"Nobile"
Duration: between 15 and 30 hours, 2007
Performed June 15th to 17th (five hours each day. Total: fifteen hours), 2007
Exhibition: The Erotic Body, La Biennale di Venezia, sezione danza contemporanea, Italy.
Curator: Marina Abramovic
Performed September 25th to 29th (six hours each day. Total: thirty hours), 2007
Exhibition: Ivan Civic - Nobile - When time becomes form, Artists Space, New York, USA.
Curator: Marina Abramovic
Curated by Marina Abramovic with the collaboration of Emanuela Nobile Mino. The NOBILE Chair was produced by Galleria Roberto Giustini (mail), Roma
The performance Ivan Civic conceived for Artists Space is a further development of the work made by the artist for the Body and Eros project curated by Marina Abramovic and presented at the Venice Biennial of contemporary dance 2007.
The performance "NOBILE - IVAN CIVIC" is inspired by a specific practice of auto erotism by very small aristocratic groups in Europe towards the end of the 1600's. It materializes in an image of the myth of Narcissus, which points out the contemporary tendency to auto-reference, and the ever- increasing dependency on images and media.
The "NOBILE" project is concentrated on the presence of two specific objects: one erotic chair with accessories, and a video camera. The action is intended as a living sculpture and consists of a perpetual simulation of an act of masturbation and a constant repetition of a provocative image. With the intention to symbolize ritual importance, the artist executes several different gestures in regular intervals: filming himself with the camera, placing himself in different positions on the chair, constantly repeating the simulation of the auto-erotic act.
As the viewers become voyeurs to the piece, the action often creates a feeling of embarrassment and at the same time solicits their imagination and eventual consequential excitement. The performance allows the spectator to evolve in an unusual context, a space in which they can let go of their inhibitions and their most hidden desires, provoking them to confront themselves with their own erotic fantasies and to reflect upon the subordinate power of pleasure connected to an object and, at the same time, to an image.
Whilst observing the simulated act, everybody will be able to find a different erotic stimulation in line with their own sexual nature and fulfillment structure. In the intimacy of their own thoughts, they will be induced to produce a variety of mental of images, presumably far more audacious than the action proposed by the performer on his stage.
The functional object has multiple iconographic and symbolic styles and the revisitation on the part of the artist of this particular typology of act which make use of it, is open to a multitude of interpretations. The object appears structurally inspired by German rationalist design and is presented in a form that alludes to Baroque. The chair, even if maintaining a strong sexual function, (reflecting upon the idea of hedonism) appears to shape itself as a fetish. It automatically introduces themes such as dependence on pleasure, slavery towards a material object, the fascination of possession, as well as egocentrism and its alienating mechanisms. These are attitudes which are first encountered in childhood (through the approach to games and particularly to a toy), and are accentuated during adolescence. It also evokes the passage from the solitary game to a group one, in which the obsession towards objects becomes tangible, and the aspiration to identify one self with the multi-accessorised and auto-sufficient cartoon protagonists becomes automatic.
The reference to childhood, and the complex connections of relationships are re-occurring themes in Ivan Civic's work. An autobiographic reflection always appears in different ways in his work, taking on, at times, a purely formal value, and a substantially formal justification: through the acquisition of 80's esthetical canons (the artist's generation) or through the use of cult music from the same period as performance soundtracks. In other instances, he involves his personal sphere of family and his hometown of Sarajevo, with which the artist maintains a visceral and at the same time conflictual relationship.
Emanuela Nobile Mino