University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Power performance: benevolence and violence in the work of Chris Burden, Barbara T. Smith, Yoko Ono and Wafaa Bilal

(USC Thesis Other)

Power performance: benevolence and violence in the work of Chris Burden, Barbara T. Smith, Yoko Ono and Wafaa Bilal

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POWER PERFORMANCE:
BENEVOLENCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE WORK OF
CHRIS BURDEN, BARBARA T. SMITH, YOKO ONO AND WAFAA BILAL

by

Rachel Ruth Zylka

____________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2010

Rachel Ruth Zylka

Copyright 2010
ii
Acknowledgments

Writing this thesis has been one of the most challenging things that I
have encountered in my academic career. I would like to thank several people for
their support and patience, without which I would have never completed this
manuscript. First, I would like to thank my family for their love, encouragement, and
the opportunities that they have given me in life. I am forever grateful. I would also
like to thank all of my teachers for opening up my mind and pushing me to do better.
I am indebted to my support at USC, who made my research and this thesis a reality.
My professors and classmates have been so incredibly supportive. Thanks especially
to my kind readers, Karen Moss, Michael Ned Holte and Joshua Decter. Your
criticism, intellectual generosity, and editorial insight kept me on track through this
difficult process. Finally, I would like to thank Daniel Kirsten for believing in me
even when I didn’t believe in myself.

iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

Abstract iv
Introduction 1

Chapter One: Chris Burden, Performances of 1971 5

Chapter Two: Barbara T. Smith, Feed Me (1973) 15
Chapter Three: Yoko Ono, Cut Piece (1965) 22
Chapter Four: Wafaa Bilal, Domestic Tension (2007) 32
Chapter Five: Comparison 47
Conclusion 57
Bibliography 64

iv
Abstract

Audience interaction is an inherent element of performance art. Because of
this performance can be observed through a relationship that is formed between the
artist and the viewer. Some performance artists choose to perform passively,
seemingly relinquishing their power to their viewers as a means of provoking a
reaction. That being said, the “powerless” artist may retain some control, even in
their state of passivity, by asserting certain restrictions into the design of their
performance. Some viewers choose to interact according to the artist’s requests,
while others respond outside of their expectations. It is on this slippery slope that
performance resides, in constant flux of power between the artist and the viewer. By
looking at specific artist/viewer interactions in the work of artists, Chris Burden,
Barbara T. Smith, Yoko Ono, and Wafaa Bilal, audience reception can be gauged,
while simultaneously illustrating the power relations and unpredictable nature in
performance art.

1
Introduction

In the late 1960s performance art became recognized as an expressive
medium. Artists, increasingly frustrated with the buying and selling of art, turned to
more conceptual methodologies less concerned with the commercialization of art.
Instead of creating a commoditized art object, artist used their bodies to convey their
messages. Many acted in an unconventional and confrontational manner to shock
their viewers with the seemingly limitless boundaries that the artists inflicted
willingly on their bodies.
Audience interaction became intrinsic to performance art and artists would go
to extremes to provoke a response. Performance was used as a strategy, as a media
that facilitated the artist to bring the art directly to the public, often in non-traditional,
alternative spaces or galleries. As performance art has evolved, contemporary artists
now perform with various technological platforms such as the Internet to interact with
an even larger public. Regardless of where the performances fall historically, the
importance of audience interaction consistently remains the focus of performance art.
The performances that will be discussed in this thesis by Chris Burden,
Barbara Smith, Yoko Ono and Wafaa Bilal deal with issues involving the body,
gender, violence, trauma, and in each the audience was intrinsic to the success of
these works. This thesis will explore the different themes that occur in each of the
works, while simultaneously examining the response of the viewer who sometimes
reacts according to the artists wishes and sometimes end up guiding the performance
in different ways than the artist intended.
2
Chris Burden, who began his work as a minimalist sculptor, inserted his body
into his sculpture and eventually transitioned into a performance methodology.
Burden united his art with extreme points of masochism in his early performance
work. At the beginning of his career, during graduate school and slightly thereafter,
Burden first used his body as a supplement to his sculpture in his work entitled Being
Photographed, Looking Out, Looking In (1971); he then enclosed his body in Five
Day Locker Piece (1971), and his infamous Shoot (1971) became full-fledged body
art with overt violence. Burden took his audience on a psychological roller coaster
ride. In a place of vulnerability, Burden asserted himself into states of self-inflicted
pain with no opportunity for the audience to interfere or stop the violence.
Barbara T. Smith, a contemporary of Burden, took the role of the pacifier in
her performance Feed Me (1973). A naked Smith sat in a gallery space for one night
surrounded by objects that could nourish or be used on her body. Participants were
encouraged to feed Smith with a recording of her voice repeating, “Feed me, feed
me.” Viewers chose to literally feed her, or feed her in other ways: socially,
philosophically, sexually. This performance focused on a personal exchange, an
exchange that occurred between Smith and what ended up being mostly male
participants. Smith’s body was a confrontational, unapologetic body that acted to
unpack the problematic relationship between the genders.
Yoko Ono restages her performance Cut Piece (1963) over a span of almost
fifty years. In this work the performer is told to sit passively on a stage while
members of the audience approach and gradually cut away at their clothing with a
3
pair of scissors until the performer feels that the work has reached its point of fruition.
The performance is based off of a score that was written by Ono but can be performed
by anyone. Because of this, each time the piece is restaged it is inscribed into a
different context. However, this piece is always performed as a way of outwardly
expressing trauma, particularly during times of war. Participants of this piece can
gently help in the performer’s sacrifice or they could choose to act out violently. The
many times that the piece has been restaged, has resulted in a variety of responses,
which illustrate the spontaneity that occurs when the public is involved.
Wafaa Bilal is a contemporary Iraqi artist, who performs through the Internet
as a way of interacting with a broader audience. In his performance Domestic
Tension (2007), Bilal is also passive in his performance. This passivity is rooted, not
in the behavior of the artist, but in the distance between the artist and the viewer that
is inherent in works that utilize the Internet as site. Bilal lived in a gallery that
connected him to his viewers through a webcam that was attached to a robotic
paintball gun. Viewers were able to shoot yellow paintballs at Bilal any time during
his month long performance. Bilal is confrontational in the design of this
performance, and expected a confrontational response in return. While Bilal intended
the condition of the performance to mostly solicit violent responses, many were
shocked by Bilal’s poor treatment and worked to encourage and protect him.
These four artists question ideas of power relations to solicit a reaction from
the audience. In these works, the artists relinquished their power giving the direction
of the performance to their viewers. They do this by performing passively within the
4
actual performance as a tool to encourage audience response. That being said, the
artist always retains a degree of direction in conceptualizing the work in an attempt to
maintain some control and power over the performance. In reality, there is never total
control on either the part of the artist or the audience.
Some of the artists have set a tone of extreme violence while others aimed for
a personal exchange instead. However, just because a tone is set by the artist, an
audience may react against it. This slippage illustrates that violence can be found in
benevolent acts, just as benevolence can be found in violence. Whenever the public
is involved, the reaction of the audience cannot be predicted fully and some react
outside of the parameters set by the artist. These works derive their authority from
the oscillation or shift of power between those involved, and the performance is in
constant flux according to where the control resides. There is always a tension, a
balance of power in performance work that shifts, which is the strength of these four
pieces. It is my intention to look at audience reception of these performances
identifying specific participant/artist interactions that demonstrate this shift of power
and the moments when the audience breaks those boundaries and work outside of the
artist’s expectations.

5
Chapter One: Chris Burden’s 1971 Performances
Chris Burden has worked for over thirty years in various media that use the
body and constructed conditions as a way of psychologically challenging the viewer.
Burden initially had an interest in architecture but when he entered his B.A. at
Pomona College, which didn’t offer an architectural program, he began to take art
courses and found himself working in the minimalist vein of sculpture. After
completing his bachelor’s degree, Burden went on to get his MFA at UC Irvine where
he studied with Robert Irwin and participated in the budding art scene along with
artists such as Barbara T. Smith. At UC Irvine Burden began to experiment with
different media that are most evident when analyzing three of Burden’s early
performances that occurred in 1971. One aspect that can be felt in these works is the
vulnerable condition that Burden has inserted himself into, but there are different
degrees of vulnerability at work here, on the part of both the artist and the viewer.
These performances set up the basic framework of Burden’s performance and
informed his methodology, while simultaneously illustrating the ways that Burden
interacted with his viewers and utilized different forms of vulnerability.
Fred Hoffman, editor of the book Chris Burden, identifies Being
Photographed: Looking Out, Looking In, a work that pre-dates Five Day Locker
Piece that is typically marked as the beginning of his performance career, as Burden’s
first work of performance.
1
The piece is made up of three elements all of which
provide a different psychological experience for the spectator. At first the spectator is

1
Fred Hoffman, Chris Burden (Locus Plus, 2007), 16.
6
confronted by a photographer who was stationed at the front door that took a Polaroid
photograph of every person that entered the gallery, including Burden himself. For
each day the artist selected 140 Polaroids that served as documentation or a record of
the work. Secondly, the artist built a hazardous looking wooden platform suspended
from the ceiling. A ladder placed next to the structure served as an invitation for the
spectator to climb up where they would discover a hole in the ceiling attached to a
small rubber eyepiece that encourages them to gaze at the sky. Lastly, participants
could wander over to a small bathroom at the corner of the gallery. The door to the
bathroom was locked, however, a small fish-eye lens inserted into the door allowed
the viewer to peek into the private space where they would see the Burden sitting on
the toilet.
This piece invited the viewer to participate in various forms of invasion.
Immediately viewers were placed in a moment of discomfort by being photographed.
These photographs became the only documentation of the work’s existence, recording
it into art history, as audience participation became the focal point of the work.
Hence, audience participation was the focal point of the work, particularly as it was
recorded into art history.
The viewer, who was probably thrown off by being photographed, was then
challenged by a structure that looked hazardous and intriguing at the same time.
Participants were met by a set of questions that both encouraged and discouraged
them from climbing the ladder up to the platform: Am I supposed to go up there? Is
this safe? Why is there a hole in the ceiling? As Hoffman notes: “the participant was
7
confronted by two seemingly conflicted feelings and responses: fear of the precarious
nature of the physical setting and attraction to the transporting, otherworldly
experience of gazing up into the sky above.”
2
By building this structure, Burden
constructed something that transformed the medium of architecture or sculpture into a
psychological look at space and art, one that challenged the viewer’s involvement
with the piece.
The viewer than was asked to look at Burden in a private moment, again by
looking through a lens. This time they were objectifying the artist. Burden
questioned ideas of voyeurism and objectified himself for the sake of his art. Both
the audience and the artist were in mutually vulnerable situations. Participants were
the first to be put in a vulnerable situation when they were asked to climb a hazardous
looking structure. The spectator was placed in a dangerous situation, not the artist.
Viewers must have a trust in the artist before they decided to participate with the
work. In the last portion of the work, the artist was the one who was vulnerable by
letting the audience look in on him, sitting on the toilet. Burden intentionally
challenged his own vulnerability just as he had done to the audience.
Burden referenced the conceptual framework for this kind of work in an
interview that he did with ArtInfo in 2008 where he said, “I did a whole series of
work in graduate school where I made apparatuses that you had to use-–using them

