The sign on the door of the unassuming Walnut Street gallery reads "exhibit may not be suitable for children," and a dark blue curtain hides the display from any passerby that may be disturbed by its content. Executive director Aaron Levy says the curtain serves not only as a shield but to "suggest to the public that something elicit is going on inside" the mysterious storefront. If that alone isn't enough to get you to stop by, read on.
Hermann Nitsch is the founder of Viennese Actionism, and is known across Europe for his "artistic blood orgies," curator Osvaldo Romberg says of Nitsch's full-scale ritual enactments. Considering the use of the word orgy in the description, it is shocking that this art form has yet to catch on in the States.
Sure, animals are ritualistically slaughtered over the naked bodies of Nitsch's followers, but really, dead animals and nakedness basically describe a successful first date -- you know, steak and sex. In this case, the nudity and staged brutality is a representation of violence and atrocities that are usually repressed. The inclusion of nudity may also be a response to the repression of nakedness in popular culture. And no, not porn, but the firewalls that keep porn from showing up in high school libraries nationwide.
Unless you're into sadomasochism, the art of Nitsch's work may not be aesthetically pleasing, nor particularly pleasant in any sense of the word. He sacrifices beauty for the sake of the catharsis and purification of his spectators. Any Catcher in the Rye fan knows the importance of a good cry once in a while.
However, as Levy stresses, it is difficult to take in the full experience of Nitsch's work from the exhibit alone. Unlike the full-scale events usually held at Nitsch's Austrian castle, the Slought display relies on technology to transmit the experience to its visitors. Played on several monitors and projectors is the multitude of Nitsch's work, some in real time and some fastly paced to allow for a phonetic overview of Nitsch's ritualistic and erotic pieces.
For live spectators of these events, the art is both visual and olfactory, as the smell of the animal sacrifices central in modern rituals can be overwhelming. It is hard to tell what position Nitsch wants the viewer to take, and it is hard not to feel voyeuristic when watching such highly-charged and eroticized ceremonies. The exhibit, right on campus and free, is the perfect chance for you to respond to your sexual angst. Nitsch explains his work as combining "the aspect of suffering and instants of extreme ecstasy," and it is hard to tell if perhaps he got confused and is actually describing a drunken one-night- stand. So put those roofies away and try to experience something a little more productive ... and legal, for once.
