Self-Sabotage
Artist statement: "Self-sabotage is a lecture-performance held at the Jeu de Paume in Paris as part of the series "Culture as a Strategy to Survive" on March 6, 2009 and again, that same year, at the Emergency Pavilion in the 53rd Venice Biennial. The piece is a lecture where artist Tania Bruguera sits at a table reading her reflections on political art and the function of artists in the context of art, institutions and society. To her right there is a box with a 38 caliber pistol and 9 mm bullets. During the first pause in her reading, the artist takes the gun, puts a bullet in it, makes the drum turn as in the Russian roulette, points at her temple and presses the trigger. She repeats this action twice, at each pause of her reading of the text. When the lecture is over, questions from the audience are answered.
The relationship between art and reality is an important concern in the development of Tania Bruguera's work. The spine-chilling gesture illustrating the function of artists in society and the truthfulness of their actions as transformers of reality. It is also the experience of total sacrifice, the sacrifice of oneself, as the possibility of maintaining a commitment with the ethical values established by artists with their work and context. This is an exercise in Behavior Art through self-aggression as a sort of call for a political art taken to its utmost consequences."
