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Curator Yona Fischer and the transition from object to performance in Israeli art of the 1960s–1970s
Abstract
Yona Fischer served as the curator of Israeli art in the Israel Museum from 1965 until 1990. This article traces the evolution of performance sensibility in his curatorial practice. It contends that his innovative curatorship allowed for performative modes of art to infiltrate the conservative sphere of the Israeli museal institution, replacing its “archival” logic with that of a “repertoire” of embodied praxis. It asserts that Fischer was not only pivotal in strengthening the performative turn in Israeli art in the 1960s–1970s but, also, was critical of the object-oriented policy of the museum, which validated Israel’s national meta-narrative.
To understand performance art of the past is to grapple with the fact that this art was designed to be lost. That is to say, it purposefully aspired to the condition of the lost work of art.
Israeli art of the 1960s–’70s was a thriving scene of performative art practices, of which very little is known to the international community of performance researchers. Evolving gradually in response to new trends on the American and European art scenes, these performative manifestations reacted to and reflected the specific local circumstances that would eventually result in a major change in the country’s life, culture, and art.
This essay aims at contributing to our understanding of the nature of exhibitions, namely how and why we make them, and what they - and the things in them - might symbolize. My focus will be on exhibitions of objects in classical museums of cultural history, archaeology and ethnology/ethnography. I will discuss how scientific epistemologies and discourses, as well as the history of ideas and ideologies, are reflected in the way museums and exhibitions are organized. Theoretically, I will lean on ideas of Michel Foucault presented in his work The Order of Things (Foucault, 1991) and Power/Knowledge (Gordon 1980),but also on Mieke Bal’s Double Exposures (1996), and a few others.
This article serves as the general introduction by the guest editors to the first of two thematic issues ofArchival Science that will explore the theme, “archives, records, and power.” Archives as institutions and records as documents are generally
seen by academic and other users, and by society generally, as passive resources to be exploited for various historical and
cultural purposes. Historians since the mid-nineteenth century, in pursuing the new scientific history, needed an archive
that was a neutral repositories of facts. Until very recently, archivists obliged by extolling their own professional myth
of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity. Yet archives are established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position
in society. Through archives, the past is controlled. Certain stories are privileged and others marginalized. And archivists
are an integral part of this story-telling. In the design of record-keeping systems, in the appraisal and selection of a tiny
fragment of all possible records to enter the archive, in approaches to subsequent and ever-changing description and preservation
of the archive, and in its patterns of communication and use, archivists continually reshape, reinterpret, and reinvent the
archive. This represents enormous power over memory and identity, over the fundamental ways in which society seeks evidence
of what its core values are and have been, where it has come from, and where it is going. Archives, then, are not passive
storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed. The power of archives,
records, and archivists should no longer remain naturalized or denied, but opened to vital debate and transparent accountability.
Since the turn of the century, Performance Studies has emerged as an increasingly vibrant discipline. Its concerns - embodiment, ethical research and social change - are held in common with many other fields, however a unique combination of methods and applications is used in exploration of the discipline. Bridging live art practices - theatre, performance art and dance - with technological media, and social sciences with humanities, it is truly hybrid and experimental in its techniques. This Companion brings together specially commissioned essays from leading scholars who reflect on their own experiences in Performance Studies and the possibilities this offers to representations of identity, self-and-other, and communities. Theories which have been absorbed into the field are applied to compelling topics in current academic, artistic and community settings. The collection is designed to reflect the diversity of outlooks and provide a guide for students as well as scholars seeking a perspective on research trends.
The documentation of practice is one of the principle concerns of performance studies. Focusing on contemporary performance practice and with emphasis on the transformative impact of video, photography and writing, this book explores the ideological, practical, and representational implications of knowing performance through its documentations.
Can performance, normally thought of as "intangible" and "ephemeral," be protected and safeguarded? What would that entail? The two questions, which sound straightforward, are extremely complicated, maybe even irresolvable. When Lourdes Arizpe, an eminent Mexican anthropologist who served as Assistant Director-General for Culture for UNESCO (1994-8), and I met in New York in 2000, these were the questions we asked each other. As someone who has worked on multiple international cultural preservation projects, including UNESCO's World Heritage program, Lourdes Arizpe insisted that protecting intangible cultural heritage was vital - just as great works of art must be conserved, she said, cultural expressions of great significance must also be preserved, particularly those that are rapidly disappearing owing to economic and social change. Furthermore, safeguarding ancient or original forms of expressions allows the preservation of unique creativities that give continuity to meanings and loyalties vital to many groups. Some in UNESCO argued that some societies do not have buildings they want to preserve - no Taj Mahals or Auschwitzes or cathedrals - and thus world heritage sites have been disproportionately located in the "First World." These are signs of cultural power and capital, but underrepresented communities have defining practices and traditions that need crediting and safeguarding. Some are disappearing, while others are changing drastically. Without UNESCO's development of a Convention to Safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage, communities of practice could not make claims for recognition and support. They would be threatened with extinction. That was Arizpe's commitment to the question.
