The
French performance artist
Orlan who was born in the industrial town of St. Étienne, France,
has got an extraordinary position in the contemporary art world.
She states “art is a dirty job, but someone has to do it” and makes
her dirty job with her own body in the most incredible meaning of
the word. In her artistic performances she defines as Carnal Art,
Orlan transforms her body and her face through surgical operations
to criticize the beauty concept of the men-power and the construction
of female-subjects in the modern Western societies.
Orlan
uses surgical operations to deconstruct “the beauty concept” and
recreate it in her personal style while women are using esthetic
surgery for rejuvenation and to gain the typology of beauty standardized
and accepted generally. The critical target of Carnal Art, with
the expression of Barbara Rose, is “the hypocrisy of the way society
has traditionally split the female image into Madonna and whore”.
(1) Rose believes in that she is a genuine artist , dead serious
in her intent about the elaborately calculated performances defined
as “the theater of operation”. Two essential criteria to distinguish
art from nonart, intentionality and transformation are presented
in Carnal Art. Her confrontational works are esthetic actions
rather than pathological behavior forces us for reconsideration
of the boundary that separates “normality” from madness and art
from nonart. (2) The operating room is her studio and her body
is not only the medium and material she uses for her work, also
is her work itself and a metaphor serves to the resistance against
the stereotypes of esthetic authority.
In Orlan the body loses its quality that unchangeable
or can be transformed according to the acceptable style. In this
context, as Kathy Davis indicates, in her project Orlan’s body
is altered surgically in order to experiment with different identities.
She transcends the borders related race and gender. Orlan claims:
“I am a woman to woman transsexual act”. However, according to
Davis these surgical transformations are far from sex exchange
operation as they are not permanent. This project can be viewed
as a contribution to the postmodern feminist theory on identity
and represents the postmodern celebration of identity as fragmented,
multiple and fluctuating. This kind of plastic surgery is a way
for women to regain the control on their bodies and Orlan’s project
could be considered as an example of a feminist utopia, that the
island where the utopia built is the body. (3)
After she was operated for an extra-uterine pregnancy
under a local anesthetic when she could play both the role of
an observer and patient Orlan decided to turning of surgery into
performance art. The operation/performances are directed by the
artist and involve music, poetry and dance. To finance her expensive
costs for the operations she sells the rights of her photos and
videos and even the samples of her flesh and blood drained off
during the “body sculpting” process. She prefers local anesthesia
for the operations to conduct the other participants of her works.
In “the theater of operation” not only the people on the stage
also the audience play their roles as interactive participants.
Even they have the real pain. The audience experience a big furor
generally while watching the spectacle where the surgeon inserts
needles into her face and skin, slices open her lips and severs
her ear from the rest of her face. They are irritated and uneasy
as Orlan saves her silence.
Orlan’s artistic production is like a parody
of the practice of the ancient Greek artist Zeuxis who was choosing
the best part from different women and combining them to obtain
the ideal woman image. Orlan has selected different features from
famous Renaissance and post-Renaissance representations of ideal
beauty. In a computer-generated way with the help of surgeons
she combines the nose of a famous sculpture of Diana, the mouth
of Boucher’s Europa, the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, the eyes
of Gerome’s Psyche and the forehead of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa on
her face. The operating rooms are also decorated with enlarged
reproductions of the related details of these works. In her deconstruction
of the Western art history she selects these female prototypes
for reasons involving history and mythology: “She chose Diana
because the goddess was an aggressive adventuress and did not
submit to men; Psyche because of her need for love and spiritual
beauty; Europa because she looked to another continent, permitting
herself to be carried away into an unknown future. Venus is part
of the Orlan myth because of her connection to fertility and creativity,
and the Mona Lisa because of her androgyny-the legend being that
the painting actually represents a man, perhaps Leonardo himself.”
(4) Orlan says that, “after mixing my own image with these images,
I reworked the whole as any painter does, until the final portrait
emerged and it was possible to stop and sign it”.
