1976-00-00

REINDEER WERK

THE NESRAL KRID

The basis of our work is "Behaviouralism"

Conceptual art has reached a contented middle age and is no longer the driving force it used to be. Neither has concept-based ‘Action’ art the impetus any longer to fulfill the role of developing Actions as an art form.

A tramp in the road, with his almost complete incapability in the ‘directional thinking’ used in conceptual art, has a more potent and direct effect on the people around him than a conceptual artist ever could. A tramp is someone to emulate. His swaying stance alone is a sufficient action. lt is enough, that he is there, ‘being’, rather than involving himself directly with an activity in order to resolve a situation, the tramp manipulates his behaviour. This is a much more direct way of identifying a situation than if he were to make a specific action.

In our performances we try to practice non-discrimination in the actions we make, and use discrimination only in the area of behaviour. In these behavioural performances, the actions made are used only to promote or change certain aspects of our behaviour. The actions in themselves are worthless.
The whole point of making performances is that the actions that take place happen HERE and NOW. So you must use the materials uni que to here and now, like behaviour, as the basis of actions, rather than tired formulae which are left-overs from other art forms and which have been dragged up as stop-gaps to deal very inefficiently with a subject which is inherently more direct than they could ever be.

If you look at Performance, you can see it has its own intrinsic qualities, which if used as material, can bring out its own positive aspects. To approach it in a formalised conceptual way, or in a ritualistic literary manner, is to feel that you must castrate it before you can use it.

[s. 2]

REINDEER WERK

“Quite confused..........?
Don't know where you stand.....?
You are of course in
Behaviour Land.”

Socially acceptable behaviour is comparable to "acceptable" art. It is composed of a series of creatively stagnant symbolic gestures. Behavioural art proposes a positive attitude towards "transcience" as a structural approach to the "way" of life and art.

When someone first sees Behavioural Action Art, their instinctive reaction, prompted by their associative memory of unacceptable behaviour, is rejection. Those that can overcome their instinctive reaction, realize that here is something they had always thought of as a negative, merely transient: behaviour, being transformed to have a positive social function.

Those who find the instinctive barrier easiest to cross are the ones who are mentally and socially secure enough to face a situation which has no literal, logical structure and is at best 'an orgasm of being' (Mott Yeckup). Those who cannot cope feel “What a waste of time. There is no point to what they are doing.” They laugh and chatter to hide their confusion, reach for their safe, logically literal conceptual bibles and stalk proudly out. They have just lost their first real battle with their instinctive behavioural reactions. The trouble is that their conceptual art books cannot begin to give them a clue as to how they can mentally resolve what they have just walked out of. Behaviouralism is on as different a base from Conceptualism, as Conceptualism is from Surrealism. They must learn a new language and thus a new structure of understanding.

[s. 3]

REINDEER WERK

They must start by looking at schizophrenics, tramps and drunks, seeing that however limited their avenues of communication are, they still manage to communicate their presence. But they use different systems. Behavioural systems which they have instinctively developed to overcome their limitations. However inventive they are, due to necessity, they are of course incapable of developing their systems beyond that point. This can be the starting point for the artist with a clear and open mind, to do something within that state of 'whirring, mental, thoughtless change' (Nes Krid)

The first obstacle is that one cannot 'do' anything with it, one can only 'be' like it and gradually evolve through it. You begin to appreciate how specifically tramps have alterated their behaviour. They have failed to influence society in terms of 'doing' anything to such an extent, that they have taken to a 'way' of influencing people just by 'being'. But to survive they have to be noticed as being there, so unconsciously perhaps, their behaviour becomes more extreme and unpredictable.

The fact that so many tramps have changed their behaviour in similar ways leads us to believe that most people have a least a similarly innate capability when approaching the subject of behaviour. When people object to Behavioural actions, they are only rejecting a side of their own abilities which they feel unable to control. If people are afraid of themselves in this way, it is necessary that they should be given the chance to understand, in a controlled situation, this side of their personalities, so that they make take that understanding away and be able to use it creatively in day to day situations.