On the Continuity of Practice in Florian Feigl’s work

Hölling, Hanna Barbara (23 March 2021). On the Continuity of Practice in Florian Feigl’s work Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge - Writing, pp. 1-6. Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge / Berner Fachhochschule, Hochschule der Künste. performanceconservationmaterialityknowledge.com

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Florian Feigl, performance artist and educator based in Berlin who was a guest speaker in our SNSF project “Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge” (Monday, March 8, 2021), recalls that Klaasen, who witnessed Fluxus during his artistic career, must have repeated the action several hundred times. At the first glimpse, the enactment of the score seems simple. The work appears to be about producing sonic effects by hitting two hammers against each other. But this simple action might generate a range of results that create utterly different sonic and haptic experiences—a fact that reveals itself only in the moment of putting the information into action. If we choose two heavy hammers to perform the score, we might soon find out not only that the sound becomes unbearable but also that our endurance is limited due to the lifted weight. If the hammers are light and handy—like French hammers employed in shoemaking—chances are that we might arrive at a few hundred repetitions, accompanied by a distinct sonic effect. These two experiences of hammering will vary significantly as if the action effectuated from two different scores. When performing the score and experiencing it first-hand, no more can we simply say, this work is about hammering. The stuff in our hands makes the experience of the sensation contained in the action produced. The ordinary patterns of thought are challenged if we remove the “about.” As we learn from the Fluxus scholar Hannah B. Higgins, “if a piece is not about things but actually is them, then the signifying chain often applied to visual art in semiotic analyses needs to be modified to make physical or actual experiences central to the process of signification” (Fluxus Experience, 2002). Higgins points to the way in which [Fluxus] works problematize the Western metaphysics since Plato and Aristotle, which separated primary experience, e.g. the feel of hammering with a hammer, from secondary experience, that is the mental concepts related to it.

Item Type:	Newspaper or Magazine Article
Division/Institute:	Bern Academy of the Arts Bern Academy of the Arts > Institute Materiality in Art and Culture Bern Academy of the Arts > Institute Materiality in Art and Culture > Contemporary Art and Media
Name:	Hölling, Hanna Barbara0000-0002-3063-4405
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Publisher:	Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge / Berner Fachhochschule, Hochschule der Künste. performanceconservationmaterialityknowledge.com
Funders:	[7] Swiss National Science Foundation
Projects:	[198] Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge Official URL
Language:	English
Submitter:	Hanna Barbara Hölling
Date Deposited:	11 Sep 2023 14:04
Last Modified:	27 Sep 2023 14:42
Related URLs:	https://performanceconservationmateriali...
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Performance Conservation Artistic practice
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.19869
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/19869