A lot of your performances are extreme challenges of
pain and effort endurance, beside the hard training before every single
performance, is your life style change by your artistic needs?
Although
I did Yoga all the time I lived in Japan and also coached and played
competitive Squash, this was not done directly for any conditioning or
physical preparation for the performances. Certainly, the body had to
be generally fit but not especially so. But certainly my art practice
affected my day to day life. It usually took a week to fully recover
from a suspension performance. I had to be monitored in a clinic after
the Stomach Sculpture insertion. It took over a
year to recover from the surgery and subsequent infection with the Ear
On Arm project. I guess the body performs with a posture of
indifference. Indifference as opposed to expectation. When actions
happen with expectation possibilities quickly collapse into
actualities. The performance becomes predictable. By performing with
indifference the event is allowed to unfold in its own time and with
its own rhythm. I guess that idea of indifference is how I live my life
now.
In your performances you violate biological limits:
in The Body Suspensions (1976-88) you fought
against gravity, in The Stomach Sculptures (1993)
you emptied body and technologies invaded it, in Fractal Flesh
(1995) body had satellite dimension and distance interact with it was
possible; development turns you into a technological shaman, do you
identify yourself in this role? Does your art have a mystical side?
Well,
there is no necessity to use words like “shaman”
and “mystical”. This kind of language is misleading
as it refers to outmoded metaphysical notions, completely unrelated to
the intention, theoretical and art practice of the artist. Rather than
clarifying what is happening this kind of interpretation confuses what
is trying to be achieved. I guess these words are used in trying to
describe activities not fully understood. There is no spiritual
dimension in these artworks. They merely explore the intuitive and the
aesthetic.
Your started to perform about forty years ago. Do you
think is there, in the actual artistic contest, a performer see fit to
become your artistic heir?
Oh, I’m sure
there are a number of artists who are experimenting and performing with
machines and interactive media. What’s important are not
artists who might perpetuate your performances, but rather artists that
have alternate ideas with radically different trajectories.
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