Boryana D Rossa

This work is my comment on the process of transition from the image of the emancipated woman, backwards to the “careless beauty”—a process that takes place in our post-communist societies. The new post-communist woman has lived beyond the female struggles, for her the bloody revolution flows over into the red world of her lipstick.

Is it possible to represent the “real, symbolic and imaginary” (according to Lacan) in one gesture? How can we “depict” the real? In this performance I stitch up myself with a surgical thread to my mirror image.

“Blood Revenge 2” is a memorial to Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s performances “Action 2 and 3,“1965. For about four decades, the myth that Schwarzkogler died after cutting his penis off has been marching successfully around the world. TIME magazine critic Robert Hughes wrote in 1972: “[Schwarzkogler is] the Vincent van Gogh of body art [who]....proceeded, inch by inch, to amputate his own penis, while a photographer recorded the act as an art event.” Influence for artists and insuperable gesture for some art critics this myth is an international performance art folklore. But it is also legitimized by academic performance art studies like Henry Sayre’s “The Object of Performance,” 1989. Through all my performance art practice I had to “compete” with Schwarzkogler’s ultimate heroic gesture. I was often told there is no stronger artistic gesture than an amputation of a penis. As far as I can’t amputate my penis, I decided to recreate the performance considering the female anatomy. I created a hybrid of art history lecture and a body intervention. I told the true story (according to “Viennese Actionism: From Action Painting to Actionism, Vienna 1960-1965 (Wiener Aktionismus)”). The photographs of “Action 2 and 3,”—the starting point of the myth—are not documentation of an actual performance, but arranged scenes. The model is Heiz Cibulka and Schwarzkogler is only the photographer. After that I asked people from the audience to be my photographers and imitate Schwarzkogler’s photo compositions—the source of the myth. Thus the public took the role of the mythology producer. After that I stitched up the dildo to myself with surgical thread, cut it off and posed for the camera.

One can always find a kind of imaginary museum in the minds of those dealing with art. I have always thought of “Clone” as part of this museum, whenever figuring it out. It is also the most difficult of all to answer the question “why” when it comes to something that is really your favorite. “Clone” is a work of art that can undoubtedly be singled out as an example of clearness of the relationship artist-idea-communication. It doesn’t happen too often that one comes across an interesting concept which is given such a perfect visual form. .....Boris Kostadinov

“Civil Position” is a public intervention in which the artist knelt down at Eagle’s Bridge Square at Sofia Center for about two hours, with handcuffs on her hand and a switcher on her head. The leaflets spread around declared the artist’s appeal for pro-active society. The posture and the attributes were inspired by a police action at the same place. “Civil Position” is a comment on the political passiveness of contemporary Bulgarian society, but also a symbol of the civil position of the individual towards a state that has no concerns of people’s needs.

Documentation has become more and more important for the history of art especially for the history of performance art. The spectators participate in the production of “art mythology.” An enormous amount of tech devices are now easily accessible. The opportunity the devices give us to create artifacts of “personal memory” about the art piece makes us see ourselves as mythology “producers” rather than passive “mythology readers.” Although documentation in exhibition spaces is usually not permitted, people always take photos with their cellphones and post them to their web blogs, thus becoming both: documentarians and mythologists.

or this series of performances the public was asked to document the action. The documentation is collected as a “personal/historical view of the performance.”