Fearless Leader's recent post about a Justice Yeldham album got me thinking. What recordings I've heard of Yeldham have been, clearly, forgettable. But those who have seen his live shtick are, invariably, impressed. From what I gather, he takes a piece of glass, contact mic's it to the p.a., then presses the thing against his face until he gets hurt.
Sound interesting? There has been a masochistic element in this music's world - Con-Dom using a whip on himself, Levas proudly posing in SI with a huge cut in his arm, Martin Bladh - how much of this is macho posturing and how much of this is art-school wanking?
Okay, that's being deliberately provocative but, paring it back to politer terms, the question is still there. What's going on with people hurting themselves on stage at PE/etc. gigs? How prevalent is it? What do people really think of it? Does it make the artist more dedicated, more extreme and therefore more commendable?
Attacking an audience I can understand. Attacking oneself, not so much. Please, if you will, enlighten me.
Good and transformative performance - transformative for both audience and performer - is linked very closely to notions of shamanism and endurance. Leaving aside the more obvious provocations of PE and noise, there is an element of watching someone take their body to the limit in a good rock show - Angus Young sweating half his body weight away every gig. Or in for instance ballet where the dancers push their bodies beyond what's reasonable, and what looks beautiful is actually acutely painful and exhausting for the ballerinas.
I guess the more extreme examples of this stuff also works as a good old fashioned freak show, like paying to see the geek bite the heads off animals at the carny, and sometimes there's an element of voyeuristic kink. And sometimes an element of personal psychological or mental health issues the performer is trying to work through.
I can appreciate it when its performers caught up in the moment, and it just happens, otherwise its a bit "Look at me, im mad me!"
Well, blood looks nice and there is no need to fake it if you need it in performance. For me it was perhaps more ritualistic, tribal, primitive, animalistic etc. approach - cutting chest or arms in special places, drawing or writing something with blood in those shows that I needed that. There were 5 I think with more or less cutting. I guess different people have different motives, but I don't think it's something exceptional, etc. at least for me. Some people shit on stage, some vomits, some masturbate, some just stand there doing nothing and if these actions help to reach the whole desired picture of what you are saying and what you want to say (if anything at all) so why not.
I love body art from the 70's by artists like Gunther Brus, Chris Burden and Ulay/Marina Abramovic. Best example in industrial/noise music in my eyes is Club Moral. I first met DDV when i was in art school and he was invited to do a performance workshop that lasted a week. Within 2 days he had people carving themselves and in the end things got out of hand and one student had to be taken to the hospital.
The format and ideas in and of themselves are fertile grounds for potentially incredible work, but more often than not succumb to really exhausted tropes and cliches. Perhaps a pretty good allegory for the whole of P.E. and Industrial if we're being additionally provocative.
In any case, most of what I see/have seen at best achieves a level of extremity which causes discomfort in spite of it's cliched nature and at worst come across as a clearly pre-meditated stage move presented as an act of abandon and spontaneity.
I think the only times working with these ideas - to my mind at least - has any effect is when the injury is a side effect of a different purpose to the entire act. I think Justice Yeldham actually falls into this camp, as his whole thing seems to be much more about the use of the glass as an interesting sound making object coupled with the visual aspect of his face being all contorted and smooshed up behind it. I'm pretty sure the injury is very much a by product. I've seem him play loads of times and end up with very mild scratches which hardly amount to any sort of noticeable stage antic. Although very different, the same kind of thing can be said of Masonna in this vid at around the 3.05 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylDuOmEoZx0
losing his shit and happening to fall off a wall in the process = great, genuine entertainment.
Not necessary entertainment purposes, but while I personally play, I tend to treat my gear with care - but I see other people hurting themselves in being caught by moment. Like even if gently pushing distortion pedal would be enough, after gig, you got guys with bloody fists simply for getting caught in moment. Of course, myself and endless amount of others get cut & bruised in sets, but I think it is more about energy and intensity, than act of "hurting"?
I liked Forza Albino gigs with singer punishing himself for the dirty urges. Or Bizarre Uproar few shows where man was subjected to belt-whipping. As method of self-humiliation, rather than "entertainment" I think. Same goes for the video footage used recently. Utmost self humiliation. I think attacking audience - especially the weakest & smallest guy in first row is hardly even entertaining. Pushing limits by beating your head with microphone until it's bleeding & swollen (a.k.a. Forza Albino in finest tradition of GG Allin?) as form of self punishment - I get it. It is disturbing and it fits perhaps much more accurately to vast amount of artwork there, which hardly attacks the audience as much as it brings demons of creator into open.
