Sacrificial Simulacra from Nietzsche to Nitsch
Page II
Far from dismissing the rite as impossibility, his first work after the group’s dissolution reaffirms his commitment to a Nietzschean conception of sacrifice. In Inner Experience (the first volume of La Somme athéologique), he explains: “That ‘God should be dead,’ victim of a sacrifice, only has meaning if profound” (1988: 133). The reduction of the phrase “God is dead” to mere statement of atheism reduces it to banality. The destruction of the concept of God is the refusal of its utility, its safeguard against temporality, that is, existence. To surrender its significatory status is to sacrifice signification itself, collapsing the object that grounds all subjectivity and fixes all identity. This is the ultimate destiny of the Western will-to-knowledge: “the supreme abuse which man ultimately made of his reason requires a last sacrifice: reason, intelligibility, the ground itself upon which he stands—man must reject them, in him God must die; this is the depth of terror, the extreme limit where he succumbs” (1988: 134). All of thought’s metaphysical comforts are lost, for this Nietzschean inversion of a Hegelian Aufhebung accomplishes the finite transcendence of tragic ecstasy as historical necessity, re-exposing consciousness to time as wound.
Perhaps by way of a justification for the failure of an Acéphale sacrifice, Bataille contends that if sacrifice is reviewed, “it is in image form” (1988: 135). Rather than continue with his pursuit of a new/old rite which would atone for the death of God, he takes recourse to a method of meditation he terms “dramatization,” using, for instance, photographic images like those of an attempted assassin’s torture by dismemberment (Leng Tch’e photos) he obtained from psychoanalyst Jacques Borel to provide him with the mimetic provocation to ecstatic states of consciousness. But this drama does not dare stage itself beyond the imaginary.
It is the work of Hermann Nitsch that best responds to the call for new rites in the wake of the death of God. His work has long reflected the influence of Nietzsche (in fact he spoke on Nietzsche at the Institute of Philosophy at Vienna University two weeks prior to this conference). I will avoid an overview of his career and focus briefly on two of his first “actions,” performed in Vienna in 1962, his reception at the campus of the State University of New York at Binghamton in October 1970, and his latest, the Six-Day-Play, performed at Schloß Prinzendorf in lower Austria, from August 3rd-9th, 1998.
His “painting action” of 4 June 1962 was part of an exhibition entitled “The Blood Organ” [Die Blutorgel], held in conjunction with Adolf Frohner and Otto Muehl, in Muehl’s cellar apartment in the Perinetgasse. After secluding themselves for three days, one of the cellar walls was knocked down to allow the public to visit. What they witnessed from Nitsch was a slaughtered and flayed lamb nailed head down, as if crucified, on a wall. Red paint was tipped and sprayed over a white canvas, and bloody innards and intestines placed on a white tablecloth, which Nitsch poured blood and hot water over, trickling down across the tablecloth and on to the floor (Green 1999: 131). Though this was his seventh painting action, it marked the first time that he poured blood on a canvas.
Nitsch published his “O.M. Theatre Manifesto” to coincide with this exhibition. In it he claims that his disembowelment of a dead lamb is “an ‘aesthetic’ substitute for the sacrificial act” in which “histrionic means will be harnessed to gain access to the profoundest and holiest symbols through blasphemy and desecration” (Green 1999: 132). Using a blend of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic theory, he explains his conception of sacrifice as an “abreaction” that provokes both a release of tensions and a collapse of individuality in which the subject ceases to identify with the ego but with existence itself. The influence of Nietzsche is suggested when he notes: “the dionysian signifies the need for abreaction, whose awakening leads, with a relentless inevitability that stems from the economy of inner urges, to orgiastics, to the longing for pain, sacrifice, the cross” (Green 1999: 134). This need is met through the staging of actions that re-present mythical scenes, as listed at the end of the manifesto as:
the analytic leitmotif of the orgies mysteries theatre, concerning situations stemming from the primal excess
I. transubstantiation, last supper (behold, this is my flesh, this is my blood)
II. mount of olives
III. crucifixion
IV. orgiastics and sacrifice of dionysos, his rending
V. killing of orpheus
VI. adonis’s mutilation by the boar
VII. isis and osiris
VIII. attis, agdistis
IX. blinding of oedipus (castration symbol)
X. ritual castration
XI. animal sacrifice in general (animal sacrifice as a substitute for human sacrifice and as object of identification)
XII. totemic meals (the rending of the totemic animal)
XIII.the primal excess (the evisceration of the lamb in the o.m. theatre is an allegorical substitute for the primal excess experience), likewise liturgical painting penetrates to the primal excess (Green 1999: 134)
This list blends ancient Egyptian and Greek myths with those of Christianity in a manner that decontextualizes all. The desire to stage actions based upon these thirteen myths and rites creates a theatrical necessity that was not met by this exhibition, which presented the results to an audience.
