Religion, Ritual, Shaman

Franko B’s act of wounding himself has shamanistic, ritualistic and religious inference. The role of Shaman is symbolically one of healer. It is possible to find connections between B’s performances and those associated with that of a Shaman. Franko B’s body is heavily tattooed and is often painted white and presented already in its bleeding wounded state. “The public performance of taboo acts is also an ancient religious custom with roots in shamanism and primitive magic” (McEvilley quoted in Warr and Jones, 2000, p.225). McEvilley also refers to the role of Shaman as a ritual scapegoat figure and refers to the body of the shaman as being frequently “tattooed or scarified or painted” (ibid). 

It is not surprising that articles written about Franko B’s performances make reference to that of Shaman “The shamanic root relates to the recognisable traits of performance as ordeal, inspiration, therapy or trance, as the artist executes a ritual of cleansing or communication” (O`Reilly, 2003, p.2). B’s life/death experiences through his performance epitomises those of the Shaman “Shamans do not only think about death: in a symbolic, yet somehow lived manner, they have been through it during their initiation” (Tucker, 1992, p.79).

References to religious painting, the sacred, stigmata and ritual have all been used to describe Franko B’s performance work. B’s body is often bandaged these bandages are then removed to reveal his already bleeding body or he may be bound and suspended upside down both have religious associations.

 “With palms held upwards, a powerful spotlight shining from above and an artificial mist hanging around his naked body, he seems to be imitating an accepted posture of the risen Christ of the New Testament” (Morgan quoted in Keidon and Morgan, 1998, NPN)

In some performances B ritually washes his hands in a bowl which he then empties over his head this image has strong religious associations with cleansing and baptism

fig.13 Franko B

Blood is the main element in Franko B’s work and this is laden with symbolic religious imagery and associations.  Kristeva refers to “the artistic experience, which is rooted in the abject it utters and by the same token purifies, appears as the essential component of religiosity” (Kristeva, 1982, p.17). Blood as both sacred and profane is where Kristeva (1982) emphasises the relevance of rituals and religious protocols which function within society as defining the sacred and the profane. John Lash (quoted in Clarke, 2000) discussing the relationship between sacrifice and scapegoat observes that in Biblical terms a scapegoat is symbolically marked with blood, weighed down with the sins of the community and cast out, and that within society, scapegoating is a most convenient form of transposing blame onto an individual/group and then ostracizing them for it, an extreme example of this would be ethnic cleansing recently witnessed in countries such as Bosnia. Under these circumstances the correlation between that of ‘other’ and Franko B’s abject performance and its role as representing the marginalised within society may not be that improbable.

Anyone with some knowledge of Christian belief systems will find it easy to recognise and associate parts of Franko B’s work with those associated with religious iconography. It is impossible not to connect the abject with religion, when it is within religious doctrine that the status of the abject is both designated and defined.

Both Mary Douglas (1979) and Julia Kristeva (1982) quote biblical writings as the source on which the status of unclean and impure practises are demarcated. Whether it be the bibles teachings on what foods/animals can or cannot be eaten because some are deemed to be unclean, Kristeva’s (1982) analysis traces the evolution of religion and its continuum of restrictions whereby prohibition begets prohibition from the dietary (no meat) to blood, concluding with Western Christian belief systems where sexual identity is also condemned when it involves sexual intercourse between same sex partners. Abjection that appears in religious structures as exclusion because of unclean or impure status concludes within Christianity as ‘otherness’. Thus homosexuality is morally condemned; the homosexual becomes a sinner (an ‘other’). But these prohibitions if broken create an anomaly within the Christian belief systems in which these issues must be able to be both resolved and absolved. Kristeva speaks of “Christian sin, tying its spiritual knot between flesh and law, does not cut off the abject...Meant for remission, sin is what is absorbed” (Kristeva, 1982, p.127). When condemning the sinner the bible asks each of us to examine our own consciences asking who of us is without sin when resolving the plight of the transgressor, the church offers forgiveness to those that repent their sins, thus placing the absolution of the abject within an infinite reciprocated discourse between that of the sinner (mortal) and the absolver (the spiritual church). “A source of evil and mingled with sin, abjection becomes the requisite for a reconciliation, in the mind, between the flesh and the law” (ibid).

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Introduction
Tracing Foundations
The Artist’s Body
Broken Boundaries
Religion, Ritual, Shaman
Nudity and Nakedness
Corporeality
The Gift
Conclusion
Illustrations
Bibliography