2
Fred Hoffman, 17
8
was the art. The apparatus was not the art; it was the tool to make you do the art.”
3

This piece is not exclusively performative, but it is his first gesture towards
performance. As suggested by the previous quote, Burden had already conceptualized
the idea of participation in his work but he always did so through constructed
apparatuses. This time he used his body to provoking a response. Being
Photographed: Looking Out, Looking In integrated various media: Photography,
installation, performance, to explore the psychological implications of space and the
body. This was not only the first time that Burden performs; it was also the first time
when audience interaction forms the identity of the piece.
Several months later, Burden presented his thesis project that he titled Five
Day Locker Piece. Burden entered an art locker at the UC Irvine Studio Art
Department that had previously been installed in the schools studio space. Burden
knew that he would remain in the space for five days, but this was unbeknownst to
any viewers or faculty. He installed a five-gallon container in the locker above and
an empty five-gallon container in the locker below to collect is urine. Burden had
access to the locker through tubes that linked the three lockers. In preparation for the
piece Burden stopped eating solid foods as to avoid not have the problem of
eliminating solid waste.
Like Being Photographed: Looking Out, Looking In, in Five Day Locker
Piece, Burden created a psychological space, but instead of building the space like he

3
Robert Ayers, “The AI Interview with Chris Burden,” ArtInfo (2008),
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28002/chris-burden/
9
had before, Burden used a readymade space as the site for his performance. Burden
imposed discomfort on himself instead of on the audience. He willingly endured
an extreme condition, his body, not a sculpture or a photograph, became the art
object, which distinguishes this performance from those that precede it.
Burden made the statement during a lecture at the Rhode Island School of
Design in 1974 “it was an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen. I thought
it was going to be an isolating thing. But it turned into a strange sort of public
confessional where people were coming all the time to talk to me.”
4
Burden was not
certain how the public would receive his piece. In fact, as indicated by the previous
quote, Burden was expecting to spend the majority of his time in the locker in
isolation. At first the piece started off as exactly that, with the exception of a few of
Burden’s friends and other graduate students who provided their support. Gradually
rumors spread around campus about the performance, then more and more people
started to gather around the locker. The performance reached a larger demographic
than Burden had ever imagined it would. Granted most of this public was comprised
of students, however they were students coming from outside of the Art Department.
As Burden also said in his lecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, “people who
weren’t interested in art came over to see this guy locked in a locker. I think that the
further away you were from this, the more strange it seemed, and I noticed that

4
Chris Burden, “Artist Lecture Series,” (Lecture presented at a MFA Symposium at
the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, November 12, 1974).
10
people actually came to talk with me, they were reassured in a way.”
5
This
unexpected audience reaction illustrates that performance art, which includes the
public is inherently unpredictable. When a work like Five Day Locker Piece compels
audience interaction the work may take an unexpected turn that brings the piece to a
place that even the artist doesn’t anticipate.
With this performance, Burden moved away from the idea of object-based
artwork. By choosing not to produce anything material, he made it clear that his body
was the art and it was an object. In this case Burden has not built an apparatus
through which the audience interacts, instead Burden used a ready-made structure in
which to perform. By choosing not to materially produce anything Burden made it
clear that his body is the art, but there was still a sense of containment in this piece
just like in Being Photographed: Looking Out, Looking In. The view of the body has
been intentionally obstructed that provided anonymity to both the artist and the
audience. The artwork precipitated an interaction that would not have occurred had
his body been displayed in a glass box instead. The locker provided anonymity to
both the artist and the spectator. Participants felt compelled to place themselves in an
equally vulnerable place as Burden was. It was the psychological draw that
spectators felt towards a man who was so exposed, so emotionally worn down, that
encouraged a trust between artist and viewer. What would you say to a faceless
stranger who would listen?

5
Burden, Lecture Series at RISD
11
Five Day Locker Piece does not place participants in a state of physical
vulnerability like they were in Being Photographed, Looking Out, Looking In; instead
Burden pushed his own vulnerability. He did not construct the piece to appeal to the
audience, however the vulnerability created by the condition appealed to the viewer
who reacted in ways that the artist did not expect. Just like Burden’s previous work,
the artist and the audience were both in a place of vulnerability. Burden deconstructed
the artwork to just the artist’s body and an interaction. This was a “eureka moment”
for Burden who said that Five Day Locker Piece made him realize “I can just do
something and it can be art. I don’t have to make anything.”
6

Burden took his body a step further in his next performance Shoot, performed
in November of 1971 at the F-Space, a small experimental gallery run by UC Irvine
students. Burden precisely described the performance at the beginning of the pieces
documentation saying, “At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The
bullet was a copper jacket 22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet
from me.”
7
The only documentation that exists is an eight second black and white
film.
This is the first time that Burden used his body exclusively in his work,
showing his full transition into the performance methodology. While he made a giant
step by identifying as a performance artist, he took a step back in terms of audience

6
Robert Ayers, “The AI Interview with Chris Burden,” ArtInfo (2008),
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28002/chris-burden/

7
Chris Burden, “Shoot documentation from November 19, 1971” accessed on
YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26R9KFdt5aY
12
participation. Five Day Locker Piece certainly tested Burden’s endurance, but Shoot
was the first time that Burned was flirting with fatality, as a result he took precautions
that increased his safety measures. Burden performed in a controlled space, which
was what F-Space provided. He was also cautious in choosing his assistant to act as
the shooter rather than a stranger. Furthermore, Shoot was also performed for a small
public forcing most to view it through documentation. These precautions came at the
expense of the viewer, who was not allowed to interact with the performance that was
clearly dictated by the artist.
Despite all of Burden’s planning there was still the element of the
unanticipated that always exists. Burden had planned for the bullet to only graze his
skin, but the bullet ended up being a through and through shot. This illustrates the
open-endedness of performance and how even in the most controlled of settings, there
is an unexpected variation that may occur. The result of the performance was more
than the artist had intended, but whenever an artist makes the choice to use a gun in
their work there is always a potential of death, and Burden had resolved this
possibility before the performance took place. Part of Burden’s resolve was that he
had an innate trust with the shooter.
Kathy O’Dell described this innate trust as a “contract” that exists between the
artist and the viewer that she discussed in her book Contract with the Skin:
Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s.
8
O’Dell uses the idea of a “contract” as
a way of illustrating the relationships that occur when there is urgency in

8
Kathy O’Dell, Contracts of the Skin. (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 4.
13
performance, one that bonds the performer and the spectator in a mutually intense act.
This trust, or contract, is what fulfills the performance while keeping it within the
artist’s vision. More harm was inflicted on Burden than he anticipated, but at the
same time there was a potential for violence that did not escalate because of the
“contract” that existed between the artist and the viewer.
In these early works Burden used a very specific conceptual framework for his
performances that were based on a specific circumstance (being locked in a locker for
five days, being shot in the arm) that is constructed by the artist before the
performance was in action. These circumstances were extreme and clearly set apart
from normal everyday activities. One of the concepts behind performance art is the
unification of art and life. Burden takes this a step further by uniting art with a very
severe perception of life. Art Historian Kristine Stiles calls his work “deceptively
simple”: “Burden conceived and designed his actions as succinct experiments through
which he could test, define, and draw conclusions about their meaning as much for
himself as for others.”
9
Burden’s actions are masochistic. He inflicted pain willingly
onto himself, whether or not there were participants to witness it. If anything the
viewer felt helpless as the artist suffered through self-inflicted pain that they are
unable to stop.
Roselee Goldberg identifies Burden’s early performance as an exploration of
the body’s limits saying that his performances “carried physical excretion and

9
Kristine Stiles, “Uncorrupted Joy: International Art Actions,” in Out of Action:
Between Performance and Art Object, 1949-1979, ed. Paul Schimmel (The Museum
of Contemporary Art, 1998), 278
14
concentration beyond the bounds of normal endurance.”
10
Certainly staying within
the confines of a locker for five days tests the body’s boundaries, but Shoot tests
boundaries of the body in a much more urgent ways.
These three pieces can be seen as a trilogy of sorts. One that showed a
progression from sculptural apparatus, to veiled performance, to body art. Burden
inflicted himself with pain and the audience is along for the ride, but he set
boundaries that clearly separated himself from the audience within the design of the
work. The urgency of the body being under duress was exactly what resonated with
the audience, who could not do anything to protect the artist. Audience reaction was
a part of Burden’s work, but there was not the same importance on interaction as the
other artists that have been chosen. As Burden put himself into more violent
conditions, he made the restrictions on his participants more stringent. However, he
never makes his body fully accessible to his viewers, never granting his audience the
same trust that he expects them to have in him. As his art became more dangerous
Burden implemented restrictions that made it impossible for the audience to change
the chores of the performance or stop the violence.

