Muscular Masculinity and the performance of masculine crisis

There are a number of exemplar texts that discuss masculinity in performance, Amelia Jones (1998, 1994, 1995) for example has redefined the work of the male body artist during 1970s America. Rather than condemning them to misogyny as other scholars have done (Schor, 1988; Blocker, 2004), she reconsiders how these artists have destabilised masculinity through its performance. She refers to this as phallic dis/play, a term which is the performance of hegemonic masculine tropes, violence, aggression, control for example, to the point of excess. This reveals the linguistic construction of those tropes, which subsequently reveals that the relationship between the male body and masculinity is arbitrary. Like Lacans phallus, to reveal these tropes on the body of the male is to make them disappear, or, to be revealed as a construct. Fintan Walsh, brings the study of masculinity into the 21st Century through an analysis of artists that include Ron Athey and Franko B (Walsh, 2011). He notes, similarly to Jones, that performed masculinity is not stable, however he goes onto note that these artists perform a masculine in crisis where masculinity becomes dysfunctional, and starts to lack meaning. This paper explores how the conflation of these two very different works maybe present in Live Art practices in the with a specific focus on the artist Ron Athey.

Since the emergence of second wave feminism during the 60s and 70s, feminist gender studies has become an important scholarly research area. Its emergence has become so prominent that it has had a major impact on other academic disciplines, especially theatre and performance studies. However during the 80s and 90s and

especially after Judith Butlers now seminal postStructuralist inflected feminist text, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Butler, 2007), gender is no longer the problematic domain of female subjectivity (Walsh, 2011: 3). To keep it so would be to prescribe masculinity as normal, linked naturally to the male body. This position reifies the security and privilege associated with male patriarchy (Thomas, 2008: 20). Instead, and as Butler notes, all genders are performative in that they only exist at the moment where the bodys actions are read and meaning is made.

By reading representations of men and their cultural interactions through this instability, the now well-known phrase masculinity in crisis emerged. This was echoed not only in the academy but also throughout the media and in the actions performed by men themselves. In the dawn of this new millennium, for example, talk shows were covering regularly the representation of bad fathers (Walsh, 2011: 4); the notion of the male bread winner declined along with industrialisation and manual labour, resulting in a blurring of sexual difference in employment (MacInnes, 2004: 314-320). Mens health is also a factor to consider now as *r+egular coverage now portrays mens ongoing higher incidences of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, serious accidents, cardiovascular disease and significantly lower life expectancies when compared with women (Segal, 2007: xviii).

Whilst these examples of crisis are read through cultural changes, some men demonstrated their crisis through a backlash towards the development of identity politics from the 60s, 70s and 80s. It wasnt, and still isnt, uncommon to hear that

as a result of feminism men have become second class citizens, that there has been a reversal of power that now leans away from white, heterosexual and western males, towards the feminazis, a pejorative term to describe extreme feminism (Walsh, 2011: 16). Of course, it is ridiculous to think that we are not in a cultural space where patriarchy does not exist any more, this reaction is a fear that men have become redundant in their own society (Walsh, 2011: 3).

This phrase though is far from uncompromising.

Crisis suggests a level of

unhappiness and failure, and as not all men are unemployed, cited as bad fathers, or are emasculated, as such masculinity is far from at crisis point. Further still it seems that men are clocking up their crisis complaints as a strategy for reclaiming centre stage (Robertson, cited in Walsh, 2011: 3). However, whilst I agree that the male is not in a position of inequality, far from it, these positions are problematic. The debate about masculinity in crisis oscillates between personal masculinities and masculinity as an ideology. This ascertains that all men strive for the hegemonic ideal, and that all masculinities are the hegemonic ideal. There is nothing wrong with being a man. The problems start with the way normative gender ideologies maintain inequalities between the sexes by reinforcing the idea that masculinity, but not femininity, is an unproblematic norm (Fisher & Shray, 2009: 150).

