Wilson Engel

Acting out Violence

On Friday June 18^th at the Hemispheric Encuentro I saw three performances that shocked me: Carlos Ruiz Sadomasofixions and Other Tales, Maria Ramirez Cuarto Mandamiento, and Rocío Boliver Cierra las Piernas. I experienced these as an ensemble series. Each performance handled the topics of religiosity and the body through violence. By the time I got to Boliver’s, the third that night, I did not want to participate in another violent performance, so I left. I look at my own experience to approach the question, “How is the viewer complicit in violence when violence is enacted?”

At the Encuentro, I talked with several Christians who discussed with me how it seemed de rigueur for many of the conference’s attendees to be critical of the Christian faith. Ruiz and Boliver’s portrayal of religion presented Christian imagery in conjunction with violence and cruelty. My doubts about the evening’s performances, especially Cierra las Piernas, comes from my sense that they were catering to those at the Encuentro who believe that Christianity is brutally expansionist. It was as if violence was being used to create a sense of solidarity among these people. In retrospect I am also uncomfortable with these performances because they create solidarity, but at the cost of implicating the audience in cruelty. This is not to say that violence is not a topic, which should be brought into performance, but I would like to suggest by conveying my own experiences that the performance of violence presents some tough challenges both for the viewer and the performer.

The set up of Sadomasofixions included three puppets crucified to six-foot tall telephone poles with a fourth one hung from the center pole. The protagonist was Cheese Ass in the center who awoke to his state as a crucified individual at the beginning of the play. Over the course of his dialog with the other characters, he is exposed as a puppet, as an anonymous fellow, and at the end as Jesus Christ. When the puppeteers finished their performance, they took a bow and the play was explained as a work in progress. I was drawn in by some of the more serious discussion about spirit-body conflict in Christian theology and policy. The performance seemed to bring up an important point that the Crucifixion of Christ is a very public performance of violence, which Christians signify as a sacrifice for all mankind. The performer brings this out in an interesting way by including a sadomasochist among the three crucified characters. His soliloquy about deriving sexual pleasure from violence might be said to undermine the accepted tradition that Christ was suffering on the cross. In the end, I think the closing of the performance leaves humans to their own devices. The performance closes with Cheese Ass calling out to his father, God, or someone. Whoever he’s calling to for help does not come.

I reacted strongly to this performance because I felt that playing a character named Cheese Ass on a telephone pole off against a sex-puppet demon made it too easy for me to dismiss the possibility that there might be a message in the play which I could earnestly take to heart. The dialogue also presented some difficulties because its scope made me think of a Platonic symposium, but the performance shied away from taking any definitive stance about the body and the spirit in Christian thought.

I walked out after the applause and saw a woman in the back of the room wearing a black robe and mantle. I worried for a second, "Did someone let a nun in here? Was the show unsettling?" I thought of talking with her about what we’d seen, but I held back. Instead, I took off for the next show.

I walked into the next room with everybody else. For some reason, maybe it was the two guys in the center pointing slide projectors at each other, but everybody thought to stay along the walls. I stood in the corner near the door because I wanted to have the option of leaving. The lights went low and Maria Ramirez walked into the middle of the room wearing a white shirt and dress pants. She carried what looked like the remains of a raspberry margarita in a goblet. The projectors filled her white button-down shirt with light and cast her shadow on the wall. She undressed and laid out her clothes at her feet. She stood on her outlaid shirt and put the glass on it between her feet.

She asked the name of an audience member’s sister; another’s mother, dipped leaves into the red mash, and pressed the leaves to her head. Now this part is a bit unclear because of where I was standing. I watched her from behind in ¾ perspective. It appeared from what I saw from her gesture and her shadows that she was taking some of the liquid, which appeared to be pureed raspberries, and rubbing them into her vagina. As she took more and more from the glass, red drops fell on her white shirt. I thought of moving around the room to get a better look at what was going on, but I stayed still. “Oh God, what will people think of me?” I didn’t want people thinking, "Look at that pervert. He just wants a peep show."

I tried to stay still. The performer’s nakedness in front of all those people made me feel vulnerable. The audience’s possible judgment of my reactions became an aspect of my behavior. I did not move for the door. I tried to stay out of the light. I kept myself safe hoping that no one would judge me for watching the naked woman’s body. Aside from my own vulnerability, I also didn’t move out of a sense of support and camaraderie for another performer. I felt that this was a fellow artist expressing something, which ought to be seen. She was drinking the red “juice” from the glass making a quarter turn with each sip. Her slow motion suggested to me some ritual and a sense of authority or initiation into what her motions might mean. However, we were watching a ritual with no explanation. No one left the room as far as I recall, perhaps I was distracted, perhaps everyone else wanted to see the performance to the end. When the artist was done drinking the juice she left the room. People were squirming and the roomed hummed with discomfort, “Is that her blood?” After the performance, I found out that it really was her blood. Once she left, I started to question my understanding that the audience and the viewer are meant to come together to share an amicable experience. My sympathy with performers withered. I was less unsettled with her drinking with her own blood then her leaving the audience without a bow, a proper farewell.

