LECTURE by Dominic Johnson / Idiot Bliss: Charles Ray’s Plank Piece I-II (1973)

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LECTURE by 

Dominic Johnson, Head of Drama department at Queen Mary, University of London /// 

Idiot Bliss: Charles Ray’s Plank Piece I-II (1973) ///

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract: Charles Ray’s Plank Piece I-II (1973) stages a critical encounter between sculpture, performance art, and photography. The work is exhibited widely, but the precise means by which Plank Piece I-II makes – or forecloses – meaning has never been adequately accounted for. For Ray in the 1970s, the works ‘ha[d] no meaning — or rather their meaning is dynamic,’ and that when he made such claims, “my friends laughed at me and said, “You idiot, it looks like the aftermath of a car wreck or a Goya print”.’ In an experiment in art writing, I pursue Ray’s ‘idiotic’ invocations, reading Plank Piece I-II in relation to car crashes, images of torture, the then-recent American War in Vietnam, and other contingent phenomena; I attempt to do so towards a possible refashioning of meaning and history in performance art and its documentation.

 

Dominic Johnson is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London (UK) and Head of Department. He is the author of four monographs including most recently Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s (2019). He is also the editor of five books including Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013). His writings have been published in Art History, Art Journal, Porn Studies, Contemporary Theatre Review, Social Text and elsewhere; and he is a frequent contributor to Art Monthly.

 

About the school:

International summer school Curating in Context is developed in order to respond to the challenges that the growing influence of the concepts of curating and curatorial posed in the contemporary art field, beyond the sphere of visual arts. It is related to the question of the curatorial and its extended understanding which goes beyond black or white box presentation and representation politics.

The program includes lectures, seminars, artists and curators’ talks, discussions and interviews, as well as production of curatorial works and co-curatorial publication.

 

The summer school is intended for:

Practitioners who would like to pursue their career as curators in the contemporary performing arts or through interdisciplinary approach, and who would like to critically address representation politics and develop curatorial methods related to practices of activism, self-organization and critical reflection.

Curating in Context began as an activity developed as part of the Erasmus + project Curating in context and its partners Tanzfabrik Berlin, Stockholm University of the Arts and University of Zagreb.

 

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This year, the Summer School Curating in Context/2021 is part of a collaboration with Brain Store Project in frame of Performance Situation Room activity of Life Long Burning project, and it is supported by the Ministry of culture, City of Skopje and Creative Europe Program of the European Union.

Curating in Context is co-curated by Biljana Tanurovska–Kjulavkovski and Slavcho Dimitrov.

Lokomotiva team: program director Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski, project manager Blagica Petrovska, program coordinators are Zorica Zafirovska and Kristina Todoroska Petreska, administrator Gjurgjica Hristovska and PR Dino Chupovski.

 

More about the program of the Summer School “Curating in Context” 2021

https://www.lokomotiva.org.mk/summer-school-program-2021/

 

 

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