As such it might be worth considering then three different understandings of masculinity: 1) masculinity, which are the traits of masculinity perceived through the identity of the individual may include violence and aggression; 2) masculinism, the ideology and subsequent normalisation of masculine ideals created by men for men;

3) patriarchy, which is the reproduction of masculine ideals in the domestic and public spaces (Brittan, 2001: 53-55). In focussing on the second, the normative

ideology of the masculine, we focus on the crisis of a normative masculine identity, rather than ones personal identity. For the purpose of this paper this means that the ideologies of masculinity in crisis can be studied as a cultural performative attribute in its own right (Walsh, 2011: 8). It could be argued then that masculinity as an ideology has entered into an identity crisis for two reasons the actual essence of masculinity cannot be grasped and is therefore not the property of men, and secondly that masculinity can be destabilised by the very same virtues, which it celebrates. A crisis occurs when the ideologies of masculinity go through a period of intense difficulty or danger.

Crisis in understood in this essay as deriving from existentialism, which is a doctrine that focuses on the idea that meaning is only constructed by ones own actions, and as such the individual is responsible for their own life. There is no naturalization of ones personality, no overarching fate, or divine god that can justify our actions. We are subject only as a result our choices (Sartre, 2007: 18). This has a major impact on the subject for outside of their actions, there can be nothing that gives us meaning, there is no essence of humanity, ho human goodness and dignity for example (Beck, 1944:129).

The combination of an existential masculine crisis, and Jones articula tion of phallic dis/play is demonstrated across a range of male body art practices, and which is something that is referred to in this essay as a Muscular Masculinity. Muscular

masculinity is the performance of masculine tropes to such an excess that through this period of the performance , singular masculinity is placed into difficulty.

This type of difficulty can read through the works of Ron Athey, his own image being a useful starting point. In a monochromatic photograph of the artist on page 11 of Pleading in the Blood he seems quintessentially masculine (Johnson, 2013). The camera positions the reader slightly underneath the artist, his head is positioned up away from the viewer, but his eyes peer down, placing the reader firmly beneath him, forcing them to look up towards the gods, where his image resides. By positioning himself in this way, his head and torso become prioritised, he represents knowledge; he is thinking. His eyes and mouth seem judgemental, they give his distance, they present him as an unapproachable, an independent man. At the same time as pushing his audience away though, his gaze reaches beyond the boundary of the page and establishes himself in our space (Dyer, 1992, p.66). There is a strong sense that we are not looking at him, rather he, through his establishment, is looking at us. As a reference to power and control, this renders Athey as active and his viewer as passive recipients of his gaze.

His masculinity and activity is further emphasised by his puffed up chest and tight skin pressing up against his tensed muscles. His shaved head, thin moustache that lines the top of his lip, and the teardrop tatoo underneath his right eye, all reinforce this normative masculine image. Athey is performing the rebel, the teardrop tattoo references Mexican prison imagery, the skin head from 1960s British gang culture, and the moustache a reference to the 1920s American Gangland.

However, not everything is what as it seems. The presentation of Athey as looking at us and establishing himself past the boundary of the page is a rouse. There is no real way this can happen, but it has to because to be looked at is to be passive, and represents what Lacan would call the desire to be desired. A phrase which is attributed in the Signification of the Phallus to the feminine (Lacan, 1973, p.321). The phallic economy relies on the active functioning of desire to be with the masculine. As such to be looked at is feminising (Phelan, 1993, p.10). To continue

the Lacanian analogy the phallus is not associated with any anatomical appendage, it is not a concept for any signifier, rather the phallus is a signifier for both lack and desire. The masculine engages with the phallic object because he desires what he lacks (Lacan, 1973, pp.216217). As such images of men must disavow this element of passivity if they are going to be kept within the domain of the masculine (Dyer, 1992, p.66). This is because it is important for the male masculine body to be presented as unified, and complete. CAMPING

