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Performances (1972-75)

Mike Parr
19721975

Performances (1972-75) colour and black and white video, sound, 39min 30sec.

These performances are very much of the form of 'art by instruction' originally used in 150 Programmes and Investigations.

  • Hold your breath for as long as possible.

  • Light a candle, hold your finger in the flame for as long as possible.

  • Push tacks into your leg .. until a line of tacks has been made up your leg.

  • Using sharpened matches .. push matches between your teeth .. until your mouth is filled with matches.

  • Sew a line of buttons onto your chest. Do up your shirt on the buttons.

  • Hold a lighted match in your mouth .. until the roof of your mouth is burnt.

  • Blood Unity Structure (After Brancusi's 'Endless Column')

  • Have a branding iron made up with the word 'ARTIST'. Brand this word on your body.

  • Sew a fish on your skin.

  • Slash your wrists and arms. Smear the blood on your face.

  • Pack your armpit with fish .. pour iodine into your armpit (Subjective Image With Fish & Iodine.)

  • Drop a burning match on your chest.

  • Using a sharp instrument cut around your thigh so that a leg ring is made.

  • Stuff your nose with bread. Push matches into your nose. Ignite the matches.

  • Reopen old wounds. Sew up the wounds.

  • Slash your fingers .. let the blood fall on your eyes.

  • [Staple four photographs of the sky to your leg]

  • [Lick honey off a woman's face]

  • [Pour honey onto a man and a woman's naked bodies and then rub your face in it]

  • [Put a live fish into your nose and then splash iodine onto it]

  • [Put sardines on the genitals of two men and two women and then pour molasses onto their mouths]

  • The Emetics/Primary Vomit Red (I am Sick of Art), performance.

  • [Wrap a fuse in a spiral around your leg and set it off]

  • [Attach the wing of a white bird, with feathers, to your right hand and use it to stroke the stub of your left arm]

  • [Blow graphite powder in an inverted triangle onto a woman's body just above her pubic hair. Then have her lean to her left, and fill out the triangle]

  • [Put fat between your toes and use a lighted match to melt it]

  • [Take charcoal from a burnt tree and use it to mark your chest with thick lines (as though an initiation mark)]