Performing the Absolute. Marina Abramovic Organizing the Unfinished Business of Arthur Schopenhauer - Critical Essay

Organization Studies, Annual, 2000 by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux

From Nitsch to Nietzsche

If you have not seen their names in print you may well believe that Hermann is related to Friedrich. Of course, Nitsch frequently quotes Nietzsche as inspiration for the mystery plays staged at his Austrian castle Prinzendorf. Nitsch regularly organizes huge 48-hour performances in a style he calls 'Orgiastisch Mystisehes Theatre'. In his 'Birth of Tragedy', Nietzsche expresses his regret about the degeneration of art since the times of Dionysian rites in ancient Athens. Art was once an cult-like expression of fusion between man and nature. In fact, Greek drama is said to have arisen out of rites customarily performed in honour of Dionysos. Then, slowly, the other side of art -- the Appolinic, distanced, analytical and cool attitude -- took over and chased the Dionysian spirit from its primitive stage. Art turned into something cultivated, that one could reason about, and, according to Nietzsche, this meant a degeneration. True ecstatic experience was replaced by Socratian reflection. The powerful forces of n ature left the stage and instead the play, in Nietzsche's opinion, became a cool and brilliant piece of conversation. This was precisely why Nitsch had said 'No! Never again!' to the Burgtheater, and had put on his own grandiose festivals instead. At Prinzendorf Castle, the spectators are seated in a half circle in the inner courtyard. They sit at long tables and are served hot meals of local food during the whole performance. They drink local wine and the entire show is accompanied by a local Lederhosed brass band. In a series of tableaus, rather like the stations of Christ's passion at the Catholic Easter mass, Nitsch makes his actors sacrifice herds of sheep, cows, and hens using their blood and bodies for a multitude of ceremonial rites culminating in a kind of 'Via Dolorosa' and cruxification of a naked man. Of course, the human sacrifice is only symbolic and the animals are slaughtered according to sanitary legal regulations. Nitsch himself supervises the ceremonies, and when the long performance ends, his courtyard is covered with carcasses and their bloody remains. On a video of the performance, one can watch how the ceremony ends with an army tank shuffling the dead animals into a huge grave, dug beforehand by a caterpillar vehicle. Nitsch choreographed everything, the men, the machines and the animals. The score of each performance, including instructions for both the restaurant and the brass band, were carefully prepared by the master of ceremony himself. The scores from which the ceremonies are played are sometimes published as a catalogue for the art shows where Nitsch's blood-stained canvasses are exposed as incarnated relics from Prinzendorf. Nitsch's art hinges on an almost liturgical organization because... 'Kunst muss eben ... wirklich etwas Religi[ddot{o}]ses sein, soil unseren religi[ddot{o}]sen Kontakt zum Dasein und zum Ganzen mehr oder weniger intensivieren.' ['Art really ... has to be something religious, hyping our religious connection to being and the whole.'] (Nitsch 1994: 59)