Buried alive, under a road

Male­vich, how­ev­er, had request­ed a sim­pler fate in death: that his ash­es be scat­tered under an oak tree near the town of Nem­chi­nov­ka, west of Moscow. His wish was lat­er ful­filled, but the town would be no place of eter­nal rest. As World War II spread across Europe, the tree was destroyed and its accom­pa­ny­ing memo­r­i­al oblit­er­at­ed. In the decades that fol­lowed, the site was used as farm­land until 2013, when the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment ­approved plans to devel­op it as a hous­ing estate.

Almost a cen­tu­ry after Malevich’s Black Square gripped the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion as an anti­dote to the West­ern artis­tic tra­di­tion against the back­drop of a world in tur­moil, the mem­o­ry of one of the 20^th century’s most impor­tant painters was paved over, interred beneath a block of shiny, high-den­si­ty apart­ments on the out­skirts of the Russ­ian capital.

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A road­work­er leans lazi­ly on a shov­el, watch­ing Mike Parr as the artist scans a leafy thor­ough­fare in Sydney’s inner city. Parr’s gaze falls on a non­de­script patch of bitu­men, and he smiles as if he has seen an old friend. ​“This is where I got the idea,” he says. ​“I thought imme­di­ate­ly of Malevich.”

The 72-year-old doyen of Aus­tralian perform­ance art has, dur­ing the course of his ­career, var­i­ous­ly sewn togeth­er his facial ­fea­tures, stuck draw­ing pins in his body, doused him­self in litres­ of his own blood and set fire to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars’ worth of self-por­trait­s­. For 50 years, his art has exist­ed at the fur­thest edges of the extreme. But Parr’s lat­est per­for­mance is rad­i­cal, even by his stan­dards: next month, he will spend 72 hours buried alive in a steel box, with­out food, a few metres beneath one of the busiest roads in Hobart.

Under­neath the Bitu­men the Artist Mike Parr, arguably the most auda­cious art­work performed­ in Aus­tralia, is being staged as part of Dark Mofo, the Muse­um of Old and New Art’s annu­al win­ter arts fes­ti­val, with the assis­tance of arts organ­i­sa­tion Detached. It ­involves Hobart City Coun­cil exca­vat­ing a sec­tion of Mac­quar­ie Street, out­side the town hall, and drop­ping a steel box below the sur­face. Parr will enter the box on Thurs­day, when the roof will be fixed, the hole back­filled and the road resur­faced for traf­fic. He will emerge on Sun­day, when the box will be filled with steel and cement and the road relaid.

The box — a 4.5m x 1.7m x 2.2m mini-­ship­ping con­tain­er — has been made spe­cial­ly by the fes­ti­val (a com­pa­ny orig­i­nal­ly appoint­ed to cre­ate the box pulled out of the project once it dis­cov­ered what it was being used for, says Parr). The space will be emp­ty but for a mat­tress on the floor, a light and a bucket.

Parr will take with him his draw­ing tools and a copy of Robert Hughes’s epic his­to­ry of Aust­ralia’s coloni­sa­tion, The Fatal Shore. Air will be piped into the box (“I will insist this is ­han­dled appro­pri­ate­ly. The prospect of oxy­gen depri­va­tion doesn’t appeal to me”), he will have an emer­gency but­ton (not his idea), and he expects to be able to hear the traf­fic flow­ing above dur­ing his inter­ment (“it might be a bit of a night­mare, actually”).

The work, which was giv­en the green light only a fort­night ago, is the third and final in a series of annu­al per­for­mance works Parr has under­tak­en for Dark Mofo. Last year’s Emp­ty Ocean fea­tured a pre-dawn chore­o­graphed paean to age­ing on Bruny Island by 70 elder­ly per­form­ers; in 2016, the artist entered a ​“mind-altered state” for Asy­lum, for which he spent 72 hours in an aban­doned psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal in New ­Nor­folk as a trib­ute to his broth­er, who suf­fered from men­tal illness.