Until the 1990s, the discipline of art history, as developed in Europe and North America from the nineteenth century onward, refused to acknowledge the crucial role of the body in the production and reception of works of art. Art history and its discursive and institutional corollaries, the art gallery, the auction house, and much of art criticism, thus systematically ignored the body, even (after 1960) in the face of the development of an explosive interest in representing, enacting, or otherwise foregrounding the body as central to the experience of visual culture. This chapter addresses why this was the case and explores how shifting emphases on the body in the production and reception of visual arts practices in the post-Second World War period insistently wore away at the occlusion of the body in art discourses and institutions. It will then examine the fact that, in the 1990s, a new generation of art historians and critics had began to theorize the central importance of the body as a crucial matrix, ground, and activating source for meaning and value in the visual arts and visual culture in general. The suppression or erasure of the live or inhabited body in institutionalized versions of art discourse and in art institutions has a long history in Euro-American culture.
Erika Fischer-Lichte's introduction to the discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies is a strikingly authoritative and wide ranging guide to the study of theatre in all of its forms. Its three-part structure moves from the first steps in starting to think about performance, through to the diverse and interrelated concerns required of higher-level study: Part 1 – Central Concepts for Theatre and Performance Research – introduces the language and key ideas that are used to discuss and think about theatre: concepts of performance; the emergence of meaning; and the theatrical event as an experience shared by actors and spectators. Part 1 contextualizes these concepts by tracing the history of Theatre and Performance Studies as a discipline. Part 2 – Fields, Theories and Methods – looks at how to analyse a performance and how to conduct theatre-historiographical research. This section is concerned with the ‘doing’ of Theatre and Performance Studies: establishing and understanding different methodological approaches; using sources effectively; and building theoretical frameworks. Part 3 – Pushing Boundaries – expands on the lessons of Parts 1 and 2 in order to engage with theatre and performance in a global context. Part 3 introduces the concept of 'interweaving performance cultures'; explores the interrelation of theatre with the other arts; and develops a transformative aesthetics of performance. Case studies throughout the book root its theoretical discussion in theatrical practice. Focused accounts of plays, practitioners and performances map the development of Theatre and Performance Studies as an academic discipline, and of the theatre itself as an art form. This is the most comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the field available, written by one of its foremost scholars.
‘At last, the past has arrived! Performing Remains is Rebecca Schneider‘s authoritative statement on a major topic of interest to the field of theatre and performance studies. It extends and consolidates her pioneering contributions to the field through its interdisciplinary method, vivid writing, and stimulating polemic. Performing Remains has been eagerly awaited, and will be appreciated now and in the future for its rigorous investigations into the aesthetic and political potential of reenactments.‘ - Tavia Nyong’o, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
I was not yet three years old, living in central North Carolina, when Carolee Schneemann performed Meat Joy at the Festival of Free Expression in Paris in 1964; three when Yoko Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto; eight when Vito Acconci did his Push Ups in the sand at Jones Beach and Barbara T. Smith began her exploration of bodily experiences with her Ritual Meal performance in Los Angeles; nine when Adrian Piper paraded through the streets of New York making herself repulsive in the Catalysis series; ten when Valie Export rolled over glass in Eros/Ion in Frankfurt; twelve in 1973 when, in Milan, Gina Pane cut her arm to make blood roses flow (Sentimental Action); fifteen (still in North Carolina, completely unaware of any art world doings) when Marina Abramovic and Ulay collided against each other in Relation in Space at the Venice Biennale in 1976 (fig. 1). I was thirty years old—then 1991—when I began to study performance or body art1 from this explosive and important period, entirely through its documentation.
I was not yet three years old, living in central North Carolina, when Carolee Schneemann performed Meat Joy at the Festival of Free Expression in Paris in 1964; three when Yoko Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto; eight when Vito Acconci did his Push Ups in the sand at Jones Beach and Barbara T. Smith began her exploration of bodily experiences with her Ritual Meal performance in Los Angeles; nine when Adrian Piper paraded through the streets of New York making herself repulsive in the Catalysis series; ten when Valie Export rolled over glass in Eros/Ion in Frankfurt; twelve in 1973 when, in Milan, Gina Pane cut her arm to make blood roses flow (Sentimental Action); fifteen (still in North Carolina, completely unaware of any art world doings) when Marina Abramovic and Ulay collided against each other in Relation in Space at the Venice Biennale in 1976 (fig. 1). I was thirty years old—then 1991—when I began to study performance or body art ¹ from this explosive and important period, entirely through its documentation.