Actually
I intend to demonstrate these relations directed to the samples
of the Western art history by Orlan as a parody and refusing the
tradition of the art historical inheritance in a contradictive
manner that fuses humor sense to horror, rather than the contemporary
representation of this tradition. In this paradoxical work you
could see the belonging to the Western culture as well as the
marks of hate to it. A similar tendency can be witnessed in the
works of American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and modern American
author Chuck Palahniuk who struggles against the main principles
of Western culture. He criticizes American and in a relation the
other Western societies as satirize their crucial values. It is
very interesting that one of his novels, Invisible Monsters is
about the transformation and mutilation of body and face, surgery
operations and related identity problems. A comparative reading
of the works of the three artists in a connection could offer
some imaginative beginning points to the critique of modern societies.
Orlan’s
art could be analyzed with its similarities to the other performance
artists like Bob Flanagan, Yves Klein, Chris Burden and Marina
Abramovic. However, two important points separate her from the
other ones. First one is pain. Orlan does not suffer from pain
thanks to anesthesia as the other performance artists call pain
under a masochistic meaning and desire it. Second one is that
Orlan’s art is completely different than the other ones with its
totality and profoundly imagined, calculated, designed and practiced
eligibility. She builds her work of art through her all life.
This is not spontaneously or aggressive. Contrarily it is a work
of art that is very consciously and well organized after detailed
plans.
Even without pain art is a matter of life and
death for Orlan despite her tranquility about the operations.
Always there is the element of risk and she is face to face the
probability of paralysis and death. Orlan sacrifices and spends
her body day to day for art and it is not an endless source. This
is maybe a kind of postmodern potlatch . (5)What is spent and
gifted is the body and what is gained is the artistic pleasure.
Orlan does not only present her work named as Carnal Art, at the
same time, she is self-reflecting the new/revolutionary level
art has arrived. While she is practicing her Carnal Art theory,
she undertakes the mission of representation of this practices
in the theoretical/esthetic area too.
In the Carnal Art Manifesto, in an ironic expression,
Orlan states that Carnal Art is a self-portrait in the classical
sense, yet realized through the technology of its time. It is
an inscription in flesh lying between figuration and disfiguration
that our age makes possible now. According to Orlan the body should
become a “modified ready-made”. Here the pain is not a means of
redemption or purification unlike “Body Art”. There is not a wish
to achieve a final “plastic” result, but rather Carnal Art seeks
to modify the body and engage in public debate. It has a contradiction
against the Christian tradition and its body-politics. Orlan transforms
the body into language and with her own words she is reversing
the Christian principle of “the word made flesh”, the flesh is
made word. Only her voice remains unchanged. She judges the famous
“you give birth in pain” as an anachronistic nonsense. In Carnal
Art, thanks to local anesthetics and multiple analgesics pain
is defeated. Her slogan is “long live morphine!”
Now
the artist can observe her body cut open, without suffering. When
she sees herself all the way down to her entrails, she reaches
a new version of “mirror stage”. Carnal Art affirms the independence
of the artist as fights against a prioris and dictates. That is
the reason why it engages society and the media and will go as
far as the judicial system. Its purpose is problematizing “the
status of the body and the ethical questions posed by them”. In
the most general sense its critique also covers male body, although
its beginning and the particular field of interest is female body.
“Carnal Art loves the baroque and parody; the grotesque, and the
other such styles that have been left behind, because Art opposes
the social pressures that are exerted upon both human body and
the corpus of art. Carnal art is anti-formalist and anti-conformist”.
(6)
After Orlan’s Manifesto I can add that Carnal
Art might be considered as an anti-authoritarian political discourse
because it rejects authority, domination and codes of the power
as a kind of bio-opposition. At the last analysis, how is Orlan’s
body formed and transformed depend on her own willing only, not
on traditions or fashion. This is one of the top levels human
freedom could reach. Carnal Art that never could become a social
liberation project, is a source guides to the personal freedom,
self-control, emancipation and liberation of the artist. However,
it could be connected to the social politics in some aspects through
feminist theory and movement.
Actually, another field that could be discussed
comparatively with Carnal Art is the critique of the reason in
social theory. In an age when the reason has become totalitarian
and determines social relations elaborately the discourse of Carnal
Art has some common points with the critical names of philosophy
and social theory like F. Lyotard, G. Deleuze, M. Focault and
J. Baudrillard. I hope to discuss these connections another time
in another context.
