Pulling Mouth

For Seven Easy Pieces Marina Abramovic reenacted five seminal performance works by her peers, dating from the 1960's and 70's, and two of her own, interpreting them as one would a musical score. The project confronted the fact that little documentation exists from this critical early period and one often has to rely upon testimony from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given performance. The seven works were performed for seven hours each, over the course of seven consecutive days, November 9 –15, 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibilities of representing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.

Experimental short by Bruce Nauman.

On three projection surfaces and six monitors, one sees the head of a man shown in different takes. While continually revolving about his own axis, in a variety of tonalities he sings «FEED ME/ EAT ME/ ANTHROPOLOGY,» «HELP ME/ HURT ME/ SOCIOLOGY,» and «FEED ME, HELP ME, EAT ME, HURT ME». In order to grasp the full effect of the installation «Anthro/Socio,» the space has to be entered. The calls heard from different directions irritate as much as the contradictory demands, aimed at the simplest of bodily needs and questioning them at the same time. The repetition of the alarming singsong, and multiple video shots of the singer, also create a disturbing moment. In «Anthro/ Socio,» not only because of the all-encompassing sensual experience does the viewer become part of the artwork; the installation also encourages viewers to give thought to the inherent qualities of subjects and objects, and to human beings in society.

In this film, Nauman bounces his testicles with one hand. Shot in extreme close-up, the work is perhaps an ironic reference to an earlier film Bouncing Two Balls Between the Floor and Ceiling with Changing Rhythms, in which he bounced rubber balls. Along with Black Balls, Gauze, and Pulling Mouth, Bouncing Balls is one of Nauman's "Slo-Mo" films which are shot with an industrial high speed camera.

“Two color monitors placed in the window played one of Nauman’s most recent videos, that of a clown jumping up and down shouting ‘No, No, No, No!’ endlessly. Nauman’s videos confront the viewer with behavior normally thought unacceptable. The clown’s simple declarative statement takes on new meaning and creates tension and anxiety for the viewer.” The New Museum Annual Report, 1988

Flour Arrangements, a photo series showing Bruce Nauman pushing some piles of flour around on the floor. He uses his body by treating it like material for his art. Nauman committed himself to making one ephemeral flour sculpture each day for over a month.

An upside-down close-up of the artist’s mouth, Nauman repeats the words “lip sync” as the audio track shifts in and out of sync with the video. The disjunction between what is seen and heard keeps the viewer on edge, struggling to attach the sound of the words with the off-kilter movements of Nauman’s mouth.

Creative portrait of the artist Bruce Nauman.

Images of sixteen men and women are shown, one by one, as they run on a conveyor belt against a black background. They appear to be in a complete void. The camera films the runners from all kinds of angles: sometimes from the front, from the knees up, then in profile or a focus on one of the limbs in close up. The heavy breathing of their exertions is audible. The tight close-ups of the limbs lend the moving body parts an almost abstract, mechanical character.

In this film, Nauman applies black makeup to his testicles. The action was recorded with an industrial high-speed camera capable of shooting between one thousand and four thousand frames per second.

4 Artists: Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg acts as a collective portrait of creators linked only by their stated intention of expressing ideas through art. Unconnected to traditional concepts of beauty, storytelling or pictorial representation, the artists discuss the context of their art and how their work and the public's perception of it have changed over time. This film offers the rare opportunity to see a large body of work in their studios.—Michael Blackwood Productions

From an inverted position, high above the floor, the camera records Nauman’s trek back and forth and across the studio; his stamping creates a generative rhythm reminiscent of native drum beats or primitive dance rituals. However, Nauman is not participating in a social rite or communal ritual—he is completely individualized. Isolated in his studio, his actions have no apparent reason or cause beyond his aesthetic practice.

In this video work Bruce Nauman explores violence, gender and behaviour. Set around a simple middle class dining table, the scene quickly escalates into a slapstick fight between a man and a woman. Their actions become increasingly more erratic and aggressive yet also ridiculous and cartoon-like as the video progresses. Nauman explores the ways in which anger can be provoked by others and questions the way we can react to them. Much like many of his other artworks, he employs the use of humour and exaggeration to explore serious and even dangerous topics - he produced this work as a result of his frustration with futile acts of violence in ordinary life. He explains, “The viewer is presented with a hypnotic repetition of pointlessly cruel and destructive violence which is both seductive and alienating.”

Seven screens show videos of as many places in Bruce Nauman's studio during the summer of 2000. He filmed these slices of night life with an infrared camera and processed them during editing. But one person is conspicuous by his absence: the artist. From time to time, only a cat wanders between the workbenches. Test Tape Chance John Cage is an incursion into a place dedicated to creation. It highlights the silence, sleep and inactivity at the heart of the creative process.

In this silent film, Nauman walks around the perimeter of a large square marked off with masking tape. He shifts his hips exaggeratedly as he places one foot in front of the other, moving carefully around the square.

In this film record of a studio activity, Nauman set himself the task of walking while playing "two notes [on a violin] very close together so that you could hear the beats in the harmonics." The camera is set centrally in the studio in a stationary position so that when he walks outside of the camera's view at times, only the sounds of the notes and footsteps are heard. Sound and image are out of sync, a situation noticeable only at the end of the film when the sound stops but Nauman continues to pace and play. [Overview Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix]