Oldal 112 [112]
Bopy, THE GAZE, AND ABSTRACTION: FROM SAMUEL BECKETT TO BRUCE NAUMAN
spectator. Nauman thus pins his Other down — the spectator is suspended
on the artist’s actions, and the rhythm he adopts — using the camera as a
device permitting him to fix the untamable gaze of his Other.”
CONCLUSION
Viewing the video “Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk)” shows how, in reading
Beckett, Bruce Nauman encountered preoccupations with which he felt a great
affinity. While the passages dealing with walking in Watt and Molloy remain
descriptions in prose, some of Beckett’s works for the theatre — notably
Footfalls and Quad — reveal the very concrete and physical dimension such
action represented for him.
While Nauman is himself the performer in his videos — contrary to
Beckett, who works with actors and dancers — the subjective relation to
the body remains absolutely primordial for both, including Beckett’s texts.“
The works of both creators involve the body pared down to its insistent and
indomitable dimension, whereby the imperative command to execute precise
and abstractly dictated actions reveals the core of existence to be situated
beyond the comforting perception of the body as a whole. Indeed, the latter
engenders a symmetry whereby the subject envisages himself as facing an
orderly and meaningful world, a reflection of his own unity as represented in
a mirror. This raises the risk of being captivated by one’s own image. Once
this dimension has been discarded, what remains is the pure determination
— devoid of any specific goal — to confront the body as governed by language
beyond meanings, desire or identity. This appears as the untameable
dimension that drives or causes the pacing, and that escapes the spectator’s
field of vision. This process reveals how active human presence produces
a deformation that subverts abstract order.
For Nauman and for Beckett, the medium utilized is also an integral part
of the construction, since the presence of the camera conditions the artist’s
address to the spectator: he produces himself as an object, subjected to
the gaze of the Other. As spectator, the latter is called on to experience an
effect on himself, similar to that of the performer. What is created is thus not
simply an image, but an empty hole that is circumscribed by the interaction
© As Gérard Wajcman has pointed out in relation to the 1973 work: Pay attention mother
fuckers. Wajcman: Mother Fuckers, 13-15.
6 Bruno Geneste points out how Beckett’s writing aims at producing an effect on the body.
Samuel Beckett: l’“entre” vivifiant de lalangue et l’'hiatus sinthomatique: contrer ces vérités
du Surmoi, 89-116 in L. Brown [dir.], La Violence dans l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett, Paris,
Lettres modernes — Minard; Série Samuel Beckett, no. 4, 2017.
+ 111 +