Perhaps she left because the experience meant too much to her for it to be sullied by inquiries from the uninitiated, perhaps she didn’t like being naked in front of all those people. Whatever the case the room arose with what I take to be more than a little confusion. I remember a few faces looking around for an explanation. We were all left there waiting for the illusion and the shock to break. I remember the gasps as she drank, the shock, which melted into gapes. Her interaction with the audience was ritualistic, but like others in the audience, I did not know the pastor, the preacher or the religion I was seeing.

Being unfamiliar with the ritual, I had been called as an audience member into the role of an ethnographic spectator. In the middle of our little congregation, I found myself losing focus while she performed her ritual. I would think about tomorrow, "had I done enough laundry?" or "did I need groceries?" I wasn’t focusing on my faith that her acts might come to have meaning. I couldn’t focus, but I didn’t want to leave because I did not want the disapproval of my congregation.

Ramirez’s performance was insulting to me, predominantly her abandonment of the audience. The absence of the bow at the end or the recognition for a job well done left me feeling that we were being thrown the scraps from the meal we’d been promised. Perhaps the artist drank her own blood because she sees performance as a blood sacrifice. She offered up her own flesh and blood but took it back and left. So, her performance exploited my notion that performance comes out of an amicable relationship between audience and performer. As an audience member, I felt like I was being mishandled if not abused.

My thoughts resonated with a woman nearby who commented, “I have a feeling the most intense will be last.” As I walked out of that room and along with the evening “mass” into the conference room, the “nun” I’d seen earlier passed through the exhausted congregation. She passed through with her bags and a benedictive grin saying, "I have to peepee." I’d already seen two pieces vaguely connected with religiosity and the body – its sanctity – or something like that. Having heard the stories from other Christians, especially in the Religion and Sexuality work group, about the flack that Christianity had been receiving, I felt that this “nun’s” performance was some permutation of that type of attitude.

All the performers engaged the audience through displays of violence. When I say violence, I mean physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological torments of yourself or of another entity or entities. I saw that Friday night’s Sadomasofixions and Cierra las Piernas both display violence and use stereotype to perpetuate and deepen these antagonisms with Christianity. What I saw was two pieces portraying Christianity as an imperialistic religion, that is to say, a religion bent on relentless expansion. These performances suggested that Christianity is one imperialistic religion, which seeks to expand by dominating the body. Reading from Rocío Boliver, the final performer’s proposal for Cierra las Piernas she writes, “La religión judéo-cristiana es la principal promotora de este tipo de censura [de sexualidad],” and she continues, “Psicológicamente hablando, en las personas bajo la influencia de estas ideologías, se originan todo tipo de trastornos con respecto al sexo.” I only read this proposal after seeing Cierra las Piernas. It seems from this commentary that Boliver is following in the line of reasoning that Christianity aspires to imperialistically subjugate bodies.

Sadomasofixions used common Christian symbols – Crucifixion, a devil, a crown of thorns – to call out a vague notion of what Christian religiosity seems to be, but I took these images as stereotypical signifiers. Similar to imagery that comes to mind is the “boxing nun” toy. This toy is a hand puppet that is dressed up like a nun and boxes. The contrast between violence and holiness is humorous just as a lot of contemporary humor is based on cruelty. The unexpectedness of a lot of Sadomasofixions amused me, but the use of violence in conjunction with Christian imagery leaves me worried that my religion is being unjustly stereotyped as imperialistic, violent, and homogenous.

After seeing the woman drink her own blood and the nun, I walked into the Shorin Performance space to see two tables flanking a hospital bed. I had seen violent imagery in the last two performances; I had not connected the nun I had seen earlier with the hospital bed, but I figured that with all the religious imagery being used in the previous shows, this performance promised to include more explicit violence.

