Timeless or Only Time Will Tell

I was surfing the web and ran into an article in EuroArts that surprised me. It's from a 1984 live art performance in Winona, MN. It became part of an art historical document in UCLA's Journal of Anthropoetics in about 2000 and now it's been re-created in this 2009 article. Does that make it timeless or will time only tell? In any event here it is excerpted from: "The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder" "The artist becomes or enacts the sacrifice, the stage represents sacred space, the performance is held in sacred time, and significantly the blood is fresh, crimson and free flowing. A classic example of performance art as blood sacrifice is a performance entitled "Bloodbath" by Minnesota Artist Billy Curmano. Press releases announced that "The artist’s own blood is shed in a human sacrifice intended to focus attention on global violence."(16) At the performance, which was symbolically held on Saint Valentine’s Day, Curmano was dressed in white and sitting next to a globe of the world; the audience was informed that his blood would be spilled as a sacrifice to ease the need for suffering and death."(17) Since Curmano had promised that he would supply his own blood for the sacrifice and would not mutilate himself on stage, a nurse sat next to him and extracted a dozen vials of blood by needle from Curmano’s arms as a drum beat in the background. During the ceremony Curmano opened each vial with his teeth and spilled his blood on the globe while a voice offstage announced the names of countries in conflict. (18) Although this encompasses all aspects of the use of blood in sacrifice, it is basically a non-violent performance." -Dawn Perlmutter

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