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Unknown Woman by Anna Odell: The Event, the Trial, the Work – Reflections on the Mediality of Performance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2012
Abstract
This article is concerned with an extraordinary artwork created by a young Swedish art student, Anna Odell. Odell's re-enactment of an earlier suicide attempt on a bridge in Stockholm, filmed for an art installation, caused an outcry from the public and medical authorities and a court case that stimulated heated debate in the national press. Here I examine Odell's work for the ‘critical’ questions it in turn provokes about artistic creation and communication: the difficulties for the performance scholar in addressing the enactment when it is so generically hard to define; why the art/artist was found guilty of a ‘fraudulent practice’; and what might be revealed and further problematized by theorizing the enactment as a cultural, socio-political event.
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References
NOTES
1 The installation Reconstruction was shown at Kalmar Konsthall 13 June–29 July 2009. I visited the installation on 16 July 2009.
2 Svenska Dagbladet, 10 May 2009, part B, p. 11, my translation.
3 Svenska Dagbladet, 3 January 2010, part B, p. 8.
4 Aftonbladet, 24 January 2009, p. 6.
5 Some short quotations help to illustrate the debate. On 10 February 2009, two weeks after the event, I printed out over sixty pages of comments about Anna Odell from Dagens Medicin. An anonymous comment on 9 February 2009 reads, ‘Neither the art school nor the so-called “artist” deserve anything but disgust from the public.’ A posting by ‘Erik’ on 28 January 2009 read, ‘If you think this is art then you are not sane neither according to common sense nor DSM-IV.’ A more tempered reflection was provided by ‘Archiatern’ on 1 February 2009: ‘Really interesting to see how much aggression, insolence, ethical violation, disgust and collapsing thoughts these controversial activities of an art student have caused in the little Swedish psychiatric duck pond.’ My translations.
6 On 1 February 2009, an experienced psychiatrist wrote, ‘It is interesting to compare today's reactions against these wallraffing methods with what happened when a number of medical students wallraffed their way into Sundby Hospital some 35–40 years ago. Nobody was prosecuted, as far as I remember, but a special issue of the Swedish journal R generated a lively and necessary debate about psychiatric health care. And such a disrespectful utterance as “cut your hair and get a job” [by Dr Eberhardt, director of the hospital to which Anna Odell was brought] was unheard of, although some doctors were critical of the event.’ My translation. The term ‘wallraffing’ relates to Günter Wallraff; see ‘The mediation of life and art’ section of this article, and note 16 below.
7 Boal, Augusto, Theatre of the Oppressed (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985)Google Scholar.
8 Kirby, Michael, ‘On Acting and Not-Acting’, in Zarrilli, P. B., ed., Acting (Re)Considered (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 43–58, here p. 46Google Scholar.
9 Austin, John, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
10 Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar.
11 Sauter, Willmar, The Theatrical Event: Dynamics of Performance and Perception (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
12 This simplification of terminology was proposed by Thomas Postlewait in a private conversation.
13 Clemens Poellinger in Svenska Dagbladet, 1 September 2009, part B, p. 4, my translation.
14 Court ruling concerning case B 3870–09, Stockholms Tingsrätt, avd.4, enhet 42, p. 9.
15 In May 2011 I was personally in contact with the person who called the police on the evening of 21 January 2009 and discussed his view of the event.
16 Wallraff, Günter, German undercover journalist, born in 1942, has published numerous books since his first publication, 13 Undesired Reports (Köln: Kiepenheur & Witsch, 1969)Google Scholar. In 2009 he created a documentary film about himself disguised as an immigrant from Somalia in Germany.
17 For details see www.nellieblyonline.com
18 Theorizing such artistic activities has attracted a number of scholars. Significant among them are Bishop, Claire, Participation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998)Google Scholar; Kwon, Miwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and, among younger scholars, Gade, Solveig, Intervention & kunst; Socialt och politiskt engagement i samtidskunsten (Köbenhavn: Forlaget Politisk Revy, 2010)Google Scholar; and Roselt, Jens, Phänomenologie des Theaters (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2008)Google Scholar.
19 Schlingensief, Christoph and Hegemann, Carl, Chance 2000: Wähle dich selbst (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998)Google Scholar.
20 Jackson, Shannon, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (London: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar.
21 Ibid., pp. 117 ff.
22 Ibid., pp. 82 ff.
23 Ibid., pp. 59 ff. The exhibition in Berlin was called Workers Who Cannot Be Paid, Remunerated to Remain inside Cardboard Boxes.
24 Jackson, Social Works, p. 28.
25 Wybrow, Nicolas, Art and the City (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011)Google Scholar.
26 While I limit my argument here to a narrow distinction of authenticity, recent discussions of documentary theatre might offer other possible views. See, for instance, Martin, Carol, ed., Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Forsyth, Alison and Megson, Chris, eds., Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)Google Scholar.
27 Arena #3, June 2009, p. 25.
28 Svenska Dagbladet, 1 September 2009, part B, p. 4.
29 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2004)Google Scholar.
30 Arena #3, June 2009, p. 24.