{"id":1555,"date":"2022-06-06T13:43:29","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T05:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2022-06-06T13:43:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T05:43:29","slug":"how-david-cronenbergs-latest-film-crimes-of-the-future-draws-on-body-and-performance-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-david-cronenbergs-latest-film-crimes-of-the-future-draws-on-body-and-performance-art\/","title":{"rendered":"How David Cronenberg\u2019s Latest Film \u2018Crimes of the Future\u2019 Draws on Body and Performance Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early on in\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>, filmmaker\u00a0David Cronenberg<\/a>\u2019s newly released big return to body horror, a man named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) has his chest opened up for a rapt audience. A machine with fast-moving scalpels pulls apart his stomach and reveals his innards to the crowd. Meanwhile, his partner Caprice (L\u00e9a Seydoux<\/a>) paces around the room, fingering a squishy gadget with blinking lights to control this surgery, which serves no medical purpose. All the while, Saul moans and writhes, perhaps in pleasure, perhaps in pain, perhaps in a mix of the two.<\/p>\n

Could this makeshift surgery be considered art? At least within the film\u2019s world, yes. Caprice labels herself as a performance artist, though Saul is not merely her subject \u2014 he is a collaborator unto himself, and he considers his organs his creations.<\/p>\n

While this may all seem rather strange,\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>\u00a0is, in fact, couched in recent art history. It draws on a kind of performance art in which artists use their body as their material, subjecting themselves to particularly painful situations that have involved bloodletting and the modification of their skin.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years ago when I wrote this script, there were lots of performance artists of various kinds,\u201d Cronenberg told critic Amy Taubin in an\u00a0Artforum<\/em>\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0this week. \u201cOnce you have it in your head that something exists, that artists were compelled to make those performance works and that there was an audience for them, that frees you to invent what you\u2019re going to invent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Photomontage<\/div>\n<\/div>
Orlan,\u00a0The Kiss of the Artist<\/em>, 1977.<\/span>PHOTO PATRICK BATARD\/SIPA USA VIA AP<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Performing Surgery<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cronenberg\u2019s latest is set in a not-far-off future in which human bodies have changed so much that some people can barely feel pain. Because of this, knives are wielded in the alleys of Athens by couples seeking semi-sexual thrills, and quasi-secret happenings such as Saul and Caprice\u2019s have developed a loyal following. Throughout, characters make one repeated pun: performing surgery has become a kind of performance art.<\/p>\n

Outside the film, in the real world, artists have undergone medical procedures in an attempt to propose new forms for the human body. Along the way, they have questioned gender binaries and sexual norms.<\/p>\n

The French artist ORLAN, for example, has received plastic surgery, memorably giving herself curved lumps on her forehead that she still has today. (Midway through\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>, Caprice gets a similar kind of plastic surgery.) ORLAN<\/a> has been clear about the fact that plastic surgery is typically used to make bodies beautiful\u2014and that in modifying her own body, she wanted to become less conventionally attractive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with my body was a political gesture,\u201d ORLAN\u00a0told\u00a0Artnet News<\/em>\u00a0in 2019. \u201cIt was an act for the woman I was\/I am\/I will be, and all women, to claim their freedom, which was denied to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cutting, puncturing, sewing, and wounding flesh have been utilized widely by artists from the late \u201960s onward, from Vito Acconci to Zhang Huan. But it is feminist art of the \u201970s that seems to exert the greatest influence on this film.<\/p>\n

Even before\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>\u00a0premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Caprice\u2019s character had\u00a0earned comparisons<\/a>\u00a0to the feminist artist Gina Pane, who ultimately stopped using her body in her work because her performances became so physically taxing.<\/p>\n

For her 1974 performance\u00a0Action Psych\u00e9<\/em>, for example, Pane repeatedly cut her eyelids and stomach, leaving the incisions open so that they dripped blood. Her goal in doing so was to \u201creach an anesthetized society\u201d \u2014 one with so much pain in it that there was no longer discomfort among viewers, similar to the world seen in\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Materials used in Marina Abramovi\u0107\u2019s 1974 performance\u00a0Rhythm 0<\/em>.<\/span>PHOTO MARIUS BECKER\/PICTURE-ALLIANCE\/DPA\/AP IMAGES<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Creators and Creations<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a certain point in\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>, it becomes clear that there are subversives seeking to create new bodies, and it is unclear whether the government supports this or not, given that there appear to be moles on the inside. A federal investigator visits the National Organ Registry in one scene. He lifts up his shirt, points to a mass on his chest, and asks if it may be art in the vein of Duchamp, who likewise didn\u2019t create many of his objects. Everyone in the room seems dumbfounded by the question.<\/p>\n