Under­neath the Bitu­men, how­ev­er, speaks to some­thing with­in Parr him­self: to a deeply felt polit­ical sen­si­bil­i­ty and a per­son­al con­nec­tion with Male­vich and the Kafkaesque philoso­phies that drove his work.

Male­vich, who found­ed and all but sin­gu­lar­ly occu­pied the geo­met­ric suprema­cist move­ment, com­plet­ed the first of four vari­a­tions on his Black Square paint­ing in 1915. The mul­ti-lay­ered black-on-white work was first shown at the Last Futur­ist Exhi­bi­tion 0, 10 in St Peters­burg. It is wide­ly regard­ed as a sem­i­nal work of abstract art; a potent sym­bol of rev­o­lu­tion, and of pos­si­bil­i­ty, at a time of glob­al tumult.

“I trans­formed myself in the zero of form,” said Male­vich of the work, ​“and emerged from noth­ing to creation.”

Says Parr: ​“I have always been inter­est­ed in Male­vich but par­tic­u­lar­ly in the notion of zero, and the zero point. The Black Square was a high point of icon­o­clasm that was meant to ter­mi­nate the West­ern pic­to­r­i­al tradition.

“He had this extra­or­di­nary admis­sion that the secret of coups d’etat and the recon­struc­tion of people’s lives lies buried in the paint­ing. Yes, the Black Square was intend­ed to nul­li­fy ­West­ern art, but it also was meant as a rejec­tion of, in his lan­guage, bour­geois val­ues and ­mid­dle-class tastes.”

The best known of the paint­ings is held at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery and has been stud­ied exhaus­tive­ly; in 2015, con­ser­va­tors used X‑rays to dis­cov­ered a riot of suprema­cist colour lying beneath its tar-like lay­ers of black.

“I found myself star­ing at the bitu­men and think­ing of the Black Square,” says Parr. ​“Bitumen­ is real­ly the most abstract and total­ising sur­face that mod­ernism has pro­duced. It’s the very essence of the mod­ernist state in a ­dap­pled sense. It’s the con­trol of the state ­imposed on us increas­ing­ly and the psycho­logical state of indi­vid­u­al­ism in our culture.”

For the Syd­ney artist, the Black Square and Beneath the Bitu­meninvoke total­i­tar­i­an­ism: Stal­in­ism, Nazism and the still prob­lem­at­ic notion in ­Aus­tralia, and in Tas­ma­nia espe­cial­ly, of ­colo­nial geno­cide. Indeed, Beneath the Bitu­men may be seen as a memo­r­i­al to the vic­tims of ­state-­sanc­tioned vio­lence and, point­ed­ly, a mon­u­ment to the vic­tims of hor­rors per­pe­trat­ed against Abo­rig­ines in the 19^th century.

“Australia’s black war in Tas­ma­nia is not a sto­ry that is not well known but is ever present just beneath the sur­face,” Dark Mofo creat­ive direc­tor Leigh Carmichael says. ​“The fact that Mike’s work will hap­pen under­ground, just out of sight, is clear­ly no coincidence.”

Tas­ma­nia, it seems, is the nat­ur­al home for Parr’s late-career suite of per­for­mances, a series his gal­lerist Anna Schwartz describes as ​“mon­u­men­tal”. Parr sees par­al­lels between Tasmania’s com­pro­mised his­to­ry — pas­sages about which are ref­er­enced heav­i­ly in Hughes’s book, which Parr plans to read aloud dur­ing his inter­ment — and the accep­tance there of his work.

“I think those ideas are real­ly con­densed in Tas­ma­nia because it is the site of 19^th-cen­tu­ry British impe­r­i­al total­i­tar­i­an­ism,” he says. ​“These ideas cut to the bone there, and the ­audi­ences are very alert.”

The suc­cess of Hobart’s Muse­um of Old and New Art, of which Dark Mofo is an off­shoot, has helped in no small way to cre­ate the state’s rep­u­ta­tion as a home for the avant-garde. (Last year’s epic blood-soaked per­for­mance by ­Aus­tri­an artist Her­mann Nitsch and a deceased bovine is instructive).

