School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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The political sacrament of the body in 21st century performance

D'URSO, SANDRA ( 2014)

My study of sacramentality and contemporary performance begins with the problem of the body. What does it mean for the body to ‘appear’ in situations of aesthetic performance? Does appearing in the context of ‘live art’ and performance share something of what it means to appear and act as a political body, or a body coming before the law? The premise of my thesis is that to appear as a body before the law, or in the polis, or at the theatre or museum as an object or agent, involves participating in a sacramental thinking about the body and its relation to institution. I will show how ‘the body’ in each of the performance case studies labours through a secular and displaced reiteration of the Christological ‘corpus, such that the display of the ‘body in pain’ is positively valued and applied as political critique. The iteration of the ‘body in pain’ is expressed by the various artists and performers through acts of endurance, mimetic sacrifice; self-injury and referential torture. I will argue that this iteration of the performing body draws explicit focus to scripted encounters with institution and citizenship, through acts of willed and unwilled abjection, illegitimacy and ‘criminality’.