Object Annotation 6

Context if you're not familiar. The artist/political activist has:- sewn their mouth shut- cut off their earlobe- set a French bank on fire- set a Russian government office on fire- placed themselves in a coccoon of barbed wire- nailed their scrotum to Russia's red square (not ours)- and created a website to leak sexual predation by Russian officials

Pyotr Pavlensky "Seam" (2012)

Knowing that 279 Golpes and Seam both involved self-mutiliation we have to ask: why did Pavlensky choose to use vision, as opposed to hearing, as the sense to exhibit his self mutilation? What strengths and weaknesses come from both techniques? Leonardo from week 6 does a good job of capturing why Pavlensky used visuality to portray violence. In the essay, the author explains that humans have a bias towards eyesight because it's the most important sense for gathering food and reproduction. Pavlensky chose sight as his sense of choice, rather than hearing, because we have evolved to be me far more sensitive and empathetic when we visualize someone being harmed as opposed to when we hear it. The internet allows for images to be spread even more which deepens this bias and allows for Pavlensky to diffuse his message globally. 279 Golpes can not be diffused globablly unless the exhibit is built across the world. However, one weakness of relying on sight, is that the viewer can always close their eyes. In 279 Golpes, unless the spectator has noise cancelling headphones they won't be able to escape the message. For that reason, I would suggest Pavlensky's next piece involve playing audio in a public space.

Seam and Style

"Real Violence" and Pyotr Pavlensky's "Seam" use violent subjects to shock the viewer out of their status quo. It's obvious that Pavlensky sews his mouth shut in order to make a martyrd statement to the people about the violence of state censorship; however, it's less clear what Wolfson's "real violence" meant to achieve. In an interview he makes it explicitly clear. "We’re exposed to so much violence; if not firsthand, in real life, then through the internet or the television or movie screen." The problem with being exposed to so much violence is that the only time to make us respect it is by taking it out of the TV and making it real. Bringing the viewer closer to the violence was the vision of both Pavlensky and Wolfson. It's why Pavlensky decided to sew his mouth shut in front of people in real life and why Wolfson decided to use VR, instead of a TV recording, to beat a man to death with a baseball bat. This object annotation is making my search history very suspicious.

Seam, Subject, & Wolfson's "Real Violence"

The use of self mutilation as a technique for motivating political action is shared by both Pavlensky and Regina Jose Galindo in their pieces. The discomfort caused by witnessing the pain of female violence, or being silenced in the case of seam, is a way of bridging the gap between the viewer and the pain experienced by others.Furthermore, Seam is a perfect example of what the 279 Golpas reading calls "anti-scenarios". Scenarios attempt to structure society in predictable ways and anti-scenarios seek to dismantle that predictability. Seam took place in a Russian square and used extreme violence and self mutilation to shock the system and destabilize the predictability that autocratic governments depend on.Despite these similarities, Seam decides to not hide the explicit violence from the viewer which maybe makes it more similar to Goya's art! (Foreshadowing for the next button)

279 Golpas and Seam

Seam and “The custody of a prisoner does not call for torture” are extremely similar as political pieces. Both are political commentary between the state and common people, not between women and Guatemalan culture like 279 Golpes. Both pieces seek to criticize overly oppressive governments by putting state violence on full display. However, in the case of Seam, the violence is self inflicted as a metaphor for the subtle violence of state censorship. The pieces are similar again for their focus on calls to action. Goya used captions to accompany his pieces with calls to end the use of torture in conflicts and Pavlensky uses public spaces such as Red Square in Moscow to inspire action to as large a crowd as possible. Finally, both Goya and Pavlensky created their art knowing, and inviting, persecution from the state because they knew state violence would only legitimize their arguments.

Goya and Pavlensky

Unfortunately I struggled to find a reading from our syllabus that connected to "Seams" context other than the Goya piece. Both Goya and Pavlensky are looking to contest a violent state through their shocking art meant to display the brutality of their respective governments. Furthermore, both artists faced persecution for their harsh critiques of the state. Goya critiqued religious conservatism and its superstitious schizophrenia and Pavlensky criticizes the state's censorship and democratic suppression. Moreover, both artists created their artwork for the purpose of spreading a message and attempted to spread their pieces as much as they could. Pavlensky has the benefit of the internet. Fracisco Goya and Pyotr Pavlensky's work share a lot in common as a result of their pursuit in mobilizing people against repressive regimes.

Seam, Context, & Goya