Gestating Bodies: Performing Masculinity in Viennese Actionism

Abstract

In this article I examine the motif of male reproduction in Viennese Actionism and its discursive links with esotericism. The Actionists were a collective of artists best known for their radical performance art. They appropriated various esoteric traditions for their subversive tactics, including for destabilizing gender norms and attacking bourgeois morals. They utilize gendered imagery from alchemy and vitalism in their works, adopting an image of virile masculinity that hails phallic creative powers. The analysis foregrounds the presentation of male reproduction in Günter Brus’ action, Der Helle Wahnsinn – Die Architektur des hellen Wahnsinns (1968), as I investigate the ideas of masculinity attached to the motif and the gendered expressions in the performance.