Dis/play can be demonstrated in Atheys work, through a series of vignettes, in Four Scenes in a Harsh Life. In this theatrical performance he explores the intimate connection between his childhood and adult identity (Walsh, 2011, p.113). As with the photograph described above, this performance particularly is difficult to define, not with regards to reading the work, which is inherently reliant upon his own life experiences, but rather within the performance of the masculine self. The most obvious representation of masculinity is Atheys ability to centralise himself. This is evidence in both his ability to deliver, but not receive pain and also the intensely

esoteric narrative of the performance. As with The Human Printing Press, that was performed at The Walker Centre, Minneapolis, in 1994 Athey either causes pain to himself, or to other people. Those individuals are rarely offered the chance to cause him pain, or to pierce this body. Whilst there are many examples of this throughout, two will be bought in to focus. The first, is the scene, where Athey inserts

hypodermic needles into his skin. The second is the last scene in which he prepares for a celebration ritual, a type of coming of age.

In a scene that proceeds The Human Printing Press with Divinity Fudge, Atheys voice emerges out of the darkness and announces that at the age of nine he was taking valium and by the time that they cut his prescription six years later he was long term addicted. In response to this he took one-hundred pills, and vomited for days, in a moment of reflection he asks whether he is the type of person to take other people down with him. This announcement to the audience forces recognition of the autobiographical, but also the present. As the lights fade up, Athey is sat on a mattress washing his head, arms and torso, in preparation. In a reference to his previous addiction to heroin, he ties a tourniquet around the top of his arm, and with precision injects 20 hypodermic needles into his veins. Once the needles reach the top of his arm he takes them out again individually, and, with another tourniquet already wrapped around his left wrist, he then picks up a scalpel and slices his other arm.

Finally, as his voice over refers to his Pentecostal childhood experiences, he creates his own thorny crown by taking spinal needles and inserting it up along the side of

his scalp starting from just beside the eye, and repeats this on the opposite side. The punctuating of his scalp continues, and blood starts to rain down his forehead.

In the penultimate scene of this performance there are echoes of this preparation. After a mock sermon that a suited Athey leads, in front of two large boards with crucifixes cut into them, he undresses and makes his way across to three veiled bodies. Through the netting a face can be just made out. He unveils the bodies who are all wearing loin clothes, their naked top halves pierced with dried flowers, and washes their cheeks. This is an action reminiscent of both the previous scene and also a holy communion, where a parishioner receives the body and blood of Christ. As his parishioners hold hands he individually pierces their cheeks an d invites them to celebrate by dancing to the beats of oil drums being hit by sticks. The dancing continues until all performers including Athey, are in frenzy.

Both of these scenes can be decoded as presenting an uncomfortable masculinism on Atheys body, despite the apparent transgression of bodily fluids and the conceptual transgression of the church, or at least its questioning as a patriarchal institution. The questioning of the church in this way is quickly forgotten as the three controlled and penetrated bodies celebrate or worship Athey (Walsh, 2011, p.118). With this, the autobiographical references delivered to the audience via the voice overs, and the injections of the hypodermic needles is a process of establishing the Athey as central to understanding the work. As Johnson notes in the

introduction of Atheys own book that celebrates thirty years in performance, it

helps to read his work through Atheys own esoteric experiences (Dominic Johnson, 2013, p.11).

Finally, the most horrific image of Athey piercing his head with spinal needles is read in this paper as aggressive and reckless, and is indicative of the strategies used in patriarchy for social progression (FIND SOURCE). As such, in these two sections the performance of masculinism is demonstrated through power, control, the centralisation of the male body, exclusion, violence, and risk. Johnson however argues that in performance risk tends to be assessed, managed and owned by the artist. By owning risk, a performer takes responsibility for the ramifications of ones actions, refusing the masculinist implications of risk, as wild, reckless (Johnson, 2012, p.129).

