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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 +
