Ana Hansa-Ogren
Germ
2019
dimensions variable
mixed media
STATEMENT:
“I hate the idea of art and myth, and Seedbed has an amazing myth that I can’t stand.” Vito Acconci
Germ is a pluralistic, grateful, and critical conversation with Vito Acconci’s notorious 1971 performance work, Seedbed.
In the interest of rekindling the visceral effect of this seminal performance work for present engagement and reanimating its experiential significance in a more inclusive and elastic framework, I have approached it from a nonbinary perspective that navigates intimacy through the blending lens of augmented reality—the smartphone.
In its time, Acconci’s performance incited a necessarily immediate, if arrestingly unsettling, relationship between artist and audience within the context of the white cube. As a canonized work, it does this through an understanding of intimacy historically framed by a power dynamic of eroticism filtered through the heteronormative male gaze of the era. The work was later restaged by Marina Abramovic at the Guggenheim in 2005, almost verbatim. While Abramovic’s performance reprised Acconci’s through the vessel of a female body, it did little to shift the restrictive binary conception of gender or the repressive, male-centric notion of desire inherent to the original. She essentially represented the myth.
This interpretation disrupts the archetype by writing consent and participant agency into its framework. The definition of “erogenous zone” is intentionally vague and left entirely up to the audience. It can be an ear, an architectural element, or located on the body of another (with permission).
These alterations may lead some to feel freer to engage, and others to experience a heightened awareness of the shaming culture around sensuality and gender that we move through on a daily basis. It may prompt many not to engage at all. But as in the original, aversion is as much a part of the work as participation.
BIO:
Ana Hansa-Ogren is an artist and curator currently based in Brooklyn. Her studio practice produces interactive installation, sound, video, and performance work, among others. Her perspective as a maker and thinker is informed by a background in environmental history and wildlife ecology, language study, and early formal training in music and dance. Hansa-Ogren’s current body of work focuses on the psycho-symbology of social constructions of whiteness, humanness, and normativity. She holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and her work has been exhibited throughout the midwest and northeast.