10
Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (Thames and
Hudson, 2001), 159
15
Chapter Two: Barbara T. Smith, Feed Me (1973)
Barbara T. Smith, like her contemporary Chris Burden, also used her body
strategically in her work, however her body authenticated the performance and
unpacked female objectification in art. Smith attended Pomona College where she
studied painting, art history and religion. After graduating from college, Smith got
married and had three children. Like many women artists of her generation, Smith
spent her time as a homemaker and her art was a side-project that she did in a spare
bedroom that had been converted into a studio. After 17 years of marriage Smith
divorced her husband and began to focus more on her art. She pursued her M.F.A.
degree at UC Irvine where she experimented with many different media including
photography, collage, and performance. Burden, Smith, and several other colleagues
founded the F-Space, a small experimental gallery that became the site of Burden’s
Shoot and many of Smith’s performances.
Smith’s performance style used feminine signifiers to confront the disparities
between genders during the 1970s. Her performance Feed Me, which was part of a
one-night art exhibition All Night Sculptures at Tom Marioni’s space the Museum of
Conceptual Art in San Francisco, depended on audience participation to unpack the
frictions felt between the genders. For one night Smith sat naked in a room equipped
with a mattress, rug, and pillows. The artist also surrounded herself with things that
could be consumed or used on the artist’s body: wines, food, massage oils, marijuana,
and so on. Participants were invited to come into the room one at a time and have a
personal experience with the artist. Upon entering the room the spectator heard a
16
looped recording of her voice saying: “Feed me, feed me.” Most of the participants
were men, which created an interesting tension that Smith intended on confront with
Feed Me. By performing naked, Smith placed herself in a vulnerable psychological
situation of not knowing and was open to all possibilities that what may occur during
the performance.
In her book Body Art/Performing the Subject, Amelia Jones has noted: “It
was crucial to embody the female subject publicly in order to politicize her personal
experience. The enacted body/self is explicitly political and social in that it opens out
onto the otherness and the world in general.”
11
Feed Me demonstrates Jones’ quote
by making a political statement out of her personal/ autobiographical enactment.
Like many female artists at the time, Smith used her body to give more importance to
her message; her body and her act became a political statement.
Smith used ideas that she is familiar with as a woman, food, nurturing, and
domesticity. Food was one of the feminine signifiers that were used in several of
Smith’s performances. In Ritual Meal (1969) Smith served an unorthodox six-course
meal at the home of Stanley and Elyse Grinstein that was layered with Western, tribal
and prehistoric traditions. Two years later Smith revisited nourishment in her work
The Celebration of the Holy Squash (1971). She constructed her own religion around
an ordinary squash, declaring it “holy” as a way of parodying the emergence of relics
in Christianity. Smith then used food and other objects that could be used on the

11
Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (University of Minnesota Press,
1998), 23.
17
artist’s body again in Feed Me. Jennie Klein asserts in her article “Feeding the Body:
The Performances of Barbara T. Smith,” Smith’s use of food is because of the artists
interested in “metaphorical, spiritual and literal meaning of food and the female body,
which was uniquely capable of both taking in and producing food.”
12

Klein ties food to femininity with this quote but she does not mention the
additional power that food holds, particularly in the case of Feed Me. In Ritual Meal
and The Celebration of the Holy Squash food is ritualized, there is sacredness to it.
However, in Feed Me the power is different; it is the conduit to a shared experience
between the artist and the spectator. Food facilitates a moment of generosity to occur.
Food was the interaction.
There were different interactions with the audience that occurred in Feed Me.
Unlike Burden who never fully relinquished his power, once the work was in play,
Smith gave the power over to the audience who ultimately guided the performance.
But she also designed several restrictions in her work, to ensure her safety. It was
important to Smith that the interactions were individual, partially because of the tone
that she set in the performance and partially as a way of protecting herself from the
potential threat due to her vulnerability. There was no barrier between artist and
viewer who had control over the interactions that occurred. Some followed the
instructions presented by the performer, and fed Smith. Others wanted to share an
emotional moment with the artist through deep philosophical conversations. This

12
Jennie Klein, “Feeding the Body: The Work of Barbara Smith,” PAJ: Performance
Art Journal 21 (January, 1999), 25.
18
reaction is akin to the response generated by Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece, a kind
of intimate interaction that is conducive to confessional motivations. These were
reactions that fell into Smith’s expectations. However, she was prepared for
participants to act outside of her expectations and some did so when three men
engaged in sexual encounters with Smith. Smith put herself at an extreme risk by
being so vulnerable and the audience reacted to that vulnerability. There were some
occasions when the participants took advantage of the situation, but most of the
encounters were about a shared moment of trust.
Passivity was a strategy used by several female artists during the 1960s and
seventies. Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece is a performance that uses the passive female body
to explore ideas of trauma and violence. This work will be discussed further in
chapter three. Another artist who used passivity to provoke response is Marina
Abramovic who used a similar format to Smith in her performance Rhythm O (1974),
which took a more violent turn than Feed Me. Rhythm O presented Abramovic’s
body to the audience along with various instruments of both pleasure and pain such as
feathers, knifes, and a gun. Audience reaction started timidly, but after several hours
of the artist’s passivity, the audience became more and more aggressive towards her.
She was eventually stripped naked, cut, and fondled. The work turned into a mob of
unruly spectators and the performance became extremely tense when a loaded gun
was placed in Abramovic’s hand, her finger on the trigger. A group in the audience
came to her protection, and the performance ended when a fight broke out between
several members.
19
Conceptually, Smith and Abramovic’s work seem very similar, however,
Smith’s performance resulted in nourishing and nurturing, while Abramovic’s
became uncontrollably violent. Because of few subtle differences in the
performances, Smith was successful in guiding the performance even in his state of
passivity, while Abramovic completely loses control. In both works participants had
a stake in course that the performance took. And the subsequent reaction was evoked
by the nuanced differences in the performances design. The number of viewers
participating in the performances was key to their result. Smith made it clear in the
design of her performance that she wanted an individual interaction with her viewers.
The intimate nature makes it less likely for an uncontrollable response to occur. Ono
also made these limitations in her score, which asked participants to approach the
artist one-at-a-time. Abramovic’s work was not an intimate exchange and didn’t have
any limitations built into the performance. Instead it was a large audience versus a
single performer. The mob mentality permitted the viewer anonymity and egged on a
violent exchange that didn’t exist in Smith or Ono’s work.
Feed Me provided specific instructions for the spectator that Abramovic did
not. Smith included a looping tape that said, “Feed me, feed me,” which reiterated
instructions to her viewers. The interpretation of the directive instruction is up to the
participant who may interpret “feed me” literally, psychologically, or sexually.
Whichever way her instructions are interpreted, there was still an instructional
structure that is constantly present. In contrast, Abramovic’s Rhythm O had very few
restrictions or instructions in her work, which made it more likely for an
20
uncontrollable outcome to occur. Abramovic instructed the viewer to use the
instruments provided, on a small sign that was easily avoidable and quickly forgotten
by the viewer, especially over the course of the six-hour performance. The artist’s
voice was never present, her body becoming even further objectified by her silenced.
There was an instructional element, but it was not nearly as ingrained or omnipresent
as the consistent instructional voice of the artist in Feed Me.
Both Smith and Abramovic provided the audience with instruments that can
be used on the body, but the instruments provoked different responses from the
audience. Smith presented food, massage oils, perfumes, wine; none of these objects
are inherently violent. In fact these objects could be seen as signifiers of a romantic
evening that may have precipitated the sexual encounters that occurred. Conversely,
the objects that Abramovic provided to be use on her body blurred the line between
pleasure and pain. Her objects were more violently provocative than those provided
by Smith. Abramovic reflected a violent sexuality that was reacted to accordingly by
the viewers. Contrasting Smith’s Feed Me with Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 illustrates
that with a few subtle shifts in the performances design can change the tone and
ultimately the viewers response to the work. These examples show that performance
resides on a slippery slope, and how much power the artist retains in the performance
design can have a profound effect on the outcome of the performance.
Smith, like many feminist artists, exposed her body very deliberately.
Feminism was becoming increasingly mainstream in the 1970s and sexual politics
were more important to culture. One of the mantras for feminism during the time was
21
“the personal is political” and that is applied to this work on multiple levels. Smith
exposed herself both literally and symbolically by presenting her vulnerable naked
body to an audience. Jennie Klein notes in her article “Feeding the Body: the Work
of Barbara Smith” the “success of Feed Me was predicated upon Smith’s nakedness,
which insured that the meaning of the performance did not simply remain an abstract
lesson about female objectification.”
13
Klein goes on to contextualize the Smith’s
body into a broader art historical framework of the female body. Smith makes it clear
that she was “naked” not “nude.” Smith says in an interview with Moira Roth, “I’m
changing the reference of art history, because nude means docile female who hasn’t
any clothes on and is viewed in a painting. Naked means I’ve removed all my clothes
and I have a different stance.”
14
By defining the state of her body, Smith clearly
articulated its role as a tool of provocation for her male viewers.

13
Jennie Klein, 30.
14
Moira Roth, “Interview with Barbara Smith” in Rachel Rosenthal, (The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997), 46.
22
Chapter Three: Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964)
Born in 1933 in Japan to an aristocratic family, Yoko Ono and her family
moved quite a bit in her early life. Because her father’s job, Her family lived in Japan
during World War II, where “one of Ono’s most powerful childhood memories dates
to the final months of World War II in Japan. The U.S. firebombings of Tokyo in
March 1945 that left tens of thousands dead and the city a vast charred ruin had
forced Yoko’s mother to evacuate her family to the countryside for safety.”
15
With
Japan’s surrender the nation was in a state of extreme devastation. Ono’s family, who
lived in a rural farming town at the time, were starving and suffering from the
national and personal trauma inflicted by war. This experience had a profound affect
on Ono who later explored ideas of self, otherness, and wartime trauma in her work.
Ono’s family relocated to New York after the war while Ono was attending
Gakushuin University where she was the first female student to study philosophy.
However, Ono dropped out after her second semester and joined her parents in New
York where she attended the nearby Sarah Lawrence College. It was at this time that
Ono began to engage with a “bohemian” lifestyle, meeting many artists and visiting
small galleries in New York City. Ono began to make performances and through this
she met John Cage and other artists who deeply influenced her practice.
Ono performed sometimes with Fluxus, a loose association with Dada-
inspired performance, and used different media including film, photography and

15
Alexandra Munroe and Jon Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono (Harry N. Abrams, Inc,
2000), 12.
23
performance. While associated with Fluxus, Ono performed one of her best known
works entitled Cut Piece, which has been restaged many times since it was originally
performed in 1964. Cut Piece used deconstruction both tangibly and conceptually as
a way of involving the viewers in her artistic sacrifice. Ono attempts to relive her
internal struggle with trauma by making a personal sacrifice, one that she shares
collectively with the audience who participates in this sacrifice.
One of the most important aspects of this piece is that it is structured off of a
score, which was written by the artist but does not have to be performed by the artist.
The score for the original performance is as follows;
Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors in front of him.
It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage – one at a
time- to cut a small piece of the performer’s clothing to take with them.
Performer remains motionless throughout the piece. Piece ends at the
performer’s option.
16

Cut Piece is a simple gesture, one that illustrates a sacrifice by the artist who prompts
the viewer to participate in the sacrifice. Not by performing their own sacrifice but
by participating in her objectification. Ono first performed the work in 1964 at the
Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. She then restaged the performance a number of times:
at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1965, London’s Africa Centre in 1965, lastly in
Paris in 2003 at the age of 70. There are slight variations, but it usually takes the
same simple form that follows the score.

