Page 50 - Studio International - June 1969

insects & water creatures which opened the which was deliberately burned in the projec- end the only medium in which it will be possible to
Destruction in Art Symposium in London, tor to reveal itself as having been projected on say everything will be reality. I mean that each
also in 1966, joined a similar method of pre- to an actual nude in the Botticelli pose. At the thing, each view, each smell, each experience is
sentation to the idea of 'examining' material end of the performance, the audience found material I want to work with. Even the phoney is
from a randomly selected site, as had been they were alone in the room, and on emerging real. I approve completely of the girl in Lyons who
tried out with serendipitous results earlier in from it, alone in an empty flat from which the insists that it's real artificial ice-cream.
the year at the Shepherd's Bush Dig (cir- owner had moved out, taking every trace of
cumstances conspired in the Dig to emphasize his occupancy with him.) Boyle has in fact I have tried to cut out of my work any hint of origi-
that the spectacular as well as the nondescript said 'I don't discard arrangement', any more nality, style, superimposed design, wit, elegance or
qualifies for the benefits of non-discrimina- than he consciously discards anything, and he significance. If any of these are to be discovered in
tion: random selection had lighted on the site uses it particularly as a kind of instinctive the show, then the credit belongs to the onlooker.
of a factory for garden statues) . All the methods expertise in handling his material when he is
so far used for selecting sites and then examin- involved with a sequence in time-that is to A video-recording of the electro-cardiograms and
ing them (including digging, collecting live say, in performance. The brilliance of his light electroencephalograms (heart-beats and brain
specimens, taking surface casts and recording shows is partly due to his skill in the manipula- rhythms) of a couple having intercourse in the Round
by photography and film) will be brought tion of climax, contrast and even the repeti- House production of Bodily Fluids and Functions
together on a literally global scale, the ulti- tion, as in musical form, of certain 'themes'. (these were originally televised and projected live on
mate in territorial non-discrimination, in the The ideal being total inclusiveness, formal to a 30-foot screen behind the couple) is available.
project journey to the surface of the earth procedures are as admissible as informal ones.
launched with the I.C.A. exhibition this year. A similar amalgamation of opposites is the To a very large extent the theatre is created for and
The taking of surface casts in epikote (the fact that Boyle's interest in theatre embraces controlled by its audience. It is an extraordinary
material and Boyle's method of using it are both this appreciation for the succinct state- situation at this time. The show-must-go-on menta-
described by Jasia Reichardt in Studio Inter- ment which makes for a 'good' performance, lity is a slave mentality, in principle not at all
national, October 1966) is the most remarkable and a fascinated absorption in the longeurs removed from the concept of court jesters performing
of these examination procedures, and the only and boredom of a so-called 'bad' one. Both whenever the lord clapped his hands. The situation
one completely free of any subsequent need are for real, and therefore equally interesting. inside the theatre is beautiful. There is a complex of
for performance. The results are not only This is not a tolerance of which many people, interweaving layers of reality that is not at all dis-
beautiful as aesthetic objects, as fragments of in practice, are capable. But Boyle's evangelis- turbed by a bad performer or a superficially dull play.
natural texture are almost bound to be. The tic message, implicit in all he does, is
fact that the process removes and retains the unarguable: if they were capable of it, the I think it's important to recognise that at this moment
actual surface film at the moment of casting quality of life would be transformed. In- in time moral shock tends to be a barrier to perception.
makes them particularly moving witnesses to exhaustible riches of untapped delight would It is therefore perhaps advisable to leave out any
the role of the two elements out of which they be available to all. Delight, or in the scriptural sections that might cause moral shock to the particular
have been lifted- time and change. Inasmuch sense, bliss, is the ultimate attainment of that audience.
as they are simultaneously frozen images of attitude to experience with which I began -
reality and fragments of that reality itself, they mysticism. Boyle did not have a Jesuit training If we go further and persuade onlookers to take part,
enforce Boyle's constant preoccupation with a for nothing: he knows the implications. q then I believe activities of this kind will be performed
need to look beyond and experience more than everywhere, with whatever materials are readily
just the image in isolation. Avoiding any of available, releasing enormous amounts of latent
the arbitrary fantasies of image-association energy in millions of people. Of course it would
QUOTATIONS FROM MARK BOYLE
that cling to the objet trouvé, these records of undermine the social structure, the art hierarchy, the
actuality, by the very scrupulousness of their If you study how it is somewhere sometime, maybe gallery system, the parish council. But I am certain
detachment and objectivity, start inching to- you are better able to begin to know how it is anywhere that, as a result, we will go about so alert that we
wards the opposite of what they appear to anytime. will discover the excitement of continually 'digging'
record-not an objective but a subjective ex- our environment as an object/ experience/ drama from
perience. Boyle would not admit in fact that The most complete change an individual can effect in which we can extract an aesthetic impulse so brilliant
an opposition was involved. Experience, or his environment, short of destroying it, is to change and strong that the environment itself is transformed.
heightened perception and awareness, of the his attitude to it. This is my objective. . .. From the
sort his activity sets out to chart is necessarily beginning we are taught to choose, to select, to I don't think I'm specially interested in `destruction
a seamless garment in which all so-called separate good from bad, best from better; our entire in art'. I'm interested in destruction as an aspect of
opposites are woven of the same fabric. Hence upbringing and education are directed towards everything. The intimations of violence and futility
the ease with which his best work absorbs in planting the proper snobberies, the right preferences. which figure so largely in the destruction movement
practise what can appear to be contradictions, I believe it is important to accept everything and attract my curiosity, but no more than, say, pacifism
or at any rate somewhat ingenuous dis- beyond that to 'dig' everything with the same con- or the euphoria at a Conservative Party conference.
claimers, in his theory: disclaimers, for centrated attention that we devote to what we consider Things are created and survive only by the destruction
example, about the role of wit, elegance, style to be a good painting or a good film. of other things. In this sense, materially and for-
and so on in what he does. Wit is a recurring mally, all art is destructive. When Ortiz destroys a
element in most of his work, not merely verb- ANTENNAE OF THIS MULTICELLULAR ORGANISM chair he is destroying an object which is the record
ally, in the matter of titles, but in the con- HUMANITY PROBE THE ENVIRONMENT NOT SO and trace of the ritual destruction of a tree.
trolled effectiveness of certain of his methods MUCH ARTISTS AS FEELERS NOT SO MUCH ANTEN-
of presentation. It can, on occasion, trip him NAE AS RECEIVERS COMMUNICATION IRRELEVANT UNTIL IF WEVE THE CAPACITY WE BECOME ONLY
up, but elegance as well as wit in the idea was THOUGHT INEVITABLE. SENSITIVE BEINGS TOTALLY. PERMANENTLY .OPEN
paramount in his 1963 Queensgate event TO EVERYTHING WITHOUT THE FILTERING OF
Suddenly Last Supper (an invited group was As far as I can be sure, there is nothing of me in PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK BARRIERS OR THE DIS-
given a performance, in Boyle's own flat, of there. TORTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE OR DRUGS DIS-
projections playing on a variety of surfaces, COVERING JUST HOW MUCH REALITY HUMAN
among them a slide of Botticelli's Birth of Venus My ultimate object is to include everything. In the KIND CAN BEAR.
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