Anthro / Socio

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anthro / Socio

Bruce Nauman , 1992
Video installation consisting of 3 video projections and 6 monitors

Anthro / Socio is the name of two video installations by the American artist Bruce Nauman from 1991 and 1992. Anthro / Socio - Bark Spinning became internationally known through its presentation at documenta IX and is now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle . The installation is made up of three video projections and six monitors, each of which shows a rapidly turning head, with the words "Feed me / eat me / Anthropology", "Help me / hurt me / Sociology" and " Feed me / help me / eat me ”sings. Anthro / Socio - Bark Facing Camera was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as early as 1991 and dispenses with the rotation of the head.

description

The video installation Anthro / Socio - Rinde Spinning consists of three larger than life video projections and six monitors, each of which is stacked in pairs. All media show the rapidly turning bald head of the performance artist and opera singer Rinde Eckert in different shots, whereby he is shown standing upside down in the monitor stacks. Eckert sings the words "Feed me / eat me / Anthropology", "Help me / hurt me / Sociology" and "Feed me / help me / eat me" in different pitches, whereby his facial expression is called the "strained facial expression of a choirboy" and on a pitch "between aggressiveness and complaint" is designated. The head is cut off at the chin as at the top of the head, which makes it appear "as if squeezed into the electronic image square".

In Anthro / Socio - Rinde Facing Camera , which was presented in 1991, the head is not turned and the head is shown from a closer perspective.

Effect and interpretation

The viewer is surrounded by the media, so is in the middle of the installation and has to face the words and the images. Nauman dispenses with a stage or a separating ramp and thus aims at the participation of the viewer, the aesthetic distance between viewer and work is abolished. The intensive contact with the sitter is intensified by the direct eye contact and the words rattle on the viewer in the form of commands, without enabling a dialogue. Due to the large number of heads and the same requests over and over again, he cannot defend himself against the impression of the installation, but he cannot comply with the actors' requests either and is therefore helpless. The installations become "psychophysical test arrangements" in which the viewer can "primarily have disturbing experiences with the video technology used as a medium of surveillance ."

Anthro / Socio is described by Sylvia Martin as a fusion of various artistic means from Nauman's early artistic phase, which is characterized by physical performances such as Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance) 1967/68, as well as his sculptures in Viewed in the form of wax head casts from the late 1980s.

According to Kathrin Busch, the work is an example of Nauman's preoccupation with screams , making references to the earlier work Concrete Tape Recorder from 1968, in which a scream was recorded on a music cassette and the player was sunk into a concrete cube . With the work, the no longer audible scream is depersonalized, at the same time the simple cube as an object of Minimal Art points to a reduction to the essentials and thus stands for “the object of pure perception”. The video installations Nauman, and in particular Anthro / Socio, be against it in the installation with the mainly due to their strong involvement of the viewer theater of cruelty of Antonin Artaud in touch.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Kathrin Busch: Contagion and incident. For an aesthetic of the pathetic. In: Kathrin Busch, Iris Därmann (eds.): "Pathos": contours of a basic concept in cultural studies. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2007; Pp. 65-69. ISBN 978-3-89942-698-4 . ( Google Books )
  2. ↑ a b c d e Anthro / socio. In: Sylvia Martin, Uta Grosenick: Video Art. Taschen GmbH, Cologne 2006; Pp. 70-71. ISBN 978-3-8228-2947-9 .

literature

  • Kathrin Busch: Contagion and experience. For an aesthetic of the pathetic. In: Kathrin Busch, Iris Därmann (eds.): "Pathos": contours of a basic concept in cultural studies. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2007; Pp. 65-69. ISBN 978-3-89942-698-4 . ( Google Books )
  • Anthro / socio. In: Sylvia Martin, Uta Grosenick: Video Art. Taschen GmbH, Cologne 2006; Pp. 70-71. ISBN 978-3-8228-2947-9 .

Web links