16
Kevin Concannon, “Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece From Text to Performance and Back
Again,” PAJ: Performance Art Journal
24
Restaging is a strategy in performance art because it allows for the spontaneity
of performance art to occur but both the artist and the audience come into the
performance with an understanding of its course. Ono said in an interview with
ArtNet, “I always thought that my work was improvisational: you do it and never look
back. With Cut Piece, I did it once in Kyoto, the performance that you saw in New
York, and then I did London. All three audiences were very different.”
173
Also since
the performance is based off of a score, the piece could be performed by anyone in
any setting. Cut Piece has taken many forms; it has been performed by men in
tuxedos, by groups of people, in institutional settings, or in public space.
Cut Piece provides an interesting example of looking at one performance in
different political and cultural settings. The first two performances were done in
Tokyo in July and August of 1964. The audience was demure and hesitant about
what the artist was asking them to do. With the exception of one man who held the
scissors over Ono’s head as if he were going to stab her. “Ono’s response was
dismay rather than fear, for his gesture made her action more theatrical than she
intended, a theatricality she avoided by suppressing her emotions and not reacting.”
18

Other than that exchange, the Japanese public was more demure than Ono had
expected. Ono felt the urgency to do this piece after the trauma she endured growing
up. The piece was meant for this setting and this audience, most of whom had
experienced the traumas of World War II that Ono was addressing. But the

17
Michele C. Cone, “Death and the Artist.” Artnet (2008), http://www.artbasel-
artnet.de/magazine/usa/features/cone05-20-08.asp
18
Alexandra Munroe and Jon Hendricks, 12.
25
audience’s response didn’t have the cathartic quality that Ono expected. The
spectator could have been modest because generally the Japanese public is less
outgoing. Also, Ono performed in a way that had not been seen before by displaying
the female body in such a confrontational way. It is also quite possible that this was
the first time that the piece was being performed and the audience and artist are still
unfamiliar with the mode of the performance.
The next time that the piece was performed was in New York at the Carnegie
Concert hall. This performance was different than the first one, there was still a fair
amount of inhibition, but the audience was more than willing to participate in her
sacrifice. Ono described this iteration as the most beautiful of all the restagings.
“With New York, the sense of inhibition created a kind of space between each person
coming up and cutting. So, in terms of music, it was like there was a pause and it was
beautiful.”
19

If the New York version of Cut Piece was the most beautiful, the London
version was the most ugly. Up until this point the artist had a sort of alliance with the
viewers who understood the collective moment that was created in that space. There
were moments of discomfort and overzealous participants, but the reaction had never
turned violent. In London, participants became more and more aggressive with the
artist. The performance took an unexpected turn for Ono whose relationship with the
viewer turned from ally to assailant. As tensions came to a head, Ono was escorted

19
Michele C. Cone, “Death and the Artist.” Artnet (2008), http://www.artbasel-
artnet.de/magazine/usa/features/cone05-20-08.asp
26
off the stage by security guards. The piece was never completed. This version of the
performance is the least spoken or written about. It is very difficult to get any
specific details about the exchanges that occurred. There is no documentation, and
when brought up in interviews, Ono addresses the confrontation but then quickly
changes the focus to the New York version, the most beautiful version.
The Paris performance took place in 2003 when Ono was 70, many years after
the original staging. While the underlying message of the performance remained, the
piece now referenced a different struggle in Ono’s life. Ono released a letter that re-
contextualized Cut Piece saying, “following the political changes through the years
after 911, I felt tribally vulnerable like the most delicate wind could bring me tears.
Cut Piece is my hope for world peace.”
20
This iteration took place much later but the
meaning is still focused on wartime trauma, voyeurism, gender relations, sexual
aggression, and violence, just as it did in 1964. Ono makes this work timeless. As
long as there is strife and war in the world, as long as there is trauma that needs to be
expressed through art, this piece could be performed by Ono herself or by other artists
who find this performance model to be cathartic. This is one of the ways that this
piece has survived in art history, by other artists who have chosen to restage her
action and to continue it’s lineage in art history.
Another way that this piece has survived, much like other performance work,
is through video documentation. Films of these performances are often exhibited in
retrospectives of Ono’s work. But a lot of the documentation can be accessed on the

20
Yoko Ono, “Cut Piece- A Letter from Yoko Ono” September 15, 2003.
27
Internet. The version that seems to be most prevalent is the Carnegie Hall restaging
in New York. This documentation is interesting because the piece in its
documentation form is so different than how it exists in the writing and the way that
Ono speaks about it. It is surprising in the documentation how loud the audience
seems. For an artwork that deals with such weighted issues as trauma, war, and
objectification, it seems odd that the audience is so loud. The background noise
seems to include people chatting and laughing.
The documentation gives a good perspective of the setting for the
performance and it also shows the individual interactions of each participant rather
than the generalizing approach that the writing on Cut Piece typically takes.
Most participants chose to have as little contact with the artist as possible. They
immediately went to the back of the artist where they couldn’t feel as much physical
connection, they couldn’t feel her breath, see the tension in her mouth, feel her gaze.
While others took the opportunity to have an intimate moment with Ono, brush the
hair away from her face, whisper in her ear. But there is one exchange that is
captured by the documentation that illustrates the outlying responses that occurred
when the audience didn’t act within the rules that Ono wrote in her score. This
interaction took place in the New York restaging of Cut Piece nearing the end of the
performance. In this exchange a young man in black slacks and a white button down
shirt approached Ono and picked up the scissors. Before beginning to cut he faces the
audience and says in a loud enthusiastic voice, as if performing himself, “very
28
delicate, might take some time.”
21
As he knelt down to begin his cuts someone
outside of the cameras frame, possibly the next person in line, said something to the
man that is hard to hear in the documentation. The man responded by saying “oh, not
too long” and began to cut. His first cut down the center of Ono’s undershirt, then the
straps of the undershirt exposing Ono’s bra. At this point Ono, who had been calm
and stoic up until this point, began to lose her concentration. She looked down at the
work this man has done, with a faint smile she bit her lip and rolled her eyes. A male
and female voice from behind the camera, possibly the videographers began to giggle.
The male said, “look at the expression on her face” followed with a laugh. The
female voice responded by saying, “he’s getting a bit carried away.”
22
They giggled
as the man continued to cut. At this point the video focuses almost exclusively on
Ono’s face, which had become tenser with less concentration. The man makes his
final two cuts; first to the left bra strap then to the right strap. With each metallic
click of the scissors Ono flinches. The man had finished his work; he had
accomplished what he had envisioned. He left Ono who is at the brink of exposure;
her hands over her breasts, a gesture to protect herself.
By stating “very delicate, may take a while” the man clearly indicated that he
has thought through his cuts, and was making it known to the audience that he had a

21
Yoko Ono “Cut Piece Doumentation from New York Restaging at Carnegie Hall in
1965” Accessed on the Daily Motion Website,
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms.
22
Yoko Ono “Cut Piece Doumentation from New York restaging at Carnegie Hall in
1965.”
29
distinct vision, more so than the participants that preceded him. The man seemed to
have wanted to bring the performance to the point of discomfort for Ono without fully
objectifying her. By cutting away at her clothing and revealing her vulnerability the
man is bringing the piece to the place that Ono wanted it to go, however his
overzealousness seemed to be shocking to both the artist and the audience. This
exchange is indicative of a broader relationship between a male spectator and a
female performer, one that is also explored by Barbra T. Smith in her work. Kathy
O’Dell observes this relationship as, “ironically replicating stereotypical male
practices of voyeurism, as well as stereotypically female sates of passivity, she
completes with traditions of voyeurism and demonstrated another form of mastery
over visual space.”
23

Ono’s intention for this piece was to challenge herself with a point of
vulnerability through a sacrifice that is facilitated by the participants. And this man
does exactly that; but he doesn’t adhere to the rules of the performance. Inevitably
the performance would result in Ono sitting bare with the same protected gesture that
she ended up in. But that state was supposed to be the result of a collective action to
her sacrifice, not the act of a single participant. Even participants in the audience
seemed to be bothered that the man has taken such an oppressive role. They may be
protective of the work and the artist or they may want to be sure that they will have
the opportunity to make their own cuts. Whatever the reason the audience is trying to

23
Kathy O’Dell, “Fluxus Feminus,” TDR Vol. 41,1 (Spring, 1997), 53.
30
preserve the performance and is uncomfortable with the man taking away from piece
more than he should.
The shift in documentation at this moment is also interesting. There is a very
clear format to the documentation of Cut Piece. The film focuses on the artist from a
frontal perspective; the body of the participants obstructs views of Ono sometimes.
But most of the time there is a clear view of both the artist and the participant. There
are points in the documentation when the person filming goes behind the artist to
capture the participants action and also provides views of the audience in the theatre
seating as well as the line of participants that form next to the stage. At the point of
this exchange the films focus changes, which leads me to believe that the comments
made about the man in from off camera are somehow connected to the production of
the documentation. The male voice says “look at the expression on her face” which
prompts an immediate close up on Ono’s face that illustrates the pain and
vulnerability that a performance of this nature takes out of a performer. This
illustrates a broader point about the problems that occur in viewing performance work
purely through documentation. The filmed documentation of the work is seen
through the lens of someone else, someone who chose to capture certain aspects and
nuances of the performance while leaving out other aspects. The documentation of
Cut Piece, which seems to have very little variation, has become more accessible than
Ono had ever imagined through the Internet. On websites like Youtube and UbuWeb,
Cut Piece can be viewed easily. Not only is Cut Piece kept alive through it’s
31
restaging, it is also re-inscribed every time it is viewed through these mediated
sources.
Ono used several strategies in Cut Piece to engage the viewer to participate in
the piece. First of all, Ono is passive, which she says references the steadfast Buddha
figure. But some critics and historians have read this passivity as early feminism.
Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt gave a specifically feminist reading in their
book Yoko Ono: Objects and Arias, that Cut Piece where they assert: “running
through much of Ono’s work is a bold commentary on women. Yet far from being
strident feminist tracts on the subordination and victimization of women, her piece
achieves power because of their ambiguity; their willingness to forfeit the illusion of
politically proper thinking throws responsibility and for judgment upon the viewer.”
24

While there are feminist undertones, Ono isn’t making a point of highlighting the
male interaction, in fact, her interaction with both male and female viewers are
exactly the same. It seems like the relinquishment of power is more about creating a
power tension. Ono is the figure, which unites a group of people who act out
collectively on her. Some were collaborative in their efforts to complete Ono’s
artistic vision, while others used her passivity as an opportunity to act out violently on
her and work against Ono’s messages of peace.

