Crossing the Line: Performance art, feminism and the “disgusting” body

Since the 1960s, the female body has become a central medium in the feminist investigation of established societal and cultural norms. Using a drastic treatment of its physical and psychological boundaries, the body – particularly in the field of performing art – is activated and politicized in a way that is contrary to the limitations and traditional perceptions of our society. In this tradition, the ideal female body is conceived as a sculptural, passive object – a form that opposes “activated” bodies that are recognizable as biological entities, as seen in the works of Carolee Schneemann, Elke Krystufek, Karen Finley or Marta Jovanovic.

This lecture demonstrates the various specific, symbolic and metaphorical ways in which the boundaries of the female body are crossed in performance art and how they are presented in such a way that the observer often deems such a violation of boundaries as inappropriate, controversial or even disgusting. Based on an analysis of the emotions of disgust in connection with the female body, it becomes clear that the ideal female body is not only coded by the biological function of disgust, but also that the social significance of disgust has caused it to become a symbol of stable social order.

Anja Foerschner is an Art Historian and curator, focusing on contemporary art. After initially training as an artist and graphic designer, she studied art education, art history and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, before writing her doctoral thesis in art history in 2011. From 2004 to 2010 she worked at Haus der Kunst in Munich, and from 2012 to 2018 at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her research fields include performance art on the USA’s West Coast and in former Yugoslavia, feminist art, the emotion of disgust in art and the concept of ideal beauty in art and visual culture. She is currently the leader of an international research project on documentation strategies for feminist performance artists and is also working on a book manuscript about women in art in former Yugoslavia since the 1970s.