CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCING DIFFICULTY

Critics have limits. Our faculties break down when an artwork reminds us ofsomething so painful, or makes us so mad, or is something we like so muchwe struggle to write about it. Or when we are tired and having a bad day.There are whole genres certain critics just don't get (for Adorno, famously,it was jazz). Critics can be tone deaf; we can miss the pleasures others take,ignore the irritation that others feel. We can be willful and stubborn, blindto the dwindling relevance of those artists we love and indifferent to theemergence of new practices we don't understand. We all have limits that lookpretty uncritical from most angles, and we rarely know these limits until weencounter them.

I begin this chapter with a story about hitting my own wall. In the fall of2007, I booked and then failed to make an appointment for a one-on-one performanceencounter with the English artist Adrian Howells. I had also madean appointment that day at a beauty salon for a cut and color, far too close tothe timeslot I'd arranged to see Howells's performance. My hair was covered ina mud of dye and wrapped in plastic when I looked at my watch and realizedthat I needed to be across London in an hour, and it would take at least thatto get there. I flipped through magazines, doing the math in my head. Anxietyrose like a tide in my throat as I realized that there was no way I was going tomake it there. I dug the phone out of my purse and called to cancel, without,however, leaving enough time for another person to take my place.

It was a careless and ordinary mistake. But the nature of Howells's performanceand my reaction to missing the appointment suggested that somethingmore was in play. Howells's work maximizes the possibilities of what he describesas "accelerated intimacy." He has explored the contours of confessionand autobiography in performances that rehearse the most painful and embarrassingmoments in his history for small audiences, and sometimes audiencesof one. In Held, Howells invites his audience into three twenty-minute scenes.First, they sit at a table, drink tea, and chat. Then they sit together on a couchin front of the television and hold hands. Last, they go up to a bedroom, liedown together, and spoon (fig. 3). Participants respond to this performancedifferently. Some are ill at ease and on their guard; some make themselves rightat home. One person fell asleep. When Howells stages a performance like this,he sees perhaps six people in a day. As one might imagine, these appointmentsare hard to come by. I felt the full weight of this; by screwing up the appointment,I prevented another person from seeing his work.

Later that day I went to the venue's address to meet friends who had honoredtheir appointments. I held in my hands a small gift of cookies, broughtto convey my apologies to the artist. Howells had just finished up for theday when I got there. I wanted to be simply apologetic, but instead I foundmyself fighting back tears—and, worse, failing to keep them in check. Wedrank tea and ate the cookies. I was embarrassed and self-conscious that myaffect risked expanding into a selfish display of abjection: shame mounted asa kind of counterattack.

Howells was sympathetic and warm. Looking at him through my tears,I felt even worse. My emotionality was well out of proportion to the circumstance.My friends and I walked back to the train station. As I listenedto them talk about their experience of Held, I tried to come to terms withthe fact that I'd subconsciously sabotaged my appointment. I'd been lookingforward to it all week, had been careful to make sure I got the timeslot, andthen scheduled a pointless event right over it. Clearly the whole idea of Heldchallenged me. Apparently I couldn't inhabit the structure of that encounterwithout being overwhelmed—by what, though?

I was afraid of what might happen, of how it might make me feel. I thinktoo I was equally put off by its artificiality—not that my own feelings wouldbe inauthentic but that they would be delivered within a temporary architectureof intimacy. What happens at the end of the appointment? I wasattracted enough to the idea to schedule the appointment but disturbedenough that I made it impossible for me to honor it. In doing so, I subconsciouslypreempted the betrayal I expected, for the experience of Held wouldfeel either very empty and disappointing or very full and disappointing. Ihad reacted badly to what Jon Cairns describes as the "confusing contextof 'staged' intimacy" in which Howells works. His medium is the affectivedensity of the interaction between artist and audience, and even a failure likemine should be understood as part of the work's performative field. By failingto make the appointment, by failing to cancel in time to allow another personto take my place, and then by trekking down there anyway to solicit hisforgiveness, I managed to extract the caretaking that Howells offered withinthe boundaries of Held but outside the boundaries of the event. I insisted ongetting what I thought the artist had promised me, but on my own terms,and after blowing him off. (Of course, behind this self-analysis are years oftherapy. The responsibility to each other's time is one of the first things oneworks through with an analyst, especially if one has missed an appointmentor is habitually late.)

Until that day I had considered myself a seasoned spectator to some ofthe most challenging forms of performance. When we think about challengingperformance art, we generally mean not the domestic normalcy cited byHeld but what is often described as "extreme" performance involving violencetoward the body and sexualized forms of display. Familiar with this kind ofwork (e.g., the work of Ron Athey, Bob Flanagan, Franko B, Kembra Pfahler,Kira O'Reilly), I had come to assume that there was nothing I couldn't handle.

I would say, in fact, that prior to this experience I was cavalier about myown limits and dismissive of others', as if it were a moral failing to be averseto the sight of blood or be uncomfortable with the idea of live performancesengaging in acts that look (and sometimes are) sexual. Howells showed mehow deluded I'd been: the mere idea of certain kinds of performance provokedin me a defensive need to assert...