Notes taken from Video

  • Tate – Turbine hall = voices/sounds not seen but coming from walls – hear a hum in hall anyway
  • used pre recorded original sounds
  • contradictory in his life, reclusive, doesn’t explain his work, lives in country with his horses
  • language – spoken word – written word in neon and prints
  • 1966 – burst onto scene, outsider – removed from the metropolis
  • time when acceptance that anything can be art – used himself as the material
  • Hand to mouth – 1967 – ugh! semi figure
  • Cast of space under chair (whiteread afterwards!)
  • using found texts (graffiti) etc and playing with them – dyslexic, odor door, raw war
  • play with camera – repetitve activity until film ran out
  • Tony Oursler – talking about repeating one word – it changes, alters, becomes another word
  • architectures like sculptures – viewer became material/narrow corridors
  • trying to control viewer experience
  • corridors – some set up with monitors creating disconcerting experience – as viewer catches glimpses of self
  • creating uncomfortable experience – ‘lifted room’
  • being uncomfortable can jolt us out of it too
  • floating furniture – chairs, birders – south american sculptures
  • Moved to New Mexico
  • Tony Oursler – describes Nauman as ‘Conceptual Cowboy’
  • 1980’s – return to video – violent scenes, domestic scene of couple domestic violence – repetitive scenes of chair being pulled out – play of agression – swap of roles – relationships
  • 1985 – neon sign returns – sex, violence, death, unsettling and funny, pantomime, puppet like
  • Carousel – casts of naked animals in a carousel – being scraped around gallery
  • “reaction to actions of human beings”
  • “Bruce Nauman is about the way you feel” (Tony Oursler)
  • no matter how dark they are they can still make you laugh
  • Clown Torture – real clown having to experience situations, repeat a joke, toilet, repeating not learning from mistakes
  • “constantly questioning and experimenting” (Alan Yentob)