Six months later, Nitsch staged his first “proper” action, in which a living moving body is employed, rather than simply inanimate (or ex-animate) objects. Action 1 was staged at Muehl’s flat at Obere Augartenstraße on 19 December 1962. Nitsch himself, dressed in a white habit (to emphasize his priestly role) was tied to the wall of a room in a crucifixion position. Blood was then poured and squirted over his head, the results of which were captured by photographs, the bloody shirt transformed into a relic/objet d’art. The mechanical reproduction of these radically singular events becomes another feature of Nitsch’s work, presenting a challenge to Benjamin’s notion of the withering of aura in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1968: 224). Nitsch noted after the action that he was “particularly impressed after seeing the photographs” (Green 1999: 135). Indeed, photographic and cinematic documentation of the O.M. Theatre play a fundamental role in not only familiarizing the public with Nitsch’s work, but the spread of his taboo imagery, like a contagion, in a way resembling the effect the Leng Tch’e photos had on Bataille.
It is then interesting to note that the arrival of the O.M. Theatre at the campus of the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY) in October 1970 was at the invitation of the Film Department (rather than the more obvious programs in theatre, art history or comparative literature). There, Nitsch (and the films of Peter Kubelka) caused a great stir, with students, faculty and the local community arguing (in the pages of the student newspaper, Pipe Dream) over the relative brilliance or perversion of the O.M.T. (Givliano 1970: 11; Klempner 1970: 5; Rachlin 1970: 7). The event (promoted as a precursor to an eventual six-day-play) on 14 October involved a dead lamb, hung in a crucifixion position, then disemboweled and stomped on by the audience (several of whom consumed it after the performance). Among the charges against Nitsch and the SUNY authorities were accusations of animal killing, though, in keeping with the Manifesto of 1962, Nitsch only used animals that had already died of old age or had to be put down. But this raises a significant obstacle to the full realization of what he came to term the “primal excess”: since the corpses that were employed were already dead, the most powerful element of the sacrificial rite was missing, the death of the other. The very thing that his most vehement opponents had accused him of was that which he had not (yet) dared to do.
Among the appeals of the manifesto of 1962 are the closure of Vienna’s Burgtheater and the expropriation of its state funds for the development of a permanent home for the O.M.T. in Prinzendorf. This dream of a permanent theatre there was realized in 1971, when his (now, late) wife Beate purchased the Schloß there with her inheritance. This would allow him not only the freedom to experiment and perform without complications from various authorities, but to stage his ultimate creative fantasy, a six-day play (Das 6-Tage-Spiel).
This did not occur until August 1998, from the 3rd,through the 9th. In addition to 100 actors and 180 musicians, materials used included “1,000 kilos of tomatoes, 1,000 kilos of grapes, 10,000 roses, 10,000 other assorted flowers, and 1,000 litres of blood” (“6-Tage-Spiel Overview” 1998: website). Numerous pigs and sheep were disemboweled, killed at a local slaughterhouse. However, the limit that others had accused him of crossing was, at last, crossed with the sacrifice of three bulls, the first at sunrise of the first day, the other two on the third and fifth days “by professional butchers under veterinary control” (“6-Tage-Spiel Overview” 1998: website).