24
Barbara Haskell and John G Hanhardt, Yoko Ono Objects and Arias (Gibbs Smith,
1991), 111.
32

Chapter Four: Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tension (2007)
Recently artists have started using the Internet as a platform for their work.
The Internet as performance site has completely stripped away the one-on-one
interaction that is usually the hallmark of performance art. Instead, the performance
took on a different dimension, one that was defined by the interactions, exchanges,
and reactions that were veiled by an anonymity that the Internet provides.
Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi-born artist living and working in the United States.
His work strives to unite his experiences living in Iraq with the contradictions he feels
while living in America. Bilal’s piece entitled Domestic Tension explores the
interaction between the artist and the viewer through a performance that occurs in
both real and virtual space and grapples with several ideas that exist in the political
and art world. The performance generated a variety of responses that ranges in
audience participation. These responses resulted in a power struggle and exchange to
occur between the participants that centered on the powerless artist. These power
relations illustrate a broader understanding of performance that is intertwined with
technology.
Domestic Tension consisted of the artist living in the corner of a gallery for
the duration of a month, a tradition seen in the performance trajectory by artists like
Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconcci, and Tracey Emin. Bilal set up a
makeshift living space in the Flatfile Gallery in Chicago. The living space was
prepared with a bed, table, even an exercise bicycle. He also set up a computer that
33
streamed his every move to an Internet audience, who had the opportunity to at any
time shoot him from about 10 feet away with yellow paintballs that were shot from
paintball gun robot that was controlled through the Internet. Bilal participated in a
violent and sacrificial act, he relinquished all power to the viewer, a viewer who he
was provoking to participate in his pain. At the same time the artist has built into the
project the potential for benevolent acts to occur. Bilal did not bring anything into the
gallery with him. No food, no change of clothes, he relied on the generosity of the
viewers. The artist surrenders his power to the audience; it is their choice to act how
they see fit.
This piece was inspired by two events in Bilal’s personal life. The first was
the separation from his family, who still were living in Iraq while he was living in
America in what he calls the “comfort zone.” By simulating a conflict zone for
himself, Bilal hoped to somehow connect to his family who were under a similar
stress as they went on with their daily lives. The second reason was that he wanted to
pay homage to his brother who was killed by a military drone in 2005. Bilal was
outraged when he saw a news story soon after his brothers death that detailed a base
in Colorado where soldiers sat comfortably while they shot at the “threat” in the
Middle East. There is no connection, just soldiers “remote from the conflict and
horror they were about to help create.”
25
Bilal wanted to create his own kind of
technological battleground. With the help of a few of his colleagues at the Art

25
Wafaa Bilal. “A Conversation with Wafaa Bilal, Author of, Shoot an Iraqi: Art,
Life and Resistance Under the Gun.” Interview by City Lights. San Francisco, CA,
September, 2008.
34
Institute of Chicago they began to build a robot paintball gun that would move on a
horizontal axis and shot when prompted through an internet interface. Bilal was
using his art “ to make people aware of not only the horrors of war but also the
remote and technological nature of modern warfare.”
26

Domestic Tension began a trajectory in Bilal’s work that deals with ideas of
war, trauma, and torture. In March of 2008 Bilal created a video game entitled Night
of Bush Capturing: Virtual Jihad (2008), that is a modified version of the commercial
game “Quest for Saddam.” In this version Bilal cast himself as a suicide bomber on a
mission to assassinate President Bush. In Dog or Iraqi (2008) Bilal again used the
Internet to gauge audience participation once more. This time he asked participants
to vote on who should be waterboarded, himself or a cute dog named Buddy. Votes
indicated that most wanted to see the Iraqi tortured, and on April 21, 2008 Bilal was
waterboarded. On March 9, 2010 Bilal will stage a 24 hour performance called and
counting….(2010) where he will have his back tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq
that will illustrate the number of both American and Iraqi wartime deaths. American
casualties will be symbolized by red dots while Iraqi casualties will use green UV ink
that can only be seen when under a black light. His action forever maps the lives lost
in war, whether they are recognized or not, on his body that provides the canvas for
his work. All of these works deal with the American perspective of the Iraqi war that
gauges audience reception through technological means.

26
Wafaa Bilal. “A Conversation with Wafaa Bilal, Author of, Shoot an Iraqi: Art,
Life and Resistance Under the Gun”
35
Very little has been written academically or critically about this piece. Most
that has been written about Domestic Tension took the form of mediated news. The
research comes in the form of cross-referencing streaming information from various
virtual mediums, including blog posts, chat rooms, video diaries, and news coverage
of the project. Bilal was diligent about posting video diaries daily at his most
vulnerable moments. Much like Ono’s Cut Piece, this work accentuated Bilal’s
vulnerability and exposed his deeply embedded trauma even further. Watching Bilal’s
videos diaries could be quite difficult to watch at times. On several occasions he
breaks down emotionally and it is quite apparent that the viewers are watching a man
suffer. These video diaries have to be viewed with a grain a salt. While there are
obvious moments of authenticity, it is quite possible that equally as many moments
have been scripted and performed.
After the projects completion, Bilal along with co-author Kari Lydersen wrote
a book entitled Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun (2008) which
was his way of coming to terms with the project. The book weaves together personal
experiences from his childhood with candid reflections of the project in retrospect.
Comparing the two primary sources, there are several discrepancies. The book
constructs a narrative that the time away from the project afforded him. Again this
source needs to be viewed with caution because there seems to be liberties taken by
the artist in terms of accuracy.
The words of the artist can be compared with the voice of the viewer. Viewers
posted thousands of blog posts, chat rooms, and the wordless but symbolic paintballs
36
that were shot, all directly gauge audience interaction. Lastly, various publications
reported stories on Domestic Tension throughout its duration; these publications help
to measure the pieces public reception. Bilal’s piece appealed to a variety of genre of
publications from news to gaming and paintball forums. The Internet as a medium
cast a net for a broader audience and once those demographics opened up, more was
written about the piece, thus generating more participation. The cycle brought waves
of response leaving Bilal constantly on edge.
When Bilal started the project, he grossly underestimated the response he
would get. He conceived of a “interactive art project that turned into a major cyber-
culture event that garnered extensive international media coverage, bringing together
far more people and exposing more complex cultural, political and personal
revelations than he had ever imagined.”
27
Bilal was aware of how painful it would be
after several test shots, however he was counting on no more than a few shots an
hour, shots that he could easily avoid by staying under the firing line of the gun or
dodging behind the Plexiglas shields that he had constructed for himself. What he
didn’t anticipate was the amount of media coverage the piece would get, and how the
coverage would ultimately result in close to 80 million hits on the website and 65,000
paintballs being shot at him.
Naturally an interest in the project escalated as more media outlet reported on
Bilal. But the most interesting part is how the genre of media outlets opened up new

27
Waffa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the
Gun (City Lights Press, 2008), 2
37
demographics to view Bilal’s work. The Chicago Tribune did the first story on May
10, 2007.
28
Other news medias started to report on the piece within a few days,
including a post on websites such as BoingBoing
29
and BBC.
30
Up until this point the
comments on the blogs are respectful yet critical.
Judging by the demographic of people who typically take interest in
publications like these, the first few days were relatively tame for Bilal who spent
most of his time in chat-rooms with viewers talking about his intention for the
project, his vision, and broader discussions about the war. There were very few shots
fired at this point and those shots that were fired were aimed at direct spots in the
room as a way of testing out the technology. Mattboy714 posted on the blog “I saw a
link to the website on the BBC page and an article in the Chicago Tribune. Yes I shot
a few balls, but I pointed the gun at the wall. I would never shoot a harmless, innocent
person (let alone over the internet), regardless of his race, ethnicity, religion, or
nationality. This is a very interesting project and I think it draws out the best in
people and the worst in people.”
31
This comment exemplifies the nature of the blog

28
Alan G. Artner, “Wafaa Bilal, Interactive Performance Piece is Altering
Perspectives on War, One Paintball at a Time,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 2007, Art
and Culture Section.
29
Michael Lithgow, “Shoot a Real Live Iraqi over the Internet,” BoingBoing blog
site, May 11, 2007. Accessed at http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/11/shoot-a-real-
live-ir.html
30
Chris Vallance, “Iraqi Paintball Art,” BBC, May 15, 2007, Blog section. Accessed
at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/2007/05/iraqi_paintball_art.shtml
31
Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension,” Domestic Tension official Webpage.
Mattboy714, Comment made May 17, 2007.
http://www.wafaabilal.com/html/domesticTension.html.
38
posts at this point in the projects. More thoughtful conversation occurs about how the
performance makes a statement about technology and war. The viewer’s response
was more about a personal interaction with the artist that occurred in blogs and chat
rooms.
On day nine the story hits specific websites having to do with gaming and
paintball activities the number of shots fired spiked and the comments become more
insulting and aggressive. The audience figured out how to hack into the system and
they have turned the gun into a paintball machine gun. In a sense, the project was
turning into what the artist was hoping. He had placed himself into the situation with
the expectation the people would shoot at him. He was a sitting duck, a place where
the viewer could literally mark him with their prejudices, hatred, and aggression.
What he had not anticipated was the power of viral culture and the popularity that the
project would get, but this is what he wanted, and the viewers gave it to him.
The moment of pandemonium for Bilal is when a story hits number one on
Digg.com. A viewer warns Bilal on the chat rooms “ you just hit Digg. Get ready to
crash.”
32
This is Bilal’s worst day and it is the first time that Bilal actually gets out of
the range of the gun because of the bodily harm that he faces. Later on the system
completely crashes, which prompted many comments where the viewer criticizes the

32
Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, 79
39
server a participant saying “dude get a decent server so we can play some wafaa
ball!”
33
Viewers also call the project a fake and the entries become belligerent.
Instead of ignoring the comments Bilal made repeated attempts to prove to
the audience that the piece is indeed real. He took them on a virtual tour of the space
on one of his video diaries and actually shoots at himself from a laptop that he has set
up in his space. Some viewers became obsessed with actually being able to see their
mark on the performance. Towards the end of the performance the walls had turned
completely yellow and participants were unable to see their contribution to the
project. To prove to the audience that the piece was “real” Bilal posted up cardboard
panels and large pictures of his face on the walls. This gave participants a blank
canvas for the shooters to aim at. Bilal’s performance is intentionally open-ended; he
has created a condition for him to live in with no idea of how the viewer will react to
his proposition. While Bilal’s message behind this piece is to give evidence and
physicality to the racism against Arabs in this political climate, it is those gestures
that are marked by the audience that also gives evidence to participation and
essentially brings the piece to fruition.
Contemporary performance artists have turned to the Internet as a platform for
their work. This medium uses a much different approach than performance art of the
past. There is a separation and a veil of anonymity that is involved here that aren’t in
most of his predecessors work. Artists like VALIE EXPORT, Francis Alys, and