Attacking the smallest and weakest person in any situation, let alone a gig, is piss-ant. However, physically engaging - to the point of attacking - with an audience is something that I think never goes out of style. People think they're prepared for it, but when they're obliged to react it brings out the individual. In any case, my experience is that people hardly ever expect it in the first place. It gets them every time.
The closest I've come to self-mutilation in a live situation was when I was rooting around in a wheelie bin with a microphone through a pedal to get Noise, and came out with a few widdle scratches on my arms from the broken bottles. The point was the Noise, not the scratches. In my then-drunken state I thought "shit, great, suffering for my anti-art!", now I'm just glad it wasn't more serious.
Some people are just addicted to low level chaos. Even – especially? - those professing a correspondence with themes of domination and control. And in the moment, and under the influence, there is very little that one is not capable of. This is neither to be censured nor applauded but to be observed much as one would a trainwreck (or life in general).
I'm more interested in the completely sober, fully contrived, species of self-flagellation. And/or of course the inevitable aftermath- eg Mikawa, pissedasfuck, bashing face in with piece of gear, chipping tooth, rolling ass out of bed bright n early next morning, dressing up in penguin suit shmoozing with banker buddies. That kind of thing I like, a lot.
I enjoy self-mutilation so it's natural to bring it into the live setting for me. Not all the time, but it's certainly an option. The bigger problem is can you cut yourself while still using your gear and getting a good live sound?
the last CM show in Finland I got a little carried away with the cutting... did it add something to the performance? I don't know because I was too drunk to remember, but hopefully.
Will there be cutting in future CM performances? if it will enhance the performance. blood is beautiful and i just legitimately like the taste of it.
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 28, 2014, 04:50:50 PM
I'm more interested in the completely sober, fully contrived, species of self-flagellation. And/or of course the inevitable aftermath- eg Mikawa, pissedasfuck, bashing face in with piece of gear, chipping tooth, rolling ass out of bed bright n early next morning, dressing up in penguin suit shmoozing with banker buddies. That kind of thing I like, a lot.
This part is interesting, if indeed an artist does maintain something of a double life between their work and...profession!? This is more of a personal interest than anything too directly related to pain in/as entertainment but perhaps still relevant.
I did a show a while ago where I sustained a pretty huge cut on my wrist and it was quite fun thinking of what to the the old ladies at my then job in a greeting card shop as an excuse when they noticed.
A lot of it just seems forced, pretty meh
I have accidentally hurt myself at gigs, especially when first starting out.
Things go better when all equipment is safe and I feel no pain afterward.
Quote from: C601 on May 28, 2014, 09:04:05 PM
A lot of it just seems forced, pretty meh
Yeah, nothing I hate more than a performance, on a stage, that seems staged.
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 29, 2014, 06:07:51 PM
Quote from: C601 on May 28, 2014, 09:04:05 PM
A lot of it just seems forced, pretty meh
Yeah, nothing I hate more than a performance, on a stage, that seems staged.
im not a fan of bad acting
Fair enough, as long as we're honest about what we're doing....
Leaving out those instances where bad acting may be preferable (refer to the ever current rip off alerts thread), it's hard for me to draw the lines between what does and does not constitute a legitimate performance, never mind a "successful" one. Taking the ever-ready example of porn, I couldn't tell you what I more readily get off on - the more professional, the more amateurish, or the more purely voyeuristic.
Whether or not the act seems "forced" is seldom a concern for myself as audience member. When the possibility of damage being done is raised – damage to the performer and/or viewer – well, it is raised. It is there. I mean, I'm as cynical as the next person, and seldom expect much beyond the usual "bad acting", but at least the notion has been brought into play, and it's hard to say how exactly it will play out.
EDIT I meant to add: in the case of the self-abuser, the audience reaction may necessarily be moot - or, any rate, mute. It could be someone I consider a good friend, on stage threatening to kill herself, and I'm not sure how/if/should I act. My reaction may well be very much internalized and not something I would often bear on let alone remark on.
And after the fact it's still hard to say how exactly it played out - seems that different people will often remember the same(?) events rather differently. (I certainly don't consider myself a great recorder of facts, particularly those playing out in live performance venues...)
To put it another way, I'm less concerned with how "forced" things seem than with how "real" the possibility of real damage. Which person is more capable of hurting themselves (and others)? The practiced performer who has rehearsed hundreds of times in hundreds of venues around the globe, or the one-off amateurish hack... no pun intended... who happens to be having a good (bad) day? The performer sets things in motion, for better or worse, and what happens happens.