When we debate on the work of Orlan she named
as “Carnal Art”, “theater of operation” or “body sculpting” there
are some words/notions inevitably we use: face, image, appearance,
view, reflection, form, feature, way, style, copy, text, picture,
photography, etc. We discuss and consider her performance art
and the recreation of her body and face through these words. They
are the words that we use most often as discussing Carnal Art.
For the Western colleagues it would be surprising to know that
there is a word on the world covers all the meanings of the each
word I have mentioned according to the context and its meaning
changes in different semantic relations with other words in the
structure of the language. This word is suret. When you look at
to the Turkish dictionaries you could see that this word originally
comes from Arabic has the meanings of appearance, view, form,
shape, face, feature, way, style, copy of a picture or a text,
duplicate, the apparent aspect of existence in Islamic philosophy,
and in some contexts picture/painting and photography. (7) This
word that is not used often in the current Turkish has not got
an equivalent in English. Hence I have to continue to use this
word as suret. I had noticed to the strange correspondence first
in 2002 when I was preparing for a review about Orlan’s art. (8)The
title of the Turkish article was the same with this paper. But
I did not attempt to debate the excellent correspondence of suret
with the attributes and the characteristics of Orlan’s performances
and delayed this discussion to the first occasion. I had to wait
for this occasion for 2 years.
I
suppose everybody would agree with me Orlan’s transformations
involve her face before everything. She changes continuously her
face, that face is seen as identical to identity generally and
accepted unchangeable, to designate the uninterrupted fluidity
of identities. Her feature is the focus of her work. The depicting
of her feature is purified from the codes of authority. Her work
is a text in inter-textual relations with other texts from the
history and the modern world. She decides her appearance and view,
these are the basic elements of her esthetic discourse, through
her own way and style. On the one hand she copies paintings from
art history while producing her work, on the other hand she reproduces
or duplicates herself through photographs and videos. So, I suggest
suret as an explanatory multiple notion. I wish the Western colleagues
will give the required attention to this word and will accept
the conceptual present of the East.
Walter
Benjamin discussed the transformation of art work in the age of
mechanical reproduction. Today maybe we are in the age of post-mechanical/organic
reproduction age. The artist reproduces her art in an organic
way and also uses the helps of mechanical and digital reproduction
techniques. But this is a reproduction that eliminates the difference
between the original and the copy. In this sense, it reminds us
the simulation concept of J. Baudrillard. Another important concept
of Baudrillard is seduction. I suppose the power of the concept
of suret comes from that it is located in a sphere where these
two concepts of Baudrillard are in a contiguity. Suret seems to
me as a state of simulation gained a seductive dimension. But,
it is more fascinating with its Eastern, mystical seductiveness.
As reference to a tale from the Middle Asia that Baudrillard quoted
to explain his seduction concept, suret is like the redness on
the edge of the tail of fox.
Another meaning of suret is the apparent, perceivable
aspect of existence according to Islamic philosophy. In this viewpoint
everything is suret and we can never be cognizant of the essence
precisely. It seems like an Oriental version of the “Matrix philosophy”.
But essentially the problem is more complicated. Debate the correspondences,
similarities and differences of suret to the Western intellectual
world is over the aim of this paper and requires a comprehensive
research.
I have bordered this work with demonstration
of the revolutionary feature of Orlan’s art and indicating to
the power of suret concept to expound the extraordinary character
of Carnal Art. As a result, I could say that art is never emerges
in a transcendental area where it is disconnected from the social,
econom ical, political, environmental problems of the age. Always,
beyond a relation of determination, there are interactive dealings
between art and the other social fields. To analyze Orlan’s or
other artist’s works we do not have to omit these connection.
Art obtains its meaning only in the historical, cultural and social
contexts. However, the sociological approach is not enough itself
without any contributions from other fields and world languages.
Notions are the basic elements of social theory. In the sociology
of arts we needs new notions for the new facts. I believe in that
suret is one of them.