33
Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension Video Documentation.” Accessed on
YouTube.com, JakeBlues69 comment posted on June 3, 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0NR_pITj0c&feature=related.
40
Marina Abramovic participate in guerilla performances that ambush unexpected
viewers on the street. They rely on interaction to bring their piece to fruition. VALIE
EXPORT’s Touch and Tap Cinema (1968-71) provides a good example of the
importance of proximity in performance art. In these pieces the artist’s proximity to
the viewer is extremely important. In this piece, EXPORT constructed a tiny movie
theatre around her bare chest. Participants were invited to reach inside the structure
and feel EXPORT’s breasts. A performance like this one thrives off of an ambush
quality. Participants on the street were unaware that they would be confronted in this
way; there is a shock involved. Proximity is also integral to this work. Participants
had to look into EXPORT’s eyes as the invaded her personal space. This kind of
performance is akin to both Ono and Smith’s performance, which also deal with ideas
of objectifying the female body that is echoed by the proximity of bodies that are
involved in the work. In the case of Domestic Tension, the viewers most likely seek
out the performance because they heard about it through the media or word of mouth.
And the Internet provides a distance that is used as a strategy to objectify Bilal’s body
in a different way than the female artists.
Domestic Tension not only took place during a time when people are generally
detached from the world, but he is also working within the technology that almost
begs for a fragmented and detached responses. Although he claims that he didn’t
think that the work would get such a reaction, it seems a little naive particularly
because the Internet and viral culture is so powerful in making things accessible on a
global level.
41
Bilal relies on interaction, however, the audience comes to him is fully aware of what
they are going to see once they actively seek out the webpage. The Internet adds an
additional element to performance, the inherent distance between the two parties to
act in ways that they wouldn’t if they were face to face; a shield that allows people to
behave without thought to consequence or societal repercussions. A mediated mob
mentality that not only allows for misbehavior, it actually tacitly encourages it.
Participants not only get to be a part of a greater community, which is itself a form of
power; they also get to exercise a direct form of control.
This piece illustrates broader power relations involved in performance art.
There are several types of reactions that occurred in response to Bilal’s action. First,
the passive act that is when the participants simply view the interactions that occurs
but never participates. Next, are moments of curiosity, participants who interacted by
posting comments or shooting just because they are interested in the technology.
Then are aggressive responses that are purely malicious in their motivation. And
lastly were sexual/nurturing responses, viewers who used sexual language to either
degrade or take care of the artist. All of these participants engage with each other and
at different moments the power shifts between the groups but at no point is it given
back to the artist who for that month had surrendered his power, his surrender being
an assertion of power in itself. The struggle for power resulted in a series of
aggressive and benevolent acts that were centered on the powerless artist.
“Domestic Tension adapted the idea of “aesthetic pleasure vs. aesthetic pain.”
We exist in a comfort zone unwilling to engage in a political dialogue. The idea was
42
to create an encounter where a person finds him/herself on a platform unknowingly
participating in the very thing they refused to be part of.”
34
Interaction is what fueled
this piece and resulted in the shifting of power between participants. Although
Domestic Tension played out on the Internet, which provided anonymity to
participants, their identity was not completely veiled. Bilal intentionally posted IP
address codes to the shots taken which indicating the location of the shooter.
Originally Bilal was worried that people wouldn’t shoot because of their location
being published, but it didn’t seem to affect the audience participation. What resulted
was a form self-governing activity within cyberspace. On the chat rooms certain
participants would attack others for how many shots they were taking. On day 15, a
participant from Columbus fired repeatedly for several hours, many participants
posted comments aimed at him “Cool it a bit Columbus. You shot at least 50 times
this hour.”
35
On day 20 a struggle for the gun happened. Hackers began to shoot
repeatedly like a machine gun. In reaction, a woman in Illinois started a group who
called themselves the “Virtual Human Shield,” hacked into the system so that every
shot fired is aimed 3 feet away from where the shot was intended
2
. They even set up
shifts on the chat room so that Bilal was consistently covered. This struggle
illustrates the how the project provokes both harmful and benevolent interaction to
occur.

34
Wafaa Bilal. “A Conversation with Wafaa Bilal, Author of, Shoot an Iraqi: Art,
Life and Resistance Under the Gun.”
35
Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, 77

43
The amount of benevolent response that occurred came as a surprise to Bilal.
He intentionally built in moments of generosity into the design of the performance
when he entered the gallery with nothing: no food, change of clothes, or cleaning
supplies. He makes sure to acknowledge the generosity of strangers in his video
diaries and book. A man who owned a falafel shop across the street from the gallery
brought him food almost every night. Many viewers sent him clean pairs of socks
and peace lilies. One of the most touching offering was when a former soldier
brought a new lamp to the gallery after his had been destroyed. They talked for a
while about the war. Bilal tearfully thanked the soldier in one of his video diaries.
Moments like this one are what Bilal meant by this project. He never expected for a
soldier to walk into the gallery bearing gifts. But conversation was sparked between
two people who have seemingly little in common, which is what Bilal had hoped
would occur. A public, who has been prompted to react in violent ways, surprised the
artist with moments of benevolence.
Domestic Tension also brought up sexual responses. Bilal set a sexual tone
for the piece from the beginning. The invitation to the opening event for the piece is
provocative and makes reference to the sexuality that underlies the piece. The image
shows Bilal in a pristinely white room bathed in sterile bright lighting. The room
appears to be very long and narrow, it is staged with a white bed and a tall white lamp
in the background. In the far upper right hand corner of the pristinely white room a
single yellow splatter can be seen. Bilal stands front and center; he is dressed in
black with a Kaffiyeh scarf wrapped around his neck. He coyly looks directly at the
44
camera. His gaze is modest and confrontational simultaneously. The shaft of the gun
in the foreground lines up almost perfectly to his pelvis. This image is ambiguous
and could be read in different ways. One could see the artist as the target, the gun
pointed directly at his crotch, the ultimate sign of submission. Or it could be viewed
as the artist as the aggressor, the gun his phallus. Again, Bilal leaves the reading of
his work up to the viewer and how they would like to interpret it. At the end of the
book he talks about how the piece had become a sexual metaphor for him “the gun a
metallic penis that shot a series of quick angry orgasms.”
36
In this quote he resolves
the role that he brings up with the invitation, he clearly sees himself as the target on
which the fantasies of the viewers can be acted out and ultimately, fulfilled.
The underlying nature of the piece evoked many to act out in sexual ways,
even unprompted. Heterosexual male participants used sexually suggested
comments that were usually intertwined with threat or degradation. One viewer said,
“I got an erection shooting at Bin Laden.”
37
Homosexual acts and name calling also
became the norm as a sexual response, “I’m going to shove some yellow balls up this
fag’s ass.”
38
Violence and sexuality become inextricably linked in these responses
and illustrate the depravity that the Internet fosters. In most cases the sexual act
becomes the violent act and vice-versa.

36
Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, 134
37
Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension Video Ducumentation,” accessed on
YouTube.com, Comment posted May 28, 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/mewafaa#p/u/13/RtrCqQ-W3KE
38
Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension Official Website.” Accessed at,
http://www.wafaabilal.com/html/domesticTension.html
45
Female responses varied. Some females would stay up late into the night on
chat rooms trying to engage the artist in online sexual conversations. The women get
quite graphic in these conversations, which take the form of traditional cyber-sex
activities. These conversations are never violent or degrading, but rather, they seem
intended on being provocative, even naughty. Other women take a more nurturing
approach, staying up late into the night chatting with Bilal in chat rooms. Their
conversations were never sexually explicit, instead alluding to nurturing sexualized
activities such as holding him, stroking his head, and confessional activities. While
the male response is short, flippant degradations the female response take the form of
a sexual scenario intended to play out in cyberspace.
Bilal’s work unites several issues that are problematic in the interactions that
occur in performance work and the reception of that work in the media. By using the
Internet as a platform, Bilal opened up Domestic Tension to an audience who would
not typically interact with performance art. And by using paintballs and a virtual
space as site for the piece, Bilal is using a language that is accessible to a broader
public. As interest spiked for the project, Bilal saw that his work was reaching a
success that he had never imagined; success that subjected him to more financial
responsibility, more hurtful comments, and more visceral trauma. Ultimately, the
project spun out of control at the hands of the news media that interpreted the piece to
fit their own agenda, identifying Bilal not as an artist but as an activist. Bilal states
clearly in several media that his intention for this piece was not to be political.
However, that is exactly what it became. Whether or not Bilal is content with how
46
the piece played out he has not commented on. But, Bilal is content with is the kind
of discussion and interaction that the piece inspired. While there were several
shockingly depraved moments, benevolent moments did shine through as well. He
says that his work “draws out the brutal elements of cyber culture and human nature,
it also highlights the ways in which the Internet has become a forum of community
resistance and empowerment.
39
” Bilal wrote his book a year later as a way of
resolving some of the issues that he has dealt with in his life and revisited during
Domestic Tension. While there seems to be a cathartic quality to the book he is still
haunted by his time in the Flatfile Gallery. If anything his reflections provided by his
memoirs has brought up more questions than answers. He ends with a final
revelation “As I bolt upright in bed awakened by nightmares or twist and turns
through sleepless nights…flailing between worlds of comfort and conflict…hope and
despair…. and I wonder….
40
”

39
Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, 120
40
Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, 120
47
Chapter Five: Comparison
Burden, Smith and Ono were working at the emergence of performance art.
They were beginning to experiment with the concept of art intersecting with life, and
their bodies acted as the unifying factor between the two. There was a gradual
progression for Burden who started off as a minimalist sculptor. A transition
happened in Burden’s early practice from working through a sculpture that he built to
its gradual deconstruction; eventually all that remained was the artist’s body. Bare,
broken, and brutalized, Burden tapped in psychologically to the audience who
responded to his vulnerability.
Bilal was working much later than the other artists when the concept of the
body as art had long been established as a tool in performance art. Bilal made this
idea contemporary by working through the Internet in Domestic Tension. While
Bilal’s body was central to the work because it brings a sense of urgency to it, the
body was not immediately present to the viewer who must engage with the artist
through mediated sources. There was a distance involved, an anonymity which was
also used by Burden in Five Day Locker Piece. The body was physically inaccessible
in both of these works. For Burden, his body was contained within a structure where
the artist cannot be seen. Bilal worked in the opposite, his body could be seen at all
times and was completely accessible to anybody with a computer and internet access,
however, a human connection could never exist. To the viewer, Bilal’s body was not
made up of flesh and blood, instead it was seen almost a video game character,
something that was so life-like but doesn’t feel pain.
48
Jayne Wark states in her book Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance
Art in North America,
When performance artists like Vito Accoci and Chris Burden explored such
concepts as power relations, risk, and vulnerability they did so from a social
position always already certain of their own power and authority and thus
obvious to what it might be like for those whose own social positions were
defined by subordination and real powerlessness. These social inequities, and
the ideologies that sustained them, were precisely the focus of female artists.
41

