Bruce Nauman, meaning over aesthetics

"Since the mid-1960s, the artist has created an open-ended body of work that includes sculptures, films, holograms, interactive environments, neon wall reliefs, photographs, prints, sculptures, videotapes, and performance. His Conceptual work stresses meaning over aesthetics; it often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about existence and alienation, and increasingly it provokes the viewer’s participation and dismay." (da biografia no Guggenheim)



Nauman na PBS, o site mais completo sobre o artista.
Aqui, na galeria Sperone Westwater.

"In the late 1960s when a recent art-school graduate, Bruce Nauman began to explore issues relating to the practice of artmaking and to the role of the artist. Performances that put his own body under duress paralleled those that demanded as much of paid performers or of spectators: compare the physically exhausting Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968) with Body Pressure (1974), exacting mental exercises in which, respectively, an actor and viewers are required through intense concentration to try to suffuse themselves into the architecture of the room. Sometimes these works were orchestrated for the camera in the studio, then to become single-monitor video pieces; sometimes they were choreographed for a gallery or museum situation."
(daqui)


"Slow Angle Walk":
"Like with so many of Nauman’s video and film works from 1968 to 1969, this early video tape too, investigates the human body as an instrument of the consciousness: «The camera lies on its side and registers for an hour everything that happens in the studio. The actor, Nauman himself, moves back and forth through the space with stiffened legs, disregarding the logic of a straight line. This method suggests the pages of description found in [Beckett’s] ‹Molloy› in which the protagonist stumbles forward on stiffened legs without bending a knee or stopping.» ". (daqui) Também sobre este trabalho/tema, o artigo "Presenças de Forma" no excelente blogue de Augusto M. Seabra.

Manifesto
LACK OF INFORMATION INPUT
(SENSORY DEPRIVATION _ BREADOWN
OF RESPONSIVE SYSTEMS.
PROVISION OF INFORMATION WHICH IS SKEW
RATHER THAN CLEARLY REINFORCING OR CON-
TRADICTORY _
2 KINDS OF INFORMATION EACH OR WHICH TO
UNRELATED RESPONSE MECHANISM.
(SKEW LINES NEVER MEET AND ARE NOT
PARALLED IN SPACE _ BUT THEY CAN BE VERY
CLOSE TOGETHER OR VERY FAR APART).
WITHDRAWAL AS AN ART FORM?
SENSORY MANIPULATION
(AMPLIFICATION)
(DEPRIVATION)
SENSORY OVERLOAD (FATIGUE) DENIAL OR
CONFUSION OF GESTALT (VOLUNTARY _ INVO-
LUNTARY)
INVOCATION OF PHYSIOLOGICAL
DEFENCE MECH.
EXAMINATION OF PHYSICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL
RESPONSES TO SIMPLE OR EVEN OVERSIMPLIFIED
SITUATIONS WHICH CAN YELD CLEARLY
EXPERIENCEABLE PHENOMENA.
_ PHENOMENA + EXPERIENCE ARE
UNDIFFERENTIABILITY.

Manifesto de 1972 sobre a nova avant-garde.
As instalações vídeo têm já vários anos, embora Nauman tenha recentemente voltado a usar este meio.
É de certo modo impressionante a escassez de textos em português sobre Bruce Nauman e a sua obra , pelo menos online, sobre a qual a Fundação de Serralves, em programa, escreveu: "uma das mais importantes e influentes das últimas quatro décadas."

EAI: Video Art Index