Parr rais­es his fin­ger and traces in the air an imag­i­nary out­line of his steel box. ​“Maybe that’s why I love Tas­ma­nia so much. I don’t think you’d get away with this any­where else.”

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Parr was born in rur­al Queens­land in 1945, the son of a war vet­er­an father and an artist­ moth­er. He stud­ied briefly at the Nation­al Art School before found­ing Australia’s first ­artist-run col­lec­tive, Inhi­bo­dress, in 1970 with Peter Kennedy. He has swung for peri­ods — decades, in some cas­es — between the sub­sets of draw­ing, sculp­ture and poet­ry. But per­for­mance, always at the lim­its of phys­i­cal or men­tal endurance, has been his pri­ma­ry driver.

In the late 60s, Parr began mak­ing his ­so-called psy­chot­ic oper­a­tions — record­ed ­per­for­mance pieces in which he attacked his body — before embark­ing on a peri­od of work that includ­ed sewing dead fish to him­self, ­let­ting a dog drink his blood and brand­ing the word ​“artist” into his skin. His first live per­for­mance work was in 1972 — an inter­pre­ta­tion of an art­work called Let a friend bite into your shoul­der until blood appears (it was exact­ly what it says on the tin) — but it wasn’t until 1977’s ­Arm­chop that Parr entered the zeit­geist. The artist, who was born with a deformed left arm, made a pros­thet­ic limb and filled it with blood and mince­meat ahead of a lec­ture he was due to give in Syd­ney. Dur­ing the talk, Parr — with­out warn­ing — pulled out a hatch­et and, to the ­hor­ror of an audi­ence most­ly unaware of his dis­abil­i­ty, began hack­ing at the offend­ing limb.

In 1981 he gave up live art and threw him­self into print­mak­ing and draw­ing, only to emerge a decade lat­er hun­gry for more per­for­mance. In 2002, he made Water from the Mouth, where he sat, live on web­cam, for 10 days in a glass cage at Sydney’s Art­space with only water to keep him alive. In the same year he made A Stitch in Time, where­in his face and lips were sewn togeth­er in response to Australia’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. Then there was the work named for the artist he so admires: for Male­vich (A Polit­i­cal Arm), Parr spent 30 hours blind­fold­ed, with his right arm nailed to a wall.

Parr is a deep-think­ing intel­lec­tu­al, prone in con­ver­sa­tion to tak­ing long, philo­soph­i­cal detours. He has a grand­fa­ther­ly qual­i­ty about him, a soft­ness that belies the extreme nature of his work. It rais­es two com­mon ques­tions: how and why does he put him­self through such torture?

“I always say the same thing in answer to that: these works enable me to think. I need it. I see things more clear­ly at the point of the extreme,” says Parr.

“I am very inter­est­ed in set­ting up­ ­sit­u­a­tions that ques­tion the cul­ture but also my own moti­va­tions. Art for me is much more than just mak­ing a liv­ing or becom­ing pro­fi­cient at mak­ing nice pic­tures. It is a pri­ma­ry form of communication.”

Parr ges­tures through to his work­ing stu­dio. A series of 12 mono­chrome dry­point pic­tures hang on a huge wall before him. ​“These might be the last self-por­traits I ever do,” he says. ​“I am giv­ing up. Start­ing again.” The zero point. ​“Maybe I’ll take up paint­ing in my old age.”

Does the forth­com­ing piece in Hobart sig­nal the end of his per­for­mance career? The health risks are real and sure­ly, at 72, he could be ­for­giv­en for slow­ing down.

“Every per­for­mance is my last,” Parr says, smil­ing, ​“until the next one.”

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Parr remains a tow­er­ing fig­ure in the move­ment tak­en to the main­stream by his friend and con­tem­po­rary Mari­na Abramovic, and his work is housed in col­lec­tions — pub­lic and pri­vate — around the globe. But Aus­tralia has always had an awk­ward rela­tion­ship with per­for­mance art, its gal­leries con­found­ed by how to dis­play it. Parr has seen the form and per­cep­tions of it change in his 50 years of prac­tice. But do we ­real­ly get it yet here?

