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PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 30.1 (2008) 42-56

Australia's Post-Olympic Apocalypse?
Edward Scheer

On April 8, 2005, at 6.30 p.m., sixty-year-old Australian performance artist Mike Parr commenced a performance action entitled Kingdom Come and/or Punch Holes in the Body Politic before an audience of mostly students, journalists, and artists at Artspace in Sydney. In a bright orange suit, complete with matching shoes and socks, and a handkerchief in the breast pocket of the jacket, Parr sat on an orange chair beneath powerful lights and a battery of cameras. Attached to the toes of his right foot was a small electrode, which transmitted a low-voltage shock whenever anyone activated the electroshock system by crossing the path of sensors located in front and to the sides of the space where Parr sat. The voltage was just strong enough to force Parr's body into a momentary spasm and his face to register shock and anger. Crossing the path of the sensors also triggered a microphone and a video camera that beamed a dissolving image of Parr's surprised, irritated face onto the wall of an adjacent gallery.

Like so many of Parr's actions in a career spanning some thirty-five years, Kingdom Come features a number of key elements which have become signature aspects of Parr's actions: the violent address to the body of the artist, the ethical challenge to the audience, the extensive use of audio-visual media, and the work's unfolding in time. While these have been in evidence since Parr's earliest performances in 1971, this article will address the ways in which Kingdom Come is emblematic of a new phase of Parr's work which continues to emphasize a durational and performative dimension but is more explicitly political in content and mode of presentation. In these new works (2001–present), Parr more directly embodies what Bonnie Marranca calls "the catastrophic imagination" in terms of the absurd and violent archetypes of contemporary Australian life.1 In these recent performances it is the rise of neoconservative politics in Australia and in particular its obsessive and unscrupulous management of national identity and the policy of "indefinite detention" of asylum seekers that become the focus of Parr's work.

Critical Aesthetics and Democratic Torture

Why would an artist such as Parr embark on such an uncompromisingly critical and physically demanding performance practice late in his career? The physical and [End Page 42] mental demands of the recent performances have been immense. They have all entailed a personal ordeal for the artist: the ten-day hunger strike of Water from the Mouth (2001), which began this new series of works; the nailing of Parr's right arm into the gallery wall in Malevich (A Political Arm) Performance For As Long As Possible (2002); the sewing of Parr's face with stiches through the skin and lips in Close the Concentration Camps (2002) and Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi (Democratic Torture) (2003), and the use of electric shock on the artist's body in both Aussie Aussie and Kingdom Come. After this latter performance Parr described its debilitating effects, involving "sleep deprivation (I was without sleep for more than 40 hours), nothing but liquids for four days and the more than 30 hours of continual shocks," and toward the end of the piece produced "extreme paranoia . . . I had begun to hate the audience and could barely contain myself."2 His partner, Felizitas, worries about what his body can withstand as he ages and Parr himself was concerned enough about the extended use of electric shock in his most recent work to update his will just prior to undertaking the performance. So why do it?

One look at his track record suggests the most obvious reason. Parr's thirty-five-year career reveals a remarkable consistency of investigation into the links between language and the body. He has always understood that the body is a key site anchoring the chain of associations that...

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