Endurance art

Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present, 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abramović sat opposite museum visitors for eight hours a day, without speaking, for a total of 750 hours.^[1]

Endurance art is a kind of performance art involving some form of hardship, such as pain, solitude or exhaustion.^[2] Performances that focus on the passage of long periods of time are also known as durational art or durational performances.^[3]

Writer Michael Fallon traces the genre to the work of Chris Burden in California in the 1970s.^[4] Burden spent five days in a locker in Five-Day Locker Piece (1971), had himself shot in Shoot (1971), and lived for 22 days in a bed in an art gallery in Bed Piece (1972).^[5]

Other examples of endurance art include Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece), in which for 12 months he punched a time clock every hour, and Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984 (Rope Piece), in which Hsieh and Linda Montano spent a year tied to each other by an eight-foot rope.^[6]

In The House with the Ocean View (2003), Marina Abramović lived silently for 12 days without food or entertainment on a stage entirely open to the audience.^[7] Such is the physical stamina required for some of her work that in 2012 she set up what she called a "boot camp" in Hudson, New York, for participants in her multiple-person performances.^[8]

Examples

Tehching Hsieh spent a year in this cage in his studio in One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece).

• Marina Abramović^[9] – Rhythm 5, 1974; Luminosity, 1997, 2010; Nude with Skeleton, 2002, 2005, 2010;^[8] The House With the Ocean View (2003);^[7] Balkan Erotic Epic, 2005.^[10]
• Marina Abramović with Ulay^[11] – Point of Contact, 1980;^[8] Night Sea Crossing, 1981; The Lovers: Walk on the Great Wall, 1988.^[12]
• Vito Acconci – Seedbed, 1972.^[13]
• David Askevold – Fill.^[14]
• Stuart Brisley – And for today ... nothing, 1972.^[15]
• Chris Burden^[11] – Five-Day Locker Piece, 1971.
• David Blaine^[16] – Witness (1999),^[17] Buried Alive, Frozen in Time, Vertigo, Above the below, Drowned Alive.
• Nikhil Chopra, – Give Me Your Blood And I Will Give You Freedom, 2014.^[18]
• Houston Conwill – Juju Rituals, 1975–1983.^[19]
• Elevator Repair Service – Gatz, 2005.^[18][20]
• Tehching Hsieh – One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece); One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece).^[6][21][22]
• Tehching Hsieh with Linda Montano – Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984 (Rope Piece).^[21]
• Ragnar Kjartansson – A Lot of Sorrow, 2014.^[23]
• Stan Lai – A Dream Like A Dream, 2014.^[18]
• Bruce Nauman – Revolving Upside Down and Stamping in the Studio.^[14]
• Carolee Schneeman – Up To And Including Her Limits.^[14]
• Wolfgang Stoerchle – Attempt Public Erection, 1972–1975.^[19]
• Emma Sulkowicz – Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), 2014–2015.^[24][11]
• Zhang Huan – 12 Square Meters, 1994.^[25]

See also

• Hunger artist

References

Further reading

• Brown, Sierra. "Discover Endurance Art," California State University, Long Beach, 2008 (report on an exhibition).
• Kafka, Franz. "A Hunger Artist", 1922.
• Montano, Linda M. "Endurance Then and Now," Letters from Linda M. Montano, Routledge, 2012, p. 123ff.
• O’Brien, Martin. "Performing Chronic: Chronic illness and endurance art", Performance Research, 26 September 2014, pp. 54–63.
• von Ah, André. "Performance Art: A Bit of History, Examples and a Fast Dictionary", The Huffington Post, 9 November 2013.

Performance art Work 7000 Oaks (1982) Body Pressure (1974) Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol (2015) Cut Piece (1964) How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) Rhythm 0 (1974) Rhythm 2 (1974) Rhythm 5 (1974) Rhythm 10 (1973) Seedbed (1972) Seven Easy Pieces (2005) The Artist Is Present (2010) Three Weeks in May (1977) Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) Artists Marina Abramović Vito Acconci David Askevold Ron Athey Franko B Joseph Beuys David Blaine Chris Burden Houston Conwill Miss Crash Bob Flanagan Tehching Hsieh Joan Jonas Allan Kaprow Yves Klein Yayoi Kusama Suzanne Lacy Milo Moiré Charlotte Moorman Bruce Nauman Yoko Ono Nam June Paik Mark Pauline Carolee Schneemann Wolfgang Stoerchle Ulay Wolf Vostell Robert Whitman Hannah Wilke Yang Zhichao Miriam Syowia Kyambi Other Body art Endurance art Feminist art Happening Hunger artist Participatory art Survival Research Laboratories Viennese Actionism