In addition to risk in Atheys work, the control demonstrated in the piercing of the three bodies can also be reconsidered as refusing the construction of masculinism. Comparing body art with the cultural climate of 90s Britain, Johnson articulates that the body can be a metaphor for wider cultural concerns. The Spanner Case was the arrest and subsequent trial of sixteen men under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. On a morning in September 1989 police raided a house, in which those men were engaged in consensual gay sadomasochistic practices. Out of the sixteen men, fifteen were convicted of GBH, including those who were receivers of the activities. In a ridiculous penal decision, those men were charged with adding and abetting GBH (Johnson, 2012, p.130). It becomes apparent through reading this case that it is acceptable to cause pain on ones self, but to do so on another consenting

body is illegal, and as such, in law we have limited agency over our bodies. Through a Lacanian reading of the concept of Self, language is referred to as paternal law, and it is located in the realm of the symbolic. The child towards the end of the mirror stage, the event that allows the concept of Self to develop, rejects the mothers body in favour of meaning, which is generated through language. The mind, culture, language and law, becomes privileged over the body (Quote). Language becomes indicative of being able to categorise and locate. The visual representation of identity then is an example of this, and is used to exclude and include particular bodies from social groups. To cause pain onto another body, or even ones own body, in performance is to question and challenge social law.

The subterranean aesthetics of the performance of existentialism in crisis, death, dirt, discarded objects, and the constant threat of consumption, can be neatly wrapped up with the embracement of the abject. However, unlike Amelia Jones concept of dis/play these works do not necessarily perform masculinity to excess through the presentation of masculine tropes. Rather they perform its crisis through the representation of broken borders and collapsed meaning. In this respect

subterranean artist in the UK might be best described as trouble maker, in that they trouble masculinity by threatening to force its collapse (Butler, 2007: xxix) (Walsh, 2011: 11).

The combination of these two concepts in performance creates a series of strategies that can be read as muscular masculinity. Such strategies include the performance of masculine tropes to excess, the inclusion of the abject, and the placing of body at

risk. These on their own are of course strategies used many artists however, it is the resulting crisis generated by muscular masculinity, which is its defining feature. This is most clearly articulated through Atheys performance of Human Printing Press at The Walker Centre in Minneapolis (1994). In this performance, which was a scene taken from Four Scenes of a Harsh Life, Divinity Fudge kneeled face down in a dentist chair, whilst Athey cut linear lines into his back, and blotted them with absorbent paper. After handing them to an assistant, they were pinned to cables and hoisted out above the audiences heads.

Whilst the event went a head without any problems, the local media portrayed it as carnage where HIV Positive infected blood rained down on the audience below, despite Divinity Fudge being HIV Negative. American Senate Jesse Helms called Athey a cockroach on the Senate floor. The NEA who funded Athey $150, had their funding slashed subsequently by over eight million dollars.

A similar occurrence happened in the UK in 1976, when Genesis P.Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti performed their now infamous work Prostitution at the ICA. In a

performance that included self-mutilation, the ingestion of bodily fluids, and the display of a sculpture made out of used tampons, Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn called them wreckers of civilization. The Sun announced that even a penny of public money was too much to spend on this squalid rubbish, and that it did not represent the Britain that we were proud to promote (Johnson, 2012, pp.124125).

What both Athey and Genesis P.Orridge demonstrate, in a rather extreme way, is that muscular masculinity disrupts stability. It puts into question the notion of free speech as an ideology by pitting it against the state. Whilst not all examples of muscular masculinity, and the crisis it causes, are this extreme, they do similar place into question hegemonic masculine ideologies.

However there are other examples of male body artists who are not easily read through muscular masculinity. Whilst artists such as Bob Flanagan engage with sadomasochistic practices, they do challenge masculinity. In some respects they do appropriate the feminine position of the passive body as noted by both Freud and Lacan. This is not without its problems, but something else does seem to be going on here As with Martin OBrien and Adrian Howells, the performance of a

masculinity in excess is less important than say with Acconci and Athey. Instead rather than destroying in order achieve crisis, these artists seem to possess an aesthetic where they establish their Selfs within the performance space. As such the questions that are left unanswered are: why does this happen, how do they achieve this, and why does this produce a different type of masculine in crisis from muscular masculinity?