1. The Body In Art: Franko B.
Annie James
a1209948
The vast array of artists using their bodies to create powerful displays of both still art
and live art has dramatically increased in the last few decades in a post modernist
movement toward a more fragmented and transgressive view of the body and the self.
Franko B. is one of these artists; using his body as the canvas to present grotesque and
shocking body art involving cutting, slapping, puncturing, inserting catheters, piercing
his body and opening up wounds and orifices. These actions are some of the ways in
which he aims to articulate the anger, fear and loss bound in life itself. This essay argues
that it is through this avenue of self expression that he presents the body in an anti-
hegemonic form, confronting audiences with an assault on their senses and sensibilities.
The function of his art allows him to show his abject body; his guts, and metaphorically,
his self.
In the 1970s and 80s, socially determined taboos surrounding the body began to be
challenged and the representation of the transgressive body began to rise. The era saw
liberation in sexuality and people began to see the body as something belonging to the
individual; giving the individual the right to use and express their body as they wish.
Helen Spackman states, “the formulation of social decorum, dictating what we should/
not do with our bodies and the increasing privatisation of the body within Western
culture...has been directly related to the ideologies of bourgeois capitalism”.(8)
Spackman goes on to say that such repression leads to a backlash in ways of thinking.
The body thus becomes represented in a primal way, disrupting the social and discursive
construction of the public and private body as something inherently wrong or right.
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2. Able bodied, white, heterosexual, and middle-class males are the privileged subjects in
Western society, whilst all “others” carry markers of difference. Spackman suggests that
this difference is expressed through people’s bodies, “-Blacks, the disabled, gays,
lesbians and women in general have all been traditionally judged against the “norm” of
the “Universal” subject, and classified as feminine, “inferior”, “lacking”, “deviant”,
“excessive”, and/or “exorbitant” (Spackman, 12). These are negative connotations and
have all been formed from a patriarchal society with culturally imposed constructs
leading to this kind of discourse on difference.
Campbell and Spackman (1998) suggest that Franko B. becomes the embodiment of a
dissolution of the boundaries between the inner and outer bodies, inhabiting the space in
between. This in itself is a powerful metaphor which will be addressed shortly, but this
silent objectification of the body can also be read as a transgression of patriarchal
masculinity and, according to Silverman, this particular use of the male body disrupts
traditional representations of sex and gender by subverting the gaze (Silverman 1992).
In many of his performances, Franko B. uses a white powder to completely cover his
body. This detail takes away any markers of identity as he quite literally becomes a
blank canvas. Taking away markers of identity allows the subject to retreat into a
metaphorical vacant space as the audience inserts themselves into his position on stage,
thus creating yet another interesting dynamic. However, the most interesting layer, when
it comes to subverting the gaze, is that by stripping himself bare, painting his body
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3. white, and displaying a non-traditional “masculine” male body, he disrupts the ideas of
hegemonic masculinity. His body is an image of a body in pain: a fragile and vulnerable
body which is traditionall accosiated with femininity. This element would
unconsciously add to the discomfort of onlookers. Spackman suggests that what is at
stake here, manifest in the discomfort of the audience, “is not the literal destruction of
the male body per se, but the metaphorical devastation of the body-of-thought of
patriarchy.” (13)
Untraditional concepts and ways of viewing the body are the predominant themes in
Franko B’s art. The term abject body, coined by Julia Kristeva in her work Powers of
Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), relates to a Post structuralist interpretation
meaning that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts.
Julia Kristeva developed the idea of the abject as, “that which is rejected by or disturbs
the social consensus that underpins a social order” (Kristeva, 4). “The abject body is
where the boundaries of the body are crossed; when internal becomes external. When
bodily fluids cross the boundaries they become something seen as unclean, unsafe and
unacceptable, a concept similar to that of Mary Douglass’s theories on what is clean and
what is unclean in her work on the theory of ‘Dirt’. (Douglas 1966)
In our culture, bodily functions are hidden; we are almost removed or separated from
them, which is in itself impossible for it is a fact of being a living being. According to
Kristeva, since the abject is situated outside the symbolic order, it follows that being
forced to face it is inherently a traumatic experience ( Kristeva, 1982). Franko B. brings
the abject to the surface literally, as he perforates his body, opens up veins to bleed
himself (sometimes into unconsciousness), inserts catheters into his penis and opens up
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4. orifices, all with no verbal or textual explanation of why. The only words used in the
performance of ‘Mama I can’t sing’, a show he performed during the mid Nineties, are
the words ‘Protect Me’, cut into his back. These words only become visible at the end
of the show, when he turns to walk off stage; the blood marking out the words
momentarily before they are covered by the increasing flow of it. This parting statement
would leave the audience feeling a combination of guilt and devastation when they have
so passively been watching on as he inflicts seemingly devastating pain upon his body.
The lack of words is an intentional part of Franko B’s art, as he “closes his mouth and
opens his body” (Campbell and Spackman, 63). He wants the audience to interpret his
art however they see fit. This may be as repulsion, abhorrence or exhilaration.
Apparently the response he does not want, despite having a documented traumatic
childhood, is an interpretation of his performance as a consequence of this trauma. It is
easy to think that Franko B’s art is an expression of the abandonment and trauma of his
childhood, and it is indeed a difficult thing not to personalise it. However, when looking
at Franko B. and the ways in which he expresses themes and issues, one must try to
abandon thoughts of who he might be as a person, and attempt to understand that he is
exploring ideas of social and gender norms, bodily functions, body ideals, physical
appearance, religion, the effect of the abject body, and transmogrification, to name a
few.
The emphasis on blood is key in Franko B’s work and is charged with multiple
meanings. As a child he was brought up by a Roman Catholic mother who eventually
abandoned him, leaving him to the subjugation of carers in a religious home for boys
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5. (Campbell and Spackman). Blood then, is used with religious connotations, as well as
more embodied ones, representing things such as disease and contamination (61).
Mikhael Bakhtin’s concept of the Grotesque body (1986) presents the binaries of the
Classical body and the Grotesque body. The Cassical body promotes, “an idealistic and
sanitised view of the body as complete, closed, contained, and individual, displaying no
orifices or “base” biological functions” (Bakhtin 1984). Whereas the Grotesque body is
quite the opposite, celebrating bodily functions, exposing genitalia and orifices, and is
“open, excessive, collective and cosmic” (Spackman 14).
The Grotesque body rejects the idea of a bounded and private self. Both Bakhtin and
Kristeva share similar views when it comes to the ways in which bodies are perceived,
performed and lived. These ideas align with Franko B’s body art in which he shows us
his abject body and the “grotesque” functions which are usually hidden so as not to
disturb the constructed ideals of Western society. He challenges these ideals and through
confronting, and sometimes unbearable images, he brings to the foreground that which
is usually shied away from.
The body throughout history has always been surrounded by ideas that sit on the edge of
art, technology and body politics. There are ideas of the body as gendered, historicised,
performing, fragmented, objectified and of the body in pain. These all point to examples
of the varying interpretations and representation of the body. In Franko B’s art, it would
appear that the body becomes a system of cultural signs rather than perception.
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6. Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhael (1984) Rebelais and His World, trans. Helen Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Campbell P. and Spackman H. “With/Out an-aesthetic: The terrible Beauty of Franko B.” The
Drama Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 pp 56-67
Douglas, Mary (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analisys of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo.
Routledge: London
Kristeva, Julia (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University
Press
Silverman, Kaja (1992) Male Subjectivity at the Margins. London: Routledge.
Spackman, Helen (2000) “Minding the matter of representation: Staging the body (politic)”,
Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp 5-22
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