Since the turn of the century, most art forms have vastly expanded their materials and scope. Totally abstract or non-objective painting and sculpture, unheard of in 1900, is practiced by many major artists today. Composers tend to discard traditional Western scales and harmonies, and atonal music is relatively common. Poetry has abandoned rhyme, meter, and syntax. Almost alone among the arts, theatre has lagged. But during the last few years there have been a number of performances that begin to bring theatre into some relation with the other arts. These works, as well as productions in other performance-oriented fields, force us to examine theatre in a new light and raise questions about the meaning of the word “theatre” itself.
In discussing this new theatre, new terms are needed. A few have already been provided by public usage, although they need clarification and standardization. Others will have to be created. Accurate nomenclature is important—not for the sake of limitation but to facilitate easy, accurate, and creative exchange among those concerned with the work and its concepts.
In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.
In the course of the 1990s, a new paradigm in cultural studies seems to have arisen. In the humanities, the metaphor of ‘culture as text’ held true until the late 1980s; culture as a whole and different cultural phenomena were understood and interpreted as structural sequences composed of single elements (signs) to which a particular meaning can be attributed. In the 1990s, however, the focus of interest shifted to the processes of making, producing, creating, doing and to the actions, processes of exchange, negotiation and transformation as well as to the dynamics which constitute the agents of these processes, the materials they use and the cultural events they produce. Thus, it seems that the metaphor of ‘culture as performance’ is gaining ground. Whereas the humanities prevailingly dealt with texts and monuments as the results, manifestations and greatest achievements of modern European culture, they are now concerned with all kinds of performative processes which are, by their very nature, bodily processes. Thus, it seems that the discovery of the performative nowadays directs the humanities and cultural studies in particular.
Herber Marcuse (1898-1979), filósofo alemán, plantea en la presente obra un estudio que tiene como fin contribuir en la construcción de una filosofía del psicoanálisis y destacar sus implicaciones sociológicas en la comprensión de la sociedad, como una cultura que paulatinamente se ha ido emancipando de los instintos represivos.
- Davis Tracy C.
‘Information + Concepts,’ Interview with Haim Maor
- Yona Fischer
Tzura Hayom [Today’s Form]. Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Yona Fischer
- Yona Fischer
An Art of Needs.” Avital Geva: Greenhouse. Exhibition Catalogue for the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice International Biennale. Curator Gideon Ofrat
- Ariella Azoulay
The 1960s in Israeli Art.” The Second Decade: 1958-1968
- Gilla Ballas
Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Yona Fischer. Jerusalem: Israel Museum
- Yona Fischer
- Mavoh
The Sixties - Increasing External Influences; “10+”.” The Story of Israeli Art
- Dorit Levita
The Conversation: History and History as it Happens.” The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology
- Susan M Lindee
Museal Time Economy.” Studio - Israeli Magazine of Art
- Ariella Azoulay
‘The Eyes of the Nation’: Visual Art in a Country Without BoundariesThe Eyes of the Nation”: Visual Art in a Country Without Boundaries. Exhibition Catalogue
- Ellen Ginton
After Modern Art: 1945-2000
- David Hopkins
The Ten Plus Group: Myth and Reality. Exhibition Catalogue
- Benno Kalev
Training for Art: Critique of Museal Economy Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
- Ariela Azoulay
New Horizons: The Birth of Abstraction in Israeli Art
- Gilla Ballas
The Historiography of Undocumented Israeli Performance Art
- Dror Harari
Assuming Responsibility: Lessons from Aesthetics.” Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century
- Hilde Hein
Live Art in Art History: A Paradox?” The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies
- Amelia Jones
After Painting, Before Performance Art
- Gabi Klasmer
How Did We Miss New York.” Gideon Ofrat’s Storehouse: Texts Archive. Web
- Gideon Ofrat
Talks About Environmental Art: Conversation with Yona Fischer
- Miriam Sharon
Durham: Duke UP, 2016
- Diana Taylor
- Performance
Art of Occupied Territories.” Avital Geva: Greenhouse. Exhibition Catalogue for the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice International Biennale. Curator Gideon Ofrat
- Gidon Ofrat
Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Gideon Ofrat. Tel Aviv: Artists’ House
- Gideon Ofrat
- Meitzag
A Decade of Turmoil: Israeli Society and Politics in the SeventiesThe Eyes of the Nation”: Visual Art in a Country Without Boundaries. Exhibition Catalogue
- Uri Ram
Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Yona Fischer. Jerusalem: Israel Museum
- Yona Fischer
- Musag
- Informatzia
Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Yona Fischer. Jerusalem: Israel Museum
- Yona Tzura Fischer
- Hayom
The Eyes of the Nation”: Visual Art in a Country Without Boundaries. Exhibition Catalogue. Curator Ellen Ginton
- Ellen Ginton