"Female Body" as a Biopolitical Concept and Nudity in Performance Art as a Dissident Attitude
Ali Ömür UlusoyThroughout history, the codings about the body plays a strategic role in the con struction of the individual. Therefore, Foucault constructs the body as a field of "biopolitical reality" by saying that the body is "a place of recording events". The body is suppressed through all tangible and intangible institutions such as religion, state and moral codes. Through the body, a dichotomic universe based on opposites such as beautiful-ugly, thin-fat is created. As a result, a concept within a concept, a field of oppression within oppression is created. On the other hand, through the panoptical situations created, the body under pressure is also kept under surveillance. When the problem is analysed in terms of the"femal ebody",the severity of oppression increases exponentially. Performance art, which emerged after the 1960s, is based on the rebellious subject as both an artistic stance and a form of social existence. The most unique thing that distinguishes it from all the other arts is that the artist themself canalso turn into aworkofart.Inthissense, fromthefirstexamplesofperformanceto the present day, the artist, with their own body, has been the performance itself or part of it both as an ontological entity, as an epistemological subject and as an aesthetic object. Therefore, the body can be positioned as the main production tool of perfor mance art. This study aims to find the point where biopolitics and performance art collide and to expose the relationship between "female body-nudity-protest" through a sample of works from the 1970s.
Biyopolitik Bir Kavram Olarak “Kadın Bedeni” ve Protest Bir Tavır Olarak Performans Sanatında Çıplaklık
Ali Ömür UlusoyTarih boyunca, bedene dair yapılan kodlamalar, bireyin inşasında stratejik bir rol oy nar. Bu yüzden Foucault; beden için, “olayların kaydolma yeridir” diyerek bedeni “biyopolitik bir gerçeklik” alanı olarak kurgular. Beden; din, devlet, ahlak kuralları gibi tüm somut ve soyut kurumlar aracılığıyla baskı altına alınır. Beden üzerinden, güzel-çirkin, zayıf-şişman gibi karşıtlıklara dayalı dikotomik bir evren yaratılır. Sonuç olarak, kavram içinde kavram,baskıiçinde baskı alanı oluşur. Diğer taraftan, yaratılan panoptik durumlar aracılığıyla baskı altındaki beden, aynı zamanda gözetim altında tutulur. Sorun, “kadın bedeni” özelinde ele alındığındaysa baskının şiddeti katlanarak artar. 1960’lardan sonra oluşan performans sanatı ise hem sanatsal bir duruş hem de sosyal bir varoluş biçimi olarak başkaldıran özne üzerine kurulur. Onu, tüm diğer sanatlardan ayıran en özgün şeyse sanatçının kendisinin de bir sanat eserine dönüşe bilmesidir. Bu anlamda performansın ilk örneklerinden, günümüze değin, sanatçı, kendi bedeniyle hem ontolojik bir varlık hem epistemolojik bir özne hem de estetik bir nesne olarak performansın kendisi ya da parçası olmuştur. Bu nedenle beden, per formanssanatınıntemelüretimaracıolarakkonumlandırılabilir.Buçalışma,biyopoli tika ile performans sanatının çarpıştığı noktayı bulgulamayı ve 1970’ler özelindeki örneklem eserler üzerinden “kadın bedeni-çıplaklık-protesto” ilişkisini serimlemeyi amaçlamaktadır.
In the last fifty years, the human body has become increasingly prominent in the academic field and a central topic in modern social sciences. Popular topics such as organ transplantation, stem cell research, nanotechnology, plastic surgery, cyborg life forms, and artificial intelligence have reinforced this interest. This, of course, has produced many theoretical structures from economics to politics, science to art. Undoubtedly, one of the most prominent theories in the field of sociopolitics is biopolitics created by Foucault. This view, which puts the body at the centre, focuses on the domination strategies established through the body. Performance art, which is created through a focus on the body, both sees the body as a means of struggle and transforms the body itself into a work of art.
In other words, both biopolitics and performance art center on the body. However, although there are qualified studies in both fields, there is almost no research that combines the two fields. Especially the pure form of the body, that is, its naked state, has been overlooked in this relationship. This article, above all, aims to make this visible by combining these two fields. In this context, how the biopolitical domination of the female body is challenged by the dissident stance of performance art is analysed through the phenomenon of nudity. For this purpose, the 1970s, when performance art was accepted as an independent art (Wark, 2009: 1), was chosen as the boundaries of the study. Methodologically, a poststructuralist perspective was followed both because Foucault epistemology forms the basis of the study and because performance art is itself a postmodern art.
The article consists of eight sections in total, excluding the Introduction and Conclusion. In the section on The Body and the "Women’s Body", the etymological and conceptual explanation of the body is given and its meaning in social sciences is examined. In addition, the distinction between biological sex and gender is mentioned. In the section on biopolitics, the importance of the body as a means of production and management since ancient times is emphasised and its political evolution is evaluated. In this context, Foucault’s views are referred to and the transformation of the body after the eighteenth century is mentioned. The basic concepts of biopolitics, biopower, anatomopolitics of the body and biopolitics of the population are discussed. In the Panopticon section, it is mentioned how the prison model designed by Jeremy Bentham has been integrated into society by expanding its sphere of influence in the modern world. In parallel to this, the concepts of control apparatus, discipline and normalisation are introduced. In the section on Identity and Truth, the biopolitical relationship between identity-truth-subject is evaluated. The view that truth consists of a discourse produced by power and that it provides its legitimacy with these truths is evaluated. It is stated that identity is also produced by the discourses of power in a parallel manner, and even the words used by individuals to define themselves are determined by power.
In the section "The Female Body” as a Prison, the relationship between gender and discipline is analysed based on Foucault’s view that "The soul is the prison of the body" (Foucault, 2000, p. 68). The discrimination against women is made concrete with examples from a wide range of fields from religion and mythology to modern social life. In this framework, it is claimed that: While power controls society, "society" controls women. Thus, women are subjected to strong oppression by both power and society: While power subjectivises men and turns them into objects, it turns women into the object of the object through double-sided control. Thus, the woman is imprisoned in her own body.
In the Performance Art section, the emergence of performance art centred, above all, on the body as a means of a dissident tool of rebellion, its political stance and its relationship with gender are examined. On the other hand, it is emphasised that the most unique thing that distinguishes performance art from all other arts is that the artist themself can turn into a work of art (Allain and Harvie, 2006, p. 370; Hallensleben, 2010, p. 10). Naked Truth: Women’s Own Body section analyses the ways in which performance artist women resist gender domination through their bodies.
The last section of the article, Examples, is devoted to the cult projects of the 1970s. The iconoclast orientations and aesthetic strategies of female performance artists who use their naked bodies as both a political weapon and an artistic tool are evaluated through examples. In this context, Mirror Check (Joan Jonas, 1970), Glass on Body Imprints (Ana Mendieta, 1972), Woman Rising (Mary Beth Edelson, 1973), S.O.S. Starification Object Series (Hannah Wilke, 1974), Interior Scroll (Carolee Schneemann, 1975) are analysed.
In conclusion, the research findings have shown that the strategy of nudity in performance art has an important place in women’s struggle for identity. The "female body" has evolved from object to subject, from passive to active, from spectator to performative through performance art.