I was beginning to feel that if the idea of an audience-actor relationship was under attack, then the performer did not deserve my tacit silence or any form of my support. I positioned myself again strategically by an exit. I remember hearing chatter in the room as it filled with people, but it was like tension and exhaustion stopped the sounds from carrying meaning. Did other people feel that this performance promised even more explicit violence than the previous ones? Then a masculine “Sh . . .” silenced a few people talking in the back. This man’s gesture brought the performer’s authority to the front of my mind. His “Sh. . .” brought back my stunned terror when caught by the piercing eyes of Mrs. Campbell, my kindergarten teacher. I was incensed that a man in the front row could be violent and imperious enough to silence someone else’s voice. "Why do we need to be quiet?” I asked the person beside me. She said that it’s a convention of performance, but I was disappointed that one audience member should force this norm on another person. Perhaps in a traditional performance, where violence might be mimicked on the staged an audience might more easily accept sitting quietly, but in this case, my fear of watching actual violence made me afraid that the convention of silence would expose me to emotional abuse and complicity in real harm.

Why did this performer deserve the audience’s attention or respect? The “Sh . . .” made the play of performance into the indoctrination of numbers, letters, forms, and political statements. One member of the audience enforced on another a sense of shame for speaking up or taking up the time, which somebody gave to the performer. When the performer appeared finally she set up her tables with paper towels, disinfectants et cetera, et cetera playing "Look, I’m a nun making a statement" all the while I’m thinking, “You’re gonna hurt yourself aren’t you?” I thought of standing up and asking the audience, "Why do we respect this woman with our silence?" Having seen the contrast between violence and religion in Sadomasofixions and Cuarto Mandamiento I felt in my gut that this performance would get bloody, but nobody stopped her. I stayed like most people. A few left.

My assumption was that her violence would have some political utility. I wondered what she had to say, so I stayed. I also stayed because I was worried she would try to hurt herself. In retrospect believing that her violence might have some political utility worth paying attention to was probably the root of my own complicity in her violent action. She had an audience because she had promised to show violence and pain at the cost of demonstrating a political point. Or was it the other way around, I can’t tell. Does the news report war and violence to show what’s going on in the world or to hide it? Is physical violence really what’s going on or is it illusion? Was that a margarita or ice cubes of blood?

Metal objects hit the table. What might Boliver actually do to herself. She’s dressed like a nun; she’s getting out medical equipment. This is going to involve her vulva, I figured, “Why else would a female dressed like a nun perform anything medical on herself in front of an audience?” I waited to intercede because I thought she might be doing something meaningful. When she was done setting up her table, she lifted up her robes and spread her legs on the hospital bed facing the audience. The audience was offered a broad swath of her pink legs and her hairless vulva. I thought this might be something about abortion or cliterectomy. Those metal objects might be scalpels. As she treated her labia with antibiotic I thought up scenarios or "what-would-I-do’s" if she were to try and cut herself. "Stop, don’t do that to yourself." "No please don’t hurt yourself. Why?" I still held back though because I still figured that the performance of public violence had to have some public, political utility. She then took out a needle and pierced her right labium. A video system was set up, so you could watch the progress of the needle through her skin. It may have been a pre-made hole. I don’t think it was though because I saw it on the TV. Whether she was acting or really piercing herself I watched the pain on her face framed by her nun-like mantle, cringing like she expected the pain to stop or acting as such. The needle was driven by an objective. The pain was voluntary and, fortunate for her, had a beginning and an end.

I began writing this piece the same day that the New York Times ran the article, “Army is Reluctant to Flaunt Photos of Hussein’s Sons” (A1, 7/24/03). This same day’s paper included the article, “U.S. Defends Move to Storm House Where Hussein Brothers Were Hiding,” within which the authors write, that in the White House “some top aides said they were relieved that the military operation just happened to occur just as new details were coming out [on] . . . mishandled intelligence.” Meanwhile an article by <a href=”http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/iraq-j24.shtml”>David Walsh</a> commented that Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14 year old son, was also killed during the attack on the Hussein compound. The Times identified him only as a “teenager” (A10). I’ve heard that these three were killed as combatants and that their deaths mark a new day for Iraq.

With these images and stories in my head, and thinking about the purpose of the Encuentro as a system for analyzing political resistance I wondered what the political significance of this “nun” piercing he labia could be. Seeing personal violence and self-damage placed alongside religious imagery I assumed there must be some religious or political content or criticism. The audience’s assumption of theatrical convention – sit down, be quiet – justified my search for what the performer had to say.

So the performer got me searching for political meaning before she started piercing herself. I had asked myself, “What would I do if she were to hurt herself?” “What would people think of me, or how could I influence the audience to examine their complicity in this woman’s hurting herself?” But all this concern dissolved after I saw her face. After seeing the pain on her face and seeing her reach for the next needle I thought to myself, "Go ahead and do it. You have the luxury of choosing to do that to yourself."