Wark addresses the distinct frameworks that gender provides in the formation of
performance art. There is a clear distinction between the way that the women and
male artists perform. The body is used in both female and male performance, but
how they are used is completely different. Male artists tend to violently act out on
their body while female artists tap into the vulnerability of the naked body and the
potentials that may occur due to their exposure.
Male performances are characterized by their aggressive nature. Burden and
Bilal are just as aggressive in their works design as the responses that they got from
their viewers. According to Wark the male artist were coming from a more
privileged place where they could explore the power that were inherently afforded to
them.
42
As a result Male performance methodologies were based on physical
endurance. As mentioned before both Burden and Bilal’s work have a psychological
dimension to them, the artist putting their body under extreme duress is what evokes
the psychological responses. Both of these performances are extreme. Burden

41
Jayne Wark, Radical Gesture: Feminism and Performance Art in North America
(McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 90.
42
Jayne Wark, 130.
49
sequestered himself inside a locker for five days while Bilal had paintballs shot at him
for a month; these do not sound like female performances.
Moira Roth explains the trajectory of feminist performance as, “expanded into
public spaces and audiences (including men). Intimate feelings and reactions
continue to be explored but the goal now is often two-fold: the evocation of anger,
empathy and catharsis and, at the same time, political action.”
42
Roth’s quote is
relevant to both Ono and Smith’s work which explores their messages through
interaction, while simultaneously their enactment becomes a political action. Both
Ono and Smith were working during a time of extreme social change, particularly for
women. They embodied these tensions through their work by boldly confronting
gender struggles with their passivity. It must be said that these works are paradoxical
in that the artists are performing passively while the design and tone of their work is
confrontational, as a result their work is passive and confrontational at the same time.
The practices of Smith and Ono operate in very similar ways, because their
body was part of a sacrifice and vulnerability, in that their bodies are exposed.
Smith’s Feed Me was meant to challenge the relationship that occurs between men
and women particularly when the woman was in a condition of extreme vulnerability.
Like Ono, Smith’s vulnerability was intrinsic to her naked body and became a
powerful aspect of the performance. Smith and Ono are deliberately used their
bodies, they chose to objectify themselves to evoke a response from the viewer.

42
Moira Roth, “A Star is Born: Performance Art in California,” PAJ: Performing Art
Journal Vol. 4, 3 (1980), 93.
50
Smith clearly made reference to her body’s nakedness, breaking down the idea of the
traditional female role in art. Smith stated that she was naked in her work and not
nude. Smith, who studied art history, is most likely referencing art historian Kenneth
Clark when she made this distinction. In his book, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
Clark writes in his opening statement:
The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between
the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and
the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that
condition. The word “nude,” on the other hand, carries, in educated usage,
no uncomfortable overtones. The vague image it projects into the mind is
not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and
confident body: the body re-formed.
43

Smith used Clark’s distinctions not to further objectify herself, but to empower
herself which is made clear by her statement, “In Feed Me the odalisque was in
control for a change.”
44
Instead of her body being a beautiful nude meant for the male
gaze, Smith’s is the confrontational naked body that is unapologetic. Clark describes
the naked body as embarrassed and huddled, but Smith turns his idea around. She is
not embarrassed by her body, she is empowered by it. She is not huddled and meek,
she is confrontational. By twisting his clarifications, Smith transforms Clark’s
concept into a strong feminist gesture.
While Cut Piece pre-dates the feminist movement, however, scholars have
read her work as having very feminist undertones. Ono, however, says that her action
was most inspired by the passive sitting Buddha figure. Her performance is less

43
Kennith Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton University Press,
1972), 3
44
Jennie Klein, 31.
51
shocking now than it was in 1961. During the time of Ono’s original performance it
was unheard of for a female artist to be so confrontational with her body. She, like
Smith, was passive and came to terms with the unknown consequences that she
stoically faced. While she never clearly distinguishes the difference between her
being naked or nude, she was also confrontational with her body. Cut Piece is central
to the artist being disrobed by the viewer. But participants are not just undressing
her; they are using an instrument, a tool that could be used violently against Ono, to
cut away at her garments. Ono sees this sacrifice, the re-traumatization of her body,
as a way of bringing about a conversation of peace. Cut Piece is different than the
other works because it can be performed by anybody. Ono wrote a score, which
carefully describes how the piece should be performed. This allows for it to be
performed and re-staged by anyone who wishes to explore these ideas. Each time the
piece is performed it is re-inscribed according to who performs it, who it is dedicated
to, and how the piece is brought to completion. Cut Piece remains relevant, even fifty
years after it was originally performed, because it’s not dependant on Ono’s body, but
it is dependant on a body.
Which brings me to my next point. The body is important to all of these
works, but what is being inflicted on the body is even more central to the work. All
of the artists are intentionally putting themselves at some sort of risk, whether it is
something severely physical or it is the psychological revisiting of a traumatic
experience. All of the pieces are to some degree self-inflicted because the artist has
52
conceived the projects and requested the audience to participate, however, they tread
the line between the masochistic and the sadistic.
Ono and Bilal turn the viewer into the assailant in their work, but they
provoke the spectator in different ways. Ono requests that the spectator turns her into
the victim by participating in her trauma. Ono requested for this action to be inflicted
onto her, which is by definition masochistic, however, her hand was taken out of the
violence completely. Instead Ono placed that responsibility on the participant. By
relinquishing that power to the audience Ono very clearly takes the role of the victim
and the participant is placed in the role of the assailant.
Bilal also placed the responsibility on the viewer who is given the
opportunity to violently act out on the artist but could interact in other ways as well.
Participants did not have to shoot to interact with the performance but that was the
opportunity that is immediately presented to the viewer. By satisfying the request of
the artist they are completing the performance, but at the same time, participants had
to cope with the fact that they contributed to Bilal’s pain. Both of these pieces are
constructed masochistically but the artist’s hand is not inflicting their pain, that
responsibility is designated for the viewer.
There is a tone implied by Smith through the objects that she presented to the
viewer and the openness that she had towards the potentials that can occur when the
artist’s body is presented to a stranger. Unlike Ono or Bilal, Smith is not silenced to
the viewer; the piece is built on an individualized interaction that does not provide the
viewer with the same anonymity or passivity. Rather than the audience approaching a
53
stoic artist who doesn’t move and was more like a statue, or an artist who doesn’t
exist in reality but only in cyberspace; participants are prompted to engage in an
exchange that is mutual. The participant was not asked explicitly to violently act out
on the artist like Bilal or Ono do but the possibility was always there and Smith is
aware of the potential consequences.
In Burden’s Shoot the artist doesn’t physically shoot himself, but there is no
opportunity for the viewer to actively choose not to participate or to stop the violence.
Burden has an assistant physically pull the trigger, but the assistant is almost an
extension of Burden, who conceived of and completes the act himself. Participants,
most of which are seeing the work after the fact through documentation, are rendered
powerless. This act is truly masochistic because it is conceptualized and followed
through by the artist.
All of these artists used their art to outwardly work through ideas of trauma
and war. Bilal and Ono most directly tie their work to war. Ono conceived of her
work as a way to physically and cathartically work out the emotional trauma that she
endured during World War II. As the piece has been restaged, not only by Ono but
also by others who shared her sentiment, it was re-inscribed as a statement against
any injustice that occurs around the world. In the summer of 2003 Cut Piece was
performed by Ono in Paris. For this restaging Ono wrote a letter that contextualized
the work into the then political climate by writing:
Some people went to Palestine to act as human shields. That really touched
me. If all of us stood to become human shields instead of machine gunning
each other… My immediate thought was to join them. I almost did, and
54
didn’t. Later the world heard of the death of Rachel Corrie. She made her
stand for all of us.”
45

Ono is referring to Rachel Corrie, an American member of the International
Solidarity Movement who was killed by a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Army
while acting as a human shield to protect a Palestinian home from demolition. By
dedicating her work to Corrie, Ono brings the work away from its original context of
her experience during World War II and re-roots it in the traumas of the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. These traumas are universal and timeless and the act of
cutting away the clothes brings a poetic tangibility to those psychological wounds.
Bilal also indicated that the origins of Domestic Tension were directly related
from the personal trauma of living in a conflict zone. Bilal was compelled to do this
piece after his brother was killed in Iraq. Bilal also felt guilty living in what he calls a
“comfort zone” while his family’s lives have been completely torn apart due to the
United States invasion of Iraq. Bilal simulates a conflict zone that he subjected
himself to for a month. His work more directly references war than Ono, by using the
language of it; guns, surveillance equipment, man-made destruction. The references
are echoed further by his later work in which he implores torture methods like water
boarding, and politically loaded terms like Jihad. Bilal is rather blatant with his
wartime references, but at the same time he claimed that his work was apolitical.
Shoot in particular has been interpreted by art historians as being a
commentary on America’s political state during the Vietnam War, which had

45
Yoko Ono, “Cut Piece- A Letter from Yoko Ono,” September 15, 2003.
55
escalated by 1971. According to Kristine Stiles, Burden “had been thinking about
what it would feel like to be shot ever since the Kent State Massacre took place some
eighteen months earlier on May, 4 1970.”
46
That moment, like the firebombings for
Ono or the death of Bilal’s brother, initiated an urgency that made Burden want to
physically embody the politics that surrounded him. Stiles goes on to write, “what
would happen if, during a time when ‘everybody’s trying to avoid being shot, I flip it
over and do it on purpose.’”
47
His enactment goes further than the Kent State
Massacre; it extends to the many men his age who were willingly, or in some cases
forcibly, placed into the military. Burden symbolically connects to those victims of
the Kent State Massacre as well as those men in duty by sharing the pain of a bullet as
it penetrated his flesh. Of course, Burden felt this sensation in a very controlled
circumstance that was far from their actual experiences. But he did, like Bilal,
simulate the experience for himself that brought him out of the creature comforts of
American society during a time of war.
Smith did not make any claims of her art reflecting any anti-war politics. But
she, like Burden, was working during the height of the Vietnam War. In this work
her body, becomes a political body. It is more political in reiterating feminist
messages. But at the same time she uses her body in the same way that many were in
the protest culture during the 1970s who used pubic nudity, sit-ins, and other acts of

46
Kristine Stiles, “Burden of Light” in Chris Burden, ed. Fred Hoffman (Locus Plus
Publishing, 2007), 29.
47
Chris Burden quoted in Susan Freudenheim, ‘The Artist as Canyon Jumper’, Los
Angeles Times Magazine (July 13, 2003): 23.
56
bodily endurance as protest strategies. Both Burden and Smith, were using their
bodies in similar ways as the protest culture. By locking himself in a locker for five
days, by sitting in a room naked for a night, Burden and Smith are letting their bodies
become political bodies that are a product of their time.