What the scene implies is that bodies can be art, and that the artists behind them are not just natural forces but also people who come in contact with them. Indeed, Caprice and Saul\u2019s artistic relationship is likely to recall that of another famed performance-art duo: Marina Abramovi\u0107 and\u00a0Ulay.<\/p>\n

Prior to working with Ulay, during the early \u201970s, Abramovi\u0107 gained international recognition for her \u201cRhythm\u201d series of performances in which she would enact violent scenarios using her own body. In\u00a0Rhythm 10<\/em>\u00a0(1973), she played a hand game using 20 knives, stabbing herself repeatedly in the process. In\u00a0Rhythm 2<\/em>\u00a0(1974), she took medication typically used for patients suffering from catatonia and began to experience violent seizures.<\/p>\n

The series culminated in\u00a0Rhythm 0<\/em>\u00a0(1974), in which audience members were invited to use objects on Abramovi\u0107\u2019s body, including a scalpel and a pair of scissors. At one point, one viewer raised a loaded gun to Abramovi\u0107.<\/p>\n

Ulay and Abramovi\u0107 never undertook anything quite so shocking together, but their performances blended aspects of their romantic and artistic collaborations in queasy ways. Their famed 1977 performance\u00a0Breathing in\/breathing out<\/em>\u00a0involved blocking their nostrils and exhaling into each other\u2019s mouths until they nearly pass out. In exchanging breaths, the two use each other\u2019s bodies to transform one another, creating and using each other\u2019s creations in a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n

While never explicitly invoked within the film,\u00a0Breathing in\/breathing out<\/em>, with its odd erotic qualities, seems to hang over the scenes in which Caprice and Saul take part in what they call \u201cthe new sex,\u201d or relations conducted primarily through surgery rather than intercourse. In one scene, the two disrobe and allow themselves to be repeatedly punctured by a machine.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Stelarc.<\/span>PA WIRE\/PA PHOTOS<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Ear Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most haunting scene in\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>, when Saul visits a performance by an artist billed only as the Ear Man. It\u2019s an apt name: this artist has sewn his eyes and lips shut, and adorned his arms, chest, legs, and head with extra sets of ears. He jerks his body around to an unsettling score while wearing only a small set of underwear.<\/p>\n

The Ear Man\u2019s performance appears to be a direct reference to a work by the Australian artist Stelarc called\u00a0Ear on Arm<\/em><\/a>. The work has involved placing a functional third ear onto his arm, and has taken Stelarc well over a decade to produce, partly because of the medical difficulties involved and partly because of the bureaucratic strictures that forbid surgeries of this sort in certain countries. He has stated that he aims for viewers to be able to hear what this ear does by tuning in online and on their phones.<\/p>\n

Stelarc has said the performance is a reflection on bodies undergoing radical shifts in the digital age. \u201cCertainly what becomes important now is not merely the body\u2019s identity, but its connectivity \u2014 not its mobility or location, but its interface,\u201d he has written. \u201cIn these projects and performances, a prosthesis is not seen as a sign of lack but rather as a symptom of excess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Cronenberg somewhat dodged Amy Taubin\u2019s question when she asked about Stelarc,\u00a0Crimes of the Future<\/em>\u00a0seems to eye the artist\u2019s work with suspicion. Midway through the Ear Man\u2019s performance, Saul is approached by a businesswoman who waves off the work as being bad conceptual art. He\u2019s a better dancer than he is an artist, she suggests.<\/p>\n

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Source: https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early on in\u00a0Crimes of the Future, filmmaker\u00a0David Cronenberg\u2019s newly released big return to body horror, a man named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) has his chest opened up for a rapt audience. A machine with fast-moving scalpels pulls apart his stomach and reveals his innards to the crowd. Meanwhile, his partner Caprice (L\u00e9a Seydoux) paces around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nHow David Cronenberg\u2019s Latest Film \u2018Crimes of the Future\u2019 Draws on Body and Performance Art - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Early on in\u00a0Crimes of the Future, filmmaker\u00a0David Cronenberg\u2019s newly released big return to body horror, a man named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) has his chest opened up for a rapt audience.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-david-cronenbergs-latest-film-crimes-of-the-future-draws-on-body-and-performance-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How David Cronenberg\u2019s Latest Film \u2018Crimes of the Future\u2019 Draws on Body and Performance Art - 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