Eskiþehir, October 2004
NOTES:
1 Barbara Rose, “Orlan: Is It Art/Orlan
and the Transgressive Act”, Art in America, 81:2 (February 1993)
2 Ibid.
3 Kathy Davis, Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences, Rowman&Littlefield,
2003
4 Rose, op. cit
5 potlatch: A ceremonial feast among certain Native American peoples
of the northwest Pacific coast, as in celebration of a marriage
or accession, at which the host distributes gifts according to
each guest's rank or status. Between rival groups the potlatch
could involve extravagant or competitive giving and destruction
by the host of valued items as a display of superior wealth. Source:
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000, Fourth Edition
6 http://www.dundee.ac.uk/transcript/volume2/issue2_2/orlan/orlan.htm
7 source: http://www.tdk.gov.tr The Official web-site of the Turkish
Language Istitute
8 Kubilay Akman, “Orlan’ýn Suretleri”, Mecmua, issue:8, 2003
Actually
I intend to demonstrate these relations directed to the samples
of the Western art history by Orlan as a parody and refusing the
tradition of the art historical inheritance in a contradictive
manner that fuses humor sense to horror, rather than the contemporary
representation of this tradition. In this paradoxical work you
could see the belonging to the Western culture as well as the
marks of hate to it. A similar tendency can be witnessed in the
works of American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and modern American
author Chuck Palahniuk who struggles against the main principles
of Western culture. He criticizes American and in a relation the
other Western societies as satirize their crucial values. It is
very interesting that one of his novels, Invisible Monsters is
about the transformation and mutilation of body and face, surgery
operations and related identity problems. A comparative reading
of the works of the three artists in a connection could offer
some imaginative beginning points to the critique of modern societies.
Orlan’s
art could be analyzed with its similarities to the other performance
artists like Bob Flanagan, Yves Klein, Chris Burden and Marina
Abramovic. However, two important points separate her from the
other ones. First one is pain. Orlan does not suffer from pain
thanks to anesthesia as the other performance artists call pain
under a masochistic meaning and desire it. Second one is that
Orlan’s art is completely different than the other ones with its
totality and profoundly imagined, calculated, designed and practiced
eligibility. She builds her work of art through her all life.
This is not spontaneously or aggressive. Contrarily it is a work
of art that is very consciously and well organized after detailed
plans.
Now
the artist can observe her body cut open, without suffering. When
she sees herself all the way down to her entrails, she reaches
a new version of “mirror stage”. Carnal Art affirms the independence
of the artist as fights against a prioris and dictates. That is
the reason why it engages society and the media and will go as
far as the judicial system. Its purpose is problematizing “the
status of the body and the ethical questions posed by them”. In
the most general sense its critique also covers male body, although
its beginning and the particular field of interest is female body.
“Carnal Art loves the baroque and parody; the grotesque, and the
other such styles that have been left behind, because Art opposes
the social pressures that are exerted upon both human body and
the corpus of art. Carnal art is anti-formalist and anti-conformist”.
(6)
I
suppose everybody would agree with me Orlan’s transformations
involve her face before everything. She changes continuously her
face, that face is seen as identical to identity generally and
accepted unchangeable, to designate the uninterrupted fluidity
of identities. Her feature is the focus of her work. The depicting
of her feature is purified from the codes of authority. Her work
is a text in inter-textual relations with other texts from the
history and the modern world. She decides her appearance and view,
these are the basic elements of her esthetic discourse, through
her own way and style. On the one hand she copies paintings from
art history while producing her work, on the other hand she reproduces
or duplicates herself through photographs and videos. So, I suggest
suret as an explanatory multiple notion. I wish the Western colleagues
will give the required attention to this word and will accept
the conceptual present of the East.
Walter
Benjamin discussed the transformation of art work in the age of
mechanical reproduction. Today maybe we are in the age of post-mechanical/organic
reproduction age. The artist reproduces her art in an organic
way and also uses the helps of mechanical and digital reproduction
techniques. But this is a reproduction that eliminates the difference
between the original and the copy. In this sense, it reminds us
the simulation concept of J. Baudrillard. Another important concept
of Baudrillard is seduction. I suppose the power of the concept
of suret comes from that it is located in a sphere where these
two concepts of Baudrillard are in a contiguity. Suret seems to
me as a state of simulation gained a seductive dimension. But,
it is more fascinating with its Eastern, mystical seductiveness.
As reference to a tale from the Middle Asia that Baudrillard quoted
to explain his seduction concept, suret is like the redness on
the edge of the tail of fox. 