“That is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. I don’t think the form is maligned here,” he says. “(The response to it) has set­tled at the edges in a place of con­tin­u­ous ambi­gu­i­ty. I am read­ing some proofs for a new Aus­tralian book, and the work­ing title is What is Per­for­mance Art? I’ve been doing this for 50 years and now we’re ask­ing: what is it?

“I could nev­er imag­ine (any­one in Europe) expos­ing that inse­cu­ri­ty or doubt. This under­scores for me the prob­lem of provin­cial­ism: it comes in and out of focus. It nev­er occurs to us in Aus­tralia that (these per­cep­tions) might still be dis­fig­ured by prob­lems of isolation.”

Parr has spent the year in Berlin; he returned to Aus­tralia only last week when the Dark Mofo project was approved. One of the rea­sons he was there was to find a per­ma­nent home for his back cat­a­logue. He has his heart set on the Mor­ra Foun­da­tion in Naples.

“I saw some­thing extra­or­di­nar­i­ly affir­ma­tive there and I knew I was in the right place,” he says. ​“They were able to deal with per­for­mance records in the most extra­or­di­nary way. It was a tran­scen­dent art expe­ri­ence. I am plan­ning on donat­ing work there.”

Parr stress­es he is not turn­ing his back on Aus­tralia: ​“All my works are duplicat­able. But the Mor­ra offers an exem­plary sit­ing for my work; there is no oppor­tu­ni­ty of that here.

“I want to be in the com­pa­ny of those oth­er artists. I want to be part of the right tribe. Oth­er­wise my work could end up just a clut­tered archive in the base­ment of the Nation­al Gallery.”

Parr turns his atten­tion back to Hobart. He has begun fast­ing and increas­ing his med­i­ta­tion in a process of slow­ing him­self, mind and body.

“I am start­ing to pull back from soci­ety. I’ll become iso­lat­ed and try to visu­alise what it’s going to be like, to find areas of anx­i­ety where I might pan­ic,” says Parr. ​“I feel very appre­hen­sive. But, then, if I didn’t feel appre­hen­sive what would be the point of it?

“That is the dif­fer­ence between the­atre and per­for­mance art: you rehearse the­atre. ­Every­thing is know­able and then you add style. Per­for­mance art is the very oppo­site of that. The good pieces con­dense that feel­ing of ­anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty. That’s when you know you’re on to a good thing.”

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The art world con­founds Parr. He doesn’t ful­ly com­pre­hend its cou­ture-clad ­coter­ies of col­lec­tors and the rav­en­ous appetite for a can­vas adorned with a big name. ​“Art has become about hedge funds,” Parr says. ​“It’s bizarre. There is all this talk of the art econ­o­my, but actu­al­ly art is meant to inter­rupt all that.”

In New York last week, auc­tion house ­Christie’s played host to a high-stakes bid­ding war. The prize? Malevich’s 1916 paint­ing ­Supre­ma­tist Com­po­si­tion. In a record for the Russ­ian avant-garde artist, the work sold for a stag­ger­ing $US85.8 mil­lion ($113m).

What, one won­ders, might the anar­chic ­Bol­she­vik have thought of that? Had he a grave, he might well have rolled in it.

“Try­ing des­per­ate­ly to lib­er­ate art from the bal­last of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al world, I sought refuge in the form of the square,” Male­vich said when asked to reflect on the polit­i­cal cli­mate that gave birth to his most ­famous painting.

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, at the far end of a very ­dif­fer­ent world, an Aus­tralian artist will take refuge in his own square as tes­ta­ment to, and in mem­o­ry of, the his­to­ry that has come between. Under­ground and out of sight, a vision will be realised; on the ­sur­face, the world will con­tin­ue its unre­lent­ing march towards tomorrow.

Dark Mofo opens in Hobart on Fri­day. Under­neath the Bitu­men the Artist Mike Parr, Mac­quar­ie Street, Hobart, June 14 – 17.