SENSATION IS EVERYTHING read performance script...
A white sheet lies on the floor (6 x 3m). Three circles have been drawn at the sheets’ respective short ends; they have all been marked with a number 1 to 6. Besides every circle lies 2 raw eggs and a container (1/2 litres) filled with blood. A large circle has been drawn on the middle of the sheet. Part: 1 (M) The music starts (volume 1). After approximately 5 minutes the Actor is led into the room; his hands are tied together with nylon rope. The Actor kneels in front of circle 1; he breaks an egg and pours the content into his mouth; picks up the container and pours blood into his mouth. The Fellow Actors give a sign; they start to drag the Actor from circle 1 towards circle 6; the Actor slowly releases the blood from his mouth - making a straight blood line on the sheet; every time the Actor is dragged into a new circle the Fellow Actors give a sign; the Actor kneels in front of it; picks up an egg; pours the yolk into his mouth; picks up the container and pours blood into his mouth. When the Actor reaches circle 6 (music; volume: 2) the same ritual proceeds until the Actor has been dragged back to circle 1 again. The Fellow Actors drags the Actor diagonally over the sheet to circle 6 (the Actor still spilling blood from his mouth) and from there diagonally into the circle in the middle of the sheet. Part: 2 (S) The Actor lies still for two minutes. The Fellow Actors give a sign; they approach the Actor in the middle of the sheet; empties two buckets of pig intestines over the Actor. (music; volume: 3). The Actor lies still for two minutes. The Fellow Actors give a sign. (music; volume: 4). The actor rises to his knees inside the mid circle; attacks the intestines, ripping them into shreds during a five minute period. (music; volume: 1). The Actor kneels inside the mid circle; stares at the sheet in front of him. Silence. Stop. Anthology: Gilles Deleuze - The Logic of Sensation: sensation acts immediately upon the nervous system, which is of the flesh, whereas abstract form is addressed to the head, and acts through intermediary of the brain, which is closer to the bone… As a spectator, I experience the sensation only by entering the painting, by reaching the unity of the sensing and the sensed. Colour is in the body, sensation is in the body, not in the air. Sensation is what is painted. That which is painted on the canvas is the body, not in inasmuch as something represented as an object, rather as the subject of that particular sensation. Francis Bacon quoted in an interview with Peter Beard: If you see someone lying on the pavement in the sunlight, with the blood streaming from him, that is in itself – the colour of the blood against the pavement – very invigorating… exhilarating… In all the motor accidents I’ve seen, people strewn across the road, the first thing you think of is the strange beauty – the vision of it, before you try to do anything. It’s to do with the unusualness of it. I once saw a bad car accident on a large road, and the bodies were strewn about with broken glass from the car, and the blood and various possessions, and it was in fact very beautiful. I think the beauty in it is terribly elusive, but it just happened to be in the disposition of the bodies, the way they lay and the blood, and perhaps it was also because it was not a thing one was used to seeing… It was midday, when the sun was very strong and on a white road. Georges Bataille – Madame Edwarda: In order to reach the limits of ecstasy in which we lose ourselves in bliss we must always set an immediate boundary to it: horror. Not only can pain, my own or that of other people, carry me nearer to the moment when horror will seize hold of me and bring me to a state of bordering on delirium, but there is no kind of repugnance whose affinity with desire I do not discern. Horror is sometimes confused with fascination, but if it cannot suppress and destroy the element of fascination it will reinforce it. Danger has a paralyzing effect, but if it is a mild danger it can excite desire. We can only reach a state of ecstasy when we are conscious of death or annihilation, even if remotely. Sigmund Freud - Basic Writing: Sadism and masochism occupy a special place in the perversions, for the contrast of activity and passivity lying at their bases belongs to the common traits of the sexual life. That cruelty and the sexual instinct are most intimately connected is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of this connection no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. The aggression which is mixed with the sexual instinct is, according to some authors, a remnant of cannibalistic lust – that is, a participation of the domination apparatus…. The most striking peculiarity of this perversion lies in the fact that its active and passive forms are regularly encountered together in the same person. He who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in sexual relations is also capable of experiencing pain in sexual relations as pleasure. A sadist is simultaneously a masochist, though either the active or the passive side of the perversion may be more strongly developed in him and thus, represent his preponderant sexual activity.