57
Conclusion
These pieces address different messages that deal with the use of the body,
masochism, trauma, and war. While these aspects are quite important in the work, it
is the audience interaction that facilitated for these messages to emerge. It is because
of audience participation that these pieces were brought to fruition, making the work
almost collaborative. By the artist choosing to relinquish their power, they let the
power swing between those parties involved. These works reside on a slippery slope,
one that lets violent acts slide into benevolence and vice versa.
Chris Burden relies on his audience the least of all of the artists presented. He
always creates a condition, but it was usually meant for his own body, with the
exception of his first piece Being Photographed, Looking Out, Looking In. Most of
these works would have been considered complete to the artist, whether or not there
was an audience there to witness it. But because of audience interaction, there were
some unexpected moments for Burden in his performances. Burden comes the
closest to relinquishing his power in Five Day Locker Piece, but he never intended on
the response that was generated by his passivity. The piece was intended to be an act
of isolation, and if in those five days, Burden hadn’t spoken to a single person, the
piece would have still been a success. However, audience interest changed the
dimensions of the piece completely. Instead of the work becoming just an act of
solitude, the piece was altered by audience interaction and ultimately was
characterized by it. From an act of isolation, to an act that was mutually beneficial,

58
this response was completely unexpected by Burden who was looking at this work as
a test of his own endurance.
By inserting her voice, which instructs the audience “Feed me, feed me,”
Smith sets clear guidelines in her work. Much like Ono, she clearly articulates her
vision in the works design, and asks for a personal exchange as a means of retaining
control. All of these controls are articulated within the pieces design prior to the
performance as it occurs in real time. Once Smith was in the actual act of performing
she had to be completely passive and allowed for the audience to dictate the
performances trajectory. Most audience members followed Smith’s request, by
actually feeding smith. And even those who decided to interpret ‘feed me’ to mean
something psychological or philosophical were subscribing to Smith’s nurturing tone.
Those who took advantage of Smith’s passivity, acted against Smith’s intentions. But
she was very aware and willing to engage according to the direction that these
members decided to take her work, even if their reactions acted against her intended
message.
Ono’s Cut Piece uses a more intimate approach and a certain amount of trust
was built with each individual encounter. Most audience members felt uncomfortable
by the sensorial experience presented, the smell of her hair, the sense of her breath on
their skin. Most tried to avoid an intimate encounter by immediately moving behind
her to make their cuts. Ono, who works off of a score, gives very clear parameters to
her viewers. She doesn’t present scissors to her audience without clear instructions.

59
She clarifies with her score, “come and cut a piece of my clothing whenever you like
the size of less than a postcard.”
48

While these parameters have been set, Ono is aware that some participants
may not react according to her score. Audience members from the Tokyo and
London staging’s chose to threaten Ono violently with the scissors. And the man
from the New York staging, didn’t react with violence, rather he made several cuts
and not following the score, which made Ono uncomfortable and other audience
members anxious that they would not be able to contribute to the work. These
responses deviated from Ono’s expectations. She absorbs them by remaining stoic in
her passivity, but they also allude to the violent responses that may occur in a work
that aims to promote peace.
Walaaf Bilal constructed Domestic Tension, a performance that was violent by
nature. When participants were provided with the opportunity to violently act out,
65,000 shots were fired at the defenseless artist. This interaction was based on a
technological encounter. Bilal built into his performance some amount of
dependence on the local community for food and other necessities, but most
interacted with the work exclusively through an interface that was designed to be
impersonal and video game-like. Bilal intentionally made these choices to eliminate
personal accountability for his pain. This related to a broader commentary on virtual
warfare: cell phone controlled bombs, military drones. These technologies were
developed to distance us from the violence and risk involved in war, however there is

48
Yoko Ono, “Cut Piece- A Letter from Yoko Ono.”
60
always a cost. What was meant to distance us has only made us more paranoid and
numb to the violence that is now part of our everyday life. The 65,000 shots fired are
not the only indication of audience participation. Some chose not to perpetuate the
violence and contributed in other ways, by commenting on the message boards,
offering support, and sending items that were needed. These actions took more effort
than, with the click of a mouse, acting to assault the artist. All of these
contributions, along with the shots fired must be considered in gauging audience
reception. The unanticipated responses surprised and touched Bilal and showed him
that even when given the opportunity to respond to overt violence some will choose
alternative ways to demonstrate their participation.
Burden relies on his audience the least of all of the artists presented. He
always creates a condition, but it was usually meant for his own body, with the
exception of his first piece Being Photographed, Looking Out, Looking In. Most of
these works would have been considered complete to the artist, whether or not there
was an audience there to witness it. But because of audience interaction, there were
some unexpected moments for Burden in his performances. Burden comes the
closest to relinquishing his power in Five Day Locker Piece, but he never intended on
the response that was generated by his passivity. The piece was intended to be an act
of isolation, and if in those five days, Burden hadn’t spoken to a single person, the
piece would have still been a success. However, audience interest changed the
dimensions of the piece completely. Instead of the work becoming just an act of
solitude, the piece was altered by audience interaction and ultimately was
61
characterized by it. From an act of isolation, to an act that was mutually beneficial,
this response was completely unexpected by Burden who was looking at this work as
a test of his own endurance.
By inserting her voice, which instructs the audience “Feed me, feed me,”
Smith sets clear guidelines in her work. Much like Ono, she clearly articulates her
vision in the works design, and asks for a personal exchange as a means of retaining
control. All of these controls are articulated within the pieces design prior to the
performance as it occurs in real time. Once Smith was in the actual act of performing
she had to be completely passive and allowed for the audience to dictate the
performances trajectory. Most audience members followed Smith’s request, by
actually feeding smith. And even those who decided to interpret ‘feed me’ to mean
something psychological or philosophical were subscribing to Smith’s nurturing tone.
Those who took advantage of Smith’s passivity, acted against Smith’s intentions. But
she was very aware and willing to engage according to the direction that these
members decided to take her work, even if their reactions acted against her intended
message.
Abramovic work acts counter to both Ono and Smith. Abramovic performs
passively, just as Ono and Smith do. But instead of operating on an individual
encounter, Abramovic goes up against a mob, and the performance got out of control
quickly. Ono and Smith defuse the audience’s power by inserting their control into
the works design and in doing so they retain some control in the work that Abramovic
did not. She acknowledges that she was frightened by the amount of power the
62
audience had in her later writing about the piece where she writes, “The experience
that I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public you can be killed. I felt
really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person
aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. I created an aggressive
atmosphere.”
49
As a result, in Rhythm O the power shifted quickly from the artist to
the mob-like and uncontrollable audience.
Unlike Abamovic who does not set enough boundaries, Burden’s Shoot
provides a counter example in that there are too many restrictions set on the audience,
hardly allowing any variation to occur at all. Burden, was putting himself at risk with
this piece, so he took precautions by performing in a controlled setting, having few
viewers at the actual performance, and having trust in the person who completed the
act. Shoot had more sever results than Burden had originally intended, not because of
the audience but because of the unexpectedness that is inherent to performance art.
Had Burden relinquished some control, allowing for many to be at the performance
and letting anyone take the shot, a different, possibly more severe result may have
occurred. Burden and Abramovic illustrate the extremes of power and control in
performance, one not providing enough boundaries and one placing too many
limitations on the performance. Burdens earlier work, along with the work of Smith,
Ono, and Bilal, illustrate a balance to occur in a performance that allows for audience
interaction to occur.

49
Marina Abramovic, “Body Art.” in Marina Abramovic, ed. Marina Abramovic
(Charta, 2002), 30.
63
All of these artists use their audience - particularly the shifting of power
between the spectator and artist - as a strategy in their work. Not only does the
audience bring urgency to the work, there is also spontaneity that occurs whenever an
audience is involved. This spontaneity enabled for a variety of responses to occur.
There is a slippage here between benevolence and threat, between performer and
audience control that creates a tension within the performance that cannot be felt in
any other medium. Neither the audience nor the performer ever has full control
within a performance that has been presented in this thesis, and that is the reason why
these performances are and continue to be relevant. The power relations and
audience participation are constantly in flux allowing for responses that both
subscribed to and work outside of the artist’s expectations.

64
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Audience interaction is an inherent element of performance art. Because of this performance can be observed through a relationship that is formed between the artist and the viewer. Some performance artists choose to perform passively, seemingly relinquishing their power to their viewers as a means of provoking a reaction. That being said, the “powerless” artist may retain some control, even in their state of passivity, by asserting certain restrictions into the design of their performance. Some viewers choose to interact according to the artist’s requests, while others respond outside of their expectations. It is on this slippery slope that performance resides, in constant flux of power between the artist and the viewer. By looking at specific artist/viewer interactions in the work of artists, Chris Burden, Barbara T. Smith, Yoko Ono, and Wafaa Bilal, audience reception can be gauged, while simultaneously illustrating the power relations and unpredictable nature in performance art.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Zylka, Rachel Ruth (author)

Core Title Power performance: benevolence and violence in the work of Chris Burden, Barbara T. Smith, Yoko Ono and Wafaa Bilal

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 05/13/2010

Defense Date 03/15/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art,Barbara T. Smith,Chris Burden,Exchange,interaction,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance art,performativity,power relations,Wafaa Bilal,Yoko Ono

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Moss, Karen (committee chair), Decter, Joshua (committee member), Holte, Michael Ned (committee member)

Creator Email rachelrzylka@gmail.com,zylka@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3083

Unique identifier UC1331494

Identifier etd-Zylka-3511 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-331801 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3083 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Zylka-3511.pdf

Dmrecord 331801

Document Type Thesis

Rights Zylka, Rachel Ruth

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu