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The Mind is a Muscle is the latest in the One Work publication series by Afterall Books. Each book in the series is an in-depth look, by one author, at a single artwork that has shaped the landscape of contemporary art as we know it today. For Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance at Tate Modern, Yvonne Rainer’s performance of ‘The Mind is a Muscle’ at the Anderson Theatre, New York on 11, 14 and 15 April 1968, is one such work.
The Mind is a Muscle is a multipart performance for 7 dancers who perform a routine of pared-down, ordinary or ‘everyday’ gestures on stage; the work also includes choreographed periods of silence, film and text. Fittingly for a whole book dedicated to one 95 minute performance, Wood’s analysis of The Mind is Muscle is detailed, specific and thorough. Importantly, Wood focuses on one particular performance of The Mind is a Muscle – 11, 14, and 15 April 1968- deliberately setting it apart from the many other instances of the same work. In this, Wood sets the specific socio-political, art historical and physical scene for the April 1968 version of The Mind is a Muscle – a scene set in the context of a 1960’s affluent America, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights protests and an exploding art scene but also inextricably linked to Rainer’s mental state, her health, her friends at the Judson Church and her own (stable) financial situation. In setting this specific scene in all its minutiae, Wood provides a close focus for her reader whilst giving weight to the idea that each performance, both of The Mind is a Muscle and of performance in general, has its own unique temporality; that even if repeated, performance is never the same twice.
For the main part Wood uses choreography scripts, documentary photographs, prop lists and evocative descriptions as well as a myriad of theoreticians, including Plato, Karl Marx, Judith Butler, Nicolas Bourriaud, Emile Durkheim and David Graeber, to explore the groundbreaking achievements of The Mind is a Muscle with regards to notions of ‘work’, minimalism, audience, and gestural image making. The result is advanced and interesting enough for those already familiar with Ranier’s work but also accessible enough to provide an in-depth introduction to those who need it. However, it is the new model of art that Wood proposes in The Mind is a Muscle, particularly its relation to audience, that is the most intriguing aspect of the book. Wood encourages us to ‘picture The Mind is a Muscle as a live event…a ritual configuration of bodies, positions and actions within the multiplicity of bodies, positions and actions found among the 18 million inhabitants of New York City at that time.’ Our continuing, embodied and live relation to The Mind is a Muscle, both to the book and the performance itself, is important for Wood because she posits that the real innovation and impact of The Mind is a Muscle is located in the works’ specific living, dynamic and relational tension between materiality and idea. For Wood, The Mind is a Muscle is the first artwork to perform the ephemeral as fact, and to conceive of the event as transmitting culture and knowledge, an event in which meaning is generated collectively.
The underlying critical problem with Wood’s One Work treatise on The Mind is a Muscle (1968), is that it adds to the growing library of ‘works that have made the difference’ in the One Work series such as Bas Jan Aders’ In Search of the Miraculous (1975), Marc Camille Chaimowiczs’ Celebration? Realife (1972) and Joan Jonas’s I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances) (1976). With her contribution Wood further solidifies the presumption – clearly evident in the One Work series- that Europe and the US in the 1960’s and 70’s is the pivotal moment for contemporary performance related practice, moreover for contemporary art. Although such canonisation is inevitable with any publication that focuses on one work, it should be recognised that 1960’s Europe and the US is hotly contested as the birthplace of visual art performance. Wood’s recourse to this all-too-familiar 1960’s US moment is a missed opportunity – for Wood, for contemporary art, for the One Work Series – to correct this mid twentieth century euro-American art historical bias and forsakes the importance of more recent, 21st Century, performance related work. More emphasis on how The Mind is a Muscle influences today’s’ contemporary art, i.e. the art of the current century , along with more practical art examples, would have gone someway to setting the record straight.
Despite the predictability of Wood’s choice of One Work, The Mind is a Muscle has plenty to offer. Picking just one contemporary art work that has significantly shaped culture, and writing a wholly focussed and impassioned book-length treatise on it, is a rare and beautiful thing to see in print and as such represents an exciting prospect for any contemporary art enthusiast. The excitement isn’t just in learning more about the author through their choice of artwork or reading about the far reaching social, political and artistic consequences of that work. More than anything else, the One Work series begs an intriguing question ‘Can you think of one contemporary art work that has transformed the way we look at the world, and if so, what is that One Work?’
