Resurrecting the body: affect and agency in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, contemporary performance and immersive virtual space

I am interested in exploring Brown's conception of a resurrection of the body through creative transgressions and Sontag's notion of an erotics of art. Beginning with Antonin Artaud's conceptualization of a "theatre of cruelty", I propose to examine artistic embodiments of transgression and erotics in the works of performance artists such as Karen Finley and Vito Acconci, as well as in the virtual art of Char Davies. Transgression and erotics in popular culture will be explored through the performance style of Jim Morrison and The Doors. Using Nietzsche and Brown's discussions of the Apollonian and Dionysian conditions or states of artistic consciousness, I argue that a return to the senses or to the romanticist notion of the "deep interior" is required in order for the process of social healing and unification to begin -- Pages 2-3.

Resurrecting the body: affect and agency in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, contemporary performance and immersive virtual space

I am interested in exploring Brown's conception of a resurrection of the body through creative transgressions and Sontag's notion of an erotics of art. Beginning with Antonin Artaud's conceptualization of a "theatre of cruelty", I propose to examine artistic embodiments of transgression and erotics in the works of performance artists such as Karen Finley and Vito Acconci, as well as in the virtual art of Char Davies. Transgression and erotics in popular culture will be explored through the performance style of Jim Morrison and The Doors. Using Nietzsche and Brown's discussions of the Apollonian and Dionysian conditions or states of artistic consciousness, I argue that a return to the senses or to the romanticist notion of the "deep interior" is required in order for the process of social healing and unification to begin -- Pages 2-3.

For Randy

In this personal essay, artist and professor Karen Finley reflects on her relationship with her colleague and mentor, Randy Martin

All My Trials

This chapter reflects on the healing powers of poems and tales. From his family's poetry night, the author understood how poems can be used to share feelings and thoughts with loved ones, but he became interested in the role that poetry could play in getting people through hard times. The author shares an excerpt of the poem entitled The Black Sheep, inscribed on a sculpture by the performance artist Karen Finley; the concrete monolith stood in the corner park on First Street in New York City and read by homeless men and homeless women day after day. Perhaps stories and poems, like prayers, have the power to heal—or perhaps they open us to the healing power of the universe. Or perhaps they provide comfort and insight into our situations when our prayers don't work.

Sticky Performances: Affective Circulation and Material Strategy in the (Chocolate) Smearing of Karen Finley

Although many artists have used food in performance, few are as famously or firmly associated with it as Karen Finley. At the start of Finley's career, almost all of her work was marked by unusual uses of food. Examples include sugared yams dumped over her backside while describing ageist rape in I'm an Ass Man (1985) and the concoction of crushed raw eggs and confetti sponged over her body to analogize social oppression in A Constant State of Desire (1986). Finley intended to channel spectators' excessive emotional and sensual reactions to her extreme, sometimes nauseating uses of food into an indictment of abusive attitudes toward people of marginalized identities. In this sense, the excess of the medium and the excess of the message were intended to correspond, creating a synergistic effect on the spectator.