Medical Performance: The Politics of Body-Home

Ive Tabar is one of the most influential Slovenian body art performers. Born in 1966, Tabar spent his youth in a small town in the Istrian region in the southwest of Slovenia and never went to art school; in fact, in terms of artistic categorization, his work could be described as naïve art. After he finished secondary school, he gained employment as a male nurse in traumatology at a local hospital. Although he engaged in some creative pursuits during his early years, his initial artistic works did not draw any public attention. The turning point for Tabar occurred when he realised that the hospital environment offered opportunities to exploit his lust for creativity. At first, he used medical equipment, specifically X-ray apparatus, to make a series of auto-portraits wearing a small golden crucifix on a chain wrapped around his head. A small exhibition of these portraits was held in a church under the patronage of a local parish priest, with modest success.

Tabar met Jurij Krpan, the curator of a unique gallery named Kapelica (The Chapel), in 1998. The gallery was established in the early 1990s, with the intention of providing organizational support and space for non-mainstream artists, and developing performance art in Slovenia. Krpan quickly recognized Tabar’s talent and enthusiasm, and instructed Tabar to “stay inside the genre of medical performance.” He made the aims and artistic platform of the gallery Kapelica clear to Tabar. Alongside themes and dilemmas rising from Tabar’s personal life, he aimed to speak publicly about current political issues, at the time related to the Slovenian accession to the European Union and NATO, and Krpan was glad to give him necessary support, as socially and politically engaged art was high on Kapelica’s agenda. From that moment on, Tabar focused on the performance of interventions into his own body through the strict application of medical instruments, supported by elementary medical knowledge. His art instinctively, but not purposely, follows Merleau-Ponty’s notion that: “[The] body is the fabric into which all objects are woven.”¹ Tabar joined a group of performance artists (whose members include Orlan, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Kira O’Reilly, and Stelarc) who have shifted the boundaries of medical performance in the last two decades. For instance, in Fibrilacija, Tabar performed a medical procedure called fibrillation, where he, while fully conscious, pushed a catheter all the way to his heart, so that the audience could see the moment when his heart trembled on a monitor. The performance was dedicated to his wife, indicating, literally that

Top: Ive Tabar, Fibrillation at gallery Galerija Kapelica.

Bottom: Ive Tabar, Evropa II at gallery Obalne galerije Koper. Photos: Miha Fras. Courtesy Galerija Kapelica.

she is “an affair of his heart.” His medical knowledge and skills acquired as a nurse allowed him to deliver an adrenalin shock to the audience.

Transmission of Medical Practice to Medical Performance

In the latest edition of his seminal work, The Body in Society, Bryan S. Turner speaks urgently about the need to recapture the theoretical contribution of the phenomenology of human embodiment as non-reproducible live experience in order to avoid reducing human bodies to a mere cultural text. Bodily performance, particularly dance, claims Turner, can be understood as non-reproducible human agency. It is safe to assume that even though unified agreement over the artistic value of Tabar’s performances is not possible, his artworks without any doubt meet these criteria for auratic art. It is hard to imagine anyone who would be willing to repeat the performance described above. The medical performance Fibrilacija is dangerous and demands a certain level of medical knowledge and technical medical experience. In addition, the performer needs to be attuned to his/her body, as during such a performance many things can go wrong. Tabar has never repeated his performance of Fibrilacija.

In considering Tabar’s artistic objectives, the most obvious interpretation would be that he is creating a spectacle for the audience. During his performances, there...