The fundamental raison d’être for the O.M.T. remains the same since the manifesto of 1962, the language altered only slightly. The list of the “analytical leitmotif” becomes the “mythical leitmotif,” modified to set of twelve:
transubstantion, communion
the crucifixion of jesus christ
the rending of dionyos
the blinding of oedipus
the ritual castration
the murder of orpheus
the murder of adonis
isis and osirus [sic]
the emasculation of attis
the ritual regicide
the killing of the totem animal and the totem animal feast
the sado-masochistic primal excess, fundamental excess (Nitsch 1998: website)
In his “Provisional, Non-Binding Overall Conception of the 6-day play,” Nitsch claims that through the use of:
mythical leitmotif and suitable sequences of actions, the dramaturgic attempt will be made to plumb the depths and trace the path from the symbolic, sublimated eucharistic sacrifice of the christian church back to the early forms of religion, of excessive totemism. This exploration is in the sense of an archeological analysis of religion. (Nitsch 1998: website)
Video documentation (available on the nitsch.org website and displayed at various galleries, such as White Box in Manhattan, from 7 October 1999 – 22 January 2000) depicts the various actions of the play. Perhaps the most startling is that of blindfolded actors strapped to crosses, paraded through the festival crowd to a sacrifice, where they are covered by the blood and entrails of a bull as it is disemboweled. Such actions are designed to lead the participants to a discovery of “the condition of BEING, the intoxication of being” (Nitsch 1998: website). Through the use of the most powerful symbol, reconstituted from its various manifestations in diverse mythological systems, Nitsch attempts a revelation of the grounds of being in a manner that language could never approach, necessarily, for the signifier employed—bereft of any stability afforded by a socio-cultural signified—exposes the receptor to a pre-significatory state, the condition for all signification.
The work of Hermann Nitsch provides us with a uniquely appropriate example of exploration of the dramatic powers latent in sacrificial imagery in this post-theological contemporary context, in the wake of the declared death of God, which now at the century’s cusp seems—perhaps—not so radical and revolutionary as it was and more a statement of cultural fact, as the O.M.T.’s performances have become a cultural artifact, with relics framed in museums and citations in histories of art and performance (even a reference in the liner notes of the 1995 David Bowie concept album, Outside). Indeed, Nitsch’s actions are arguably not as shocking now as they once were for, as Roselee Goldberg points out, “In the early days, the police often stopped the deeply unnerving events; thirty years later, they are watched with the reverence accorded to art works of historical significance” (1998: 116). Surely if the performances of the O.M.T. are no longer shocking, there can scarcely be anything left to shock. For four decades, Nitsch has ritualized this simulacra in a way that—following Nietzsche and Bataille—engages with the most powerful sign as empty signifier, denying its transcendental signified as guarantor for any mythological construct, even that which identifies itself as non-mythical. Doubtless, this transgressive trail from Nietzsche to Nitsch presents a unique challenge to semiotics.
REFERENCES
Bataille, Georges (1988). Inner Experience. Trans. Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany: State U of NY P
— (1985). Visions of Excess. Trans. Allan Stoekl, et al. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P
Benjamin, Walter (1968). Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken
Blanchot, Maurice (1988). The Unavowable Community. Trans. Pierre Joris. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill
Brotchie, Alastaire (ed.) (1995). Encyclopaedia Acephalica. London: Atlas
Champagne, Roland (1998). Georges Bataille. New York: Twayne
Givliano, Tommy (1970). “Nitsch Barbarian.” Pipe Dream 1(10): 11
Goldberg, Roselee (1998). Performance: Live Art Since 1960. New York: Abrams
Green, Malcolm (ed.) (1999). Writings of the Vienna Actionists. London: Atlas
Hollier, Denis (ed.) (1988). The College of Sociology (1937-39). Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P
Klempner, Yon (1970). “The Aesthetics of Butchery.” Pipe Dream 1(9): 5
Kristeva, Julia (1984). Revolution in Poetic Language. Trans. Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia U P
Lotringer, Sylvère (1999). “Burning for Judgment Day.” Theater 29(3): 70-83
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1968). Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Modern Library
— (1984). Human, All Too Human. Trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann. Lincoln, Nebraska: U of Nebraska P
— (1954). The Portable Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking
— (1996). Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Christopher Middleton. Indianapolis: Hackett
Nitsch, Hermann (1998). “Provisional, Non-Binding Overall Conception of the 6-day Play Planned for 3rd to 9th of August 1998 at Prinzendorf.” <http://www.fondazionemorra.org/specialevents/nitschhermann/nitsch_en.htm>
Rachlin, Henry (1970). “Nitsch Catharsis.” Pipe Dream 1(11): 7
“6-Tage-Spiel Overview” (1998). <http://www.nitsch.org>
EDITORS’ NOTE
This paper was first presented at the conference Myths, Rites, Simulacra: 10th International Symposium of the Austrian Association for Semiotics. Vienna, 8-10 December 2000. Prior to its appearance in Hyperion, it was published in Mythen, Riten, Simulakra: Semiotische Perspektiven. Vienna: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Semiotik, 2001. The editors of Hyperion wish to thank David Kilpatrick for giving his permission to republish this important essay.
© David Kilpatrick—Nietzsche Circle, 2008
(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, June 2008)
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