Hardship Art: Pain and Performance Art, 1990 to the present

Works of art and performance that privilege hardship, extremity, pain and wounding may sometimes seem unbearable, unwarranted, or unintelligible, for straying too far beyond a certain aesthetic limit. I propose to undertake a series of research-based activities on the theme of hardship art after 1990. These activities will include two strands: firstly, the completion of the typescript for a sole-authored publication (under contract); and public engagement activities in London and Los Angeles. Some events will take place during a period of research as AHRC Visiting Professor at University of California, Riverside, lasting one month.

A defining assumption of the project considers 'hardship art' as a set of important contemporary trends in the performance of extremity. While the works of key artists have been undeniable fixtures on the national and international programming circuits in visual art and performance, their theorisation and historicisation has been limited. The term 'hardship art' was put forward in the 1980s as a tentative critical neologism, with a short and peripatetic history of usage, falling out of favour for less specific umbrella terms. Subsequent studies have historicised the work that came before or around the time of its first provisional theorisation. A starting point for the project involves an acknowledgement of 'hardship art' as a terminology for studying performance art, live art, theatre and visual art, and the elaboration of new critical methods to engages with performance of excess or 'extremity'.

"The Preferred Ordeal: 'Hardship Art' and the Performance of Extremity" (the monograph) constructs a history of contemporary performances and related documents that involve the production and representation of pain, wounds, and hardship. I counter the absence of sustained study of hardship art and related practices by arguing that such works demand a reconfiguration of our assumptions about politics and aesthetics. Case studies include Ron Athey, Franko B, Sheree Rose and the late bob Flanagan, Rick Castro, and Kira O'Reilly. These artists are familiar to specialised audiences, but perhaps less well-known to general audiences of art and theatre. I therefore contextualise their art practices through new close readings of more established artists including the most-cited and vastly exhibited artists including Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Robert Mapplethorpe, ORLAN, and Gina Pane. Introducing emerging or marginal practices is a revisionist strategy to insert disorganizing supplements into the existing cultural histories of performance and visual culture. The length of the introduction and seven chapters will be around 10,000 words each; the projected word count is 86,000 words (including prelims and bibliography). Through primary research and extensive critical analysis, I will show that these artists and others enable new perspectives on the cultural politics of performance and visual culture. They provoke new approaches to the ideological function of institutions: artistic, theatrical, critical, legislative and academic. "The Preferred Ordeal" suggests that we might search for the bite, the flinch, and the grimace of one's confusion in the encounter with art and performance - despite the consolations that more convivial forms might sometimes offer.

The PE activities complement, extend and inform the written research towards the monograph. As such, the project involves a series of engaging and accessible critical dialogues with key artists in London and Los Angeles, at non-HE institutions including: Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Arts, and/or INIVA (London); and Culver Arts Center and Human Resources (Riverside/Los Angeles). Representatives of the venues in London have provisionally confirmed their willingness to discuss programming the proposed events; the venues in California are confirmed.

The series of critical dialogues in the UK and US seek to develop links between three constituencies: scholars, artists, and lay audiences. An underlying objective of the project is therefore to develop a model of best practice for the development of relationships between HE institutions and the cultural sector and its audiences. I will seek to produce high-quality research in the PE activities: I took the Oral History Society (OHS) training programme in interview technique as independent professional training in April 2009. I have set up several projects that create links between scholarly practice and individuals working in the cultural industries. For example, I co-established AiR Project, an Arts Council England-funded initiative to introduce and support artists-in-residence in the Department of Drama, Queen Mary, University of London; the project was responsive to the needs of independent artists, including the provisions of a number of small commissions, crucial spaces for rehearsal and creative experimentation, and public events including a festival of Live Art in the diverse spaces of QMUL Drama. I see my proposed Fellowship as an extension of these precedents, drawing on my prior experience as an organiser of PE events through curating and as an artist. The research project similarly attempts to intervene in the relationships between scholarly practice and the cultural sector, to ask questions about the ways in which histories of experimental performance are written and recorded.

I hope that the research - and especially the direct intervention into programming at cultural institutions through PE - will have an impact on beneficiaries within the public sector, including galleries and museums. Especially, curators will be enabled in their research into more diverse artistic practices, through the wealth of knowledge that will be provided in the critical dialogues themselves, and by the inclusion of new or expanded audiences. I will complement and extend my established record of working closely with major cultural institutions in the UK, including Tate, ICA, and National Portrait Gallery.

The proposed research will foster impact on the cultural industries by revealing and understanding 'hidden' archives and neglected histories of performance and visual culture. The project will also facilitate widening access and participation, by assessing and analysing the work of hitherto under-acknowledged practitioners in the arts. The public sector can use my written research potentially to facilitate programming and expand public education schemes around contemporary and recent historical performance and the arts.

To disseminate my previous practice-based research and event programming, I have capitalised on PR and marketing tools including online advertising, producing flyers (through QM Publishing) postcards and other ephemera, and related methods (see Pathways to Impact attachment). Events that I have sought funding for and organised - such as AiR Project, and my ACE-funded tattooing project, "Departure (An Experiment in Human Salvage)" - have attracted diverse audiences from my bespoke marketing initiatives (this has included journalism for The Independent and cultural commentary for BBC World Service Radio, with an average audience of 40 million). These experiences inform my strategy for marketing the PE activities.

The research outcomes have potential for non-commercial exploitation and application. The sole-authored publication will be a unique and innovative resource. It is under contract. The publisher Manchester University Press is a world-leading academic publisher with excellent national and world distribution (in the US through Macmillan) and sophisticated publicity and marketing strategies. It will be distributed through bookshops and online, and launched in an event after the end of the Fellowship (my first monograph was launched in a public event at the ICA, London in September 2012.