Talking the more purely voyeuristic, I love when people weigh in with lines like, "What's it to you? I happen to enjoy self-mutilation." And why not? Why shouldn't a noise/pe show be like watching The Nature Channel?
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on June 02, 2014, 10:48:11 AMTo put it another way, I'm less concerned with how "forced" things seem than with how "real" the possibility of real damage.
For the sake of discussion, I'll go with your distinctions (qualitative vs quantitative?), and a good 99.99% of the time, I'm the opposite. Authenticity, genuineness, sincerity, and these type things are key. In a performance, that's how I distinguish, or measure,
quality. And to bring your other example into the mix, this is why Sasha Grey holds no interest for me. For my metrics, she can't sell a scene to save her life. Nothing about her performance
feels genuine or authentic to me. As beautiful as I do find her (even with her soulless eyes), and though a good percentage of the situations are to my liking, she doesn't affect me at all. She lacks the ability to convince me of any truth in what she's doing.
I do share your idealism in this regard, as the phrase "I am as cynical as the next person" suggests. But what I do not share is your confidence in the ability to assess the success of the (self-consciously) self-abusive component of a performance. And that's because I really can't gauge where the person is coming from / what they are capable of - until the performance has played out, at which point I would suggest that the gauge is no longer applicable.
Was Corbelli's suicide "fake", that is to say in-authentic? In Japan, one common response to Mishima's suicide was that he was "showing off". What a fucking faggot faker. etc. Am I to judge the success of Mishima's "act" according to this audience response? I suppose I could. I don't pretend to understand the culture (then or now) anyway.
Under these (less than ideal) circumstances I can only assess the damage and allow my "value" judgement to flow from there.
Quote from: C601 on May 29, 2014, 06:23:52 PM
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 29, 2014, 06:07:51 PM
Quote from: C601 on May 28, 2014, 09:04:05 PM
A lot of it just seems forced, pretty meh
Yeah, nothing I hate more than a performance, on a stage, that seems staged.
im not a fan of bad acting
I understand the appeal - as in the comments above (not the attraction). For me it's the lowest form of attention-seeking disorder; the elicited emotions revolve largely around pity.
If anyone has not seen it, I would recommend the Scandinavian Black Metal documentary, Till The Light Takes Us. I forget the performance artist in question, though the sight of this fully-looped blackened-loon pacing around the performance area stabbing soft furnishings w/ a hunting knife between screams of rage and slicing his arms to a bloody mess left a lasting impression on me. I had no idea the Norwegian stand-up comedy scene was so well developed.
Quote from: ONE on April 27, 2015, 01:25:03 PM
Quote from: C601 on May 29, 2014, 06:23:52 PM
Quote from: Bloated Slutbag on May 29, 2014, 06:07:51 PM
Quote from: C601 on May 28, 2014, 09:04:05 PM
A lot of it just seems forced, pretty meh
Yeah, nothing I hate more than a performance, on a stage, that seems staged.
im not a fan of bad acting
I understand the appeal - as in the comments above (not the attraction). For me it's the lowest form of attention-seeking disorder; the elicited emotions revolve largely around pity.
If anyone has not seen it, I would recommend the Scandinavian Black Metal documentary, Till The Light Takes Us. I forget the performance artist in question, though the sight of this fully-looped blackened-loon pacing around the performance area stabbing soft furnishings w/ a hunting knife between screams of rage and slicing his arms to a bloody mess left a lasting impression on me. I had no idea the Norwegian stand-up comedy scene was so well developed.
Not a performance artist per se, rather it is Frost from Satyricon. The 'performance' part of it was pretty 'meh', but the cutting of the side of his neck looked pretty deep/ serious with the amount of blood.
Quote from: HongKongGoolagong on May 27, 2014, 02:17:07 PM
Or in for instance ballet where the dancers push their bodies beyond what's reasonable, and what looks beautiful is actually acutely painful and exhausting for the ballerinas.
I was hoping there was a dedicated The Rita thread, but this is probably just as inappropriate. I'm still very surprised that there are Principal class dancers in their forties. I was led to believe that dancers are finished at a very young age (I thought less than 25 years old).
This PBS doc on the American Ballet Theatre was good. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/american-ballet-theatre/about-the-film-american-ballet-theatre-at-75/3638/
and I'm sure everyone has seen this image lately. I see it posted everywhere. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAtrwLsVEAA900n.jpg