that Brisley’s work You Know It Makes Sense (1972) was enacting a real-time
happening based on past event. Brisley enacted a sequence of acts in the performance that correlated
with the acts of politicians.
 In the script, the man is in an office, responding for the official allegations.

“Every five minutes or so he makes an announcement into a microphone. The announcement consists
of an elaborate denial of certain activities, couched in officialese language. The man does not express
in human emotion. He does not answer questions. He is “unavailable”, but in his presence and
statements expresses an official position.”

In the same space, there is a set of violent acts with tools, paints, newspaper on the floor that appeared
to be chaotic and bloody.

“In the room with him are one, two, three or four people who are undergoing certain form of treatment
– ill-treatment, therapy treatment, which form in fact the substance for the official denial.”

The core of the play that formed inner reality was how Brisley juxtaposed two conditions into one
stage—“official denial” and “undergoing treatments” because they happened in different time but
being explicitly linked together in one space.

The “official denial” (Referring back to government’s allegations of the banning of torture treatments)
was trying to cover the act of violence while the treatments were unofficially displayed. (Referring
back to the secret interrogation centre designed for the prisoners in 1971.) The audience would identify
the pattern of expressions as it relates so much with their daily experience of how they perceive the
messages of political propaganda on television although they might not know the actual events Brisley
was trying to relate to.

The official ‘dialogue’ is a clumsy, stupefying daily expression that generates political values,
however, when it appears on the stage or television, it becomes a jargon that contains a certain intensity
of public ridicule. Through the outrageous setting of the stage, it dramatizes the tension between the
audience and the performers. It is because there is a sense of existence of institution, and the existence
could only work when consensus is made between the audience and the performers. It is because the
behavior of the acts fits the image of a politician, and the play fits in the social context. Here shows
how performance is positioned in relation to aesthetic expectations and institutional power where
audience’s attention acts as a supervision of performance behavior depending on their daily witness
and past experience. The witness doesn’t provide an adequate basis for analysis, but a sense of
confusion that recalls the memory of individuals.

3. Reaching out to the future: from 80s onwards

To understand the future practice of performance art is to identify conceptual variations or continuities
in post-1989 performing arts practices. What kind of queries caused the resort to the body? Which of
the criticisms are still current and which new issues are formulated in the present geopolitical
framework or in particular socio-political contexts? 22
To conclude, performance in sixties was anti-
institutional, expressive, participatory, and non-context based in nature influenced by new Dadaism
and Fluxus Movement in 1960s. In the seventies, more frameworks and referencing were done to
design a performance, thus performance was more context-wise, inner-structured, and socially
responsive in nature. Alexander Brener’s performances in Russia referenced by Stuart Brisley once
pointed out the characteristics of performances from 80s onwards: social reconciliation and body as
politics.

22
Nedelcu, L. (2020). Performance art after the 1990s. 10(1), 74-87. doi:10.2478/tco-2020-0005
 Bibliography

Report

Brisley, S. The Peterlee Project 1976-1977, Museum of Ordure, 2014, from

http://www.stuartbrisley.com/media/201720772354b65ae19c3767.38276457.pdf

Journal/ Online Database

Brisley, S. (n.d.). 80sTextTranscript of film text: Being and doing, a film by Stuart Brisley and Ken McMullen,

1984. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from

http://www.stuartbrisley.com/pages/28/80s/Works/Being_and_Doing,_a_film_by_Stuart_Brisley_and

_Ken_McMullen/page:6

Nedelcu, L. (2020). Performance art after the 1990s. 10(1), 74-87. doi:10.2478/tco-2020-0005

Roberts, J. (2019, February 21). Stuart Brisley. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from.

https://www.domobaal.com/resources/stuartbrisley/stuart-brisley-john-roberts-ica-domobaal-

1981.pdf.

Website

Lesso, R. (2020, June 05). 10 most shocking & controversial art ever made. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from.

https://www.thecollector.com/controversial-art-history/

Stuart Brisley. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://aestheticamagazine.com/stuart-brisley/

Westerman, J. (n.d.). Unscheduled Action 1968, Retrieved December 14, 2021, from.

https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/perspectives/stuart-

brisley#footnoteref12_ipitdnc

5. Rite de Passage. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/5-rite- de-passage/

Books

M. Lewis: Social Anthropology in Perspective, Penguin 7976, p.l:36.

Stuart Brisley: 'Environments’, Studio International, June 1969, p.268.