I would like to be able to describe to you the rest of the event, even the discussion afterwards, but I was among the group of people who walked out. Others who stuck around told me that she put a plastic baby Jesus in her vagina, tied her labia shut, somehow zipped her legs together, and put on a dress. She then put on a pearl necklace and shoes, and she walked around the room “seductively.” I still struggle to discern salient political content in the controlled display of pain when a man burns a nine-year old girl with acid for refusing his advances (AP. 7/29/03). Why should I support a woman who hurts herself in front of an audience?

I feel ambivalent about embodying another character in performance because I worry that I am misleading people. Truth in representation is an interesting topic in view of the US current executive administration. After the trauma of 9/11, going to war twice in the mid-East I feel uneasy about depicting violence to achieve political ends. President Bush who acts as if Truth swings with the sword now heads the U.S. government. Administrations justify their politics with violence. So why should I watch her when I get too much violence on the “news?”

If violence is reported on the news, is it news because it is violent? Or is violence news because we are told that it is the groundwork for civilization? Violence is the dead meat empires are built on. So when I watch the news on Iraq, am I complicit in the construction of Empire? Yes, I am called as a spectator and a citizen to “know what’s going on in the world,” and see what the U.S. government is up to, but I see a lot of blood and a lot of lies. I am uncomfortable with lies, but I still call myself a U.S. citizen. I want to turn my head from the gore, but I can’t reclaim any innocence by ignorance. These days when I watch a performance I feel complicit in a dissimulation. I watch television or film and I feel my time is being wasted, but I keep my seat, and I watch. I think it comes from watching news and film media reporting and representing traumas. When I watch American mass media, even when the news anchors are not broadcasting news about Iraq or Afghanistan I feel a yearning for reconciliation for those who suffered under US war hawks. This reconciliation has not come. I fear it won’t.

When I watch performance, I might watch someone live and suffer, perhaps die. What’s worse, I see death and suffering in reality. I’m told that death is the beginning of a Brave New World for the Iraqi people. I realize now that my uneasiness with performance suggests that I’ve been living for some time now in a state of shock. Life under this administration has become traumatic. I know that injustice is going on around the world and I am a member of the country that’s doing it, yet performers within mass media tell me that everything is alright.

The paradox for “performers of harm” is that violence is a compelling topic. Unfortunately staged violence is premeditated, self-inflicted, and/or consensual. One consequence of performing violence is that these circumstances do not speak to the violence in the real world, which do not have an easy curtain call, an ending. Taking the performance off stage, leaving behind pre-meditation, planning and/or consent runs into obvious moral, ethical and legal issues for the performer, be it the United States or any other Joe or Jane performance artist. The performance of violence also presents ethical difficulties for the audience.

I feel that the audience in Boliver’s performance was complicit in her demonstration of injury under the guise of criticizing Christian religion. Giving the audience seating arrangement further implicates viewers in violence. In an audience the people are told “Sh,” which I see as, “Sit, be quiet, we are supposed to watch this performance respectfully.” Sitting divides the viewer from participation in the formation of art. When a person harms her/himself on stage, the audience members who do not choose to leave or intercede choose to be voyeurs, aggressors or victims. Boliver’s acting out self-violence forced me onto uncomfortable morally shaky ground because once I heard the metal instruments clanging on the table, I knew it was more than likely that this person was going to hurt herself.

I feel that using the audience’s discomfort would be very compelling and productive for violence prevention programs. By raising awareness through events of staged violence, the viewer might feel obligated to spread information about different kinds of violence. Even better, the viewer might feel obligated to reexamine her/his own experiences with violence, so she/he could better come to terms and/or learn to help other people. Rocío Boliver mentions that she wants to raise awareness of sexual guilt in her “Proposal to the Encuentro.” Her performance did not achieve her objective because using only a nun’s robe and a plastic Jesus to suggest that she is criticizing Christian religiosity did nothing to help me or many others overcome sexual guilt.

Walking into Cierra las Piernas after hearing “I have to peepee,” her display of violence and the control of its display, I chose the position of greatest ethical maneuverability. I placed myself nearest the position of non-participation in what might happen. I reacted strongly to seeing the hospital bed and then hearing someone “Shh…” another member of the audience because one audience member tried to force another person into complicity in an event, which promised to include violence.

I left because I didn’t want to be complicit in public displays of people playing at violence. One of the purported purposes of the Encuentro was to find new ways of resistance to the policies of governments, which oppress, brutalize, and otherwise devalue human life. I felt it was my best option to walk out of Cierra las Piernas because the display left me, as an audience member, no way to channel disgust into productive behavior, including the search for understanding and reconciliation.