Virtuosic Performance: Rearticulating Disability in the Works of Lisa Bufano, Ron Athey, and Martin O'Brien

The performance art practices of Lisa Bufano, Martin O’Brien, and Ron Athey articulate a virtuosic disability that operates in the spaces between representation, embodied experience, and material traces of the diseased or disabled body. Using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s model of affective, relational bodies, this thesis analyzes Ron Athey’s <i>Deliverance</i> and <i>Self-Obliteration</i> cycle, Lisa Bufano’s performance work <i>One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart</i>, and Martin O’Brien’s durational performance of <i>Mucus Factory</i>, arguing that when virtuosity and disability are at play with one another in performance, all assumptions about the essential dysfunction of the disabled body become groundless. The disabled body becomes an affirmation of embodiment and possibility, performing a body that can be painful, erotic, sensual, sublime, knowable and unknowable at each turn, opening up the potential for a multiplicity of body knowledges and experiences.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History (Fine Arts)

Grantor dc:publisher

Ohio University

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Kurtz, Amanda J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Klein, Jennie

• Art Criticism
• Art History
• Dance
• Fine Arts
• Performing Arts
• virtuosity
• disability
• performance and disability
• Ron Athey
• Martin O'Brien
• Lisa Bufano

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1354806907

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:ohiou1354806907