The spectacle of duress, extended duration, and endurance in art may prompt crises of witnessing and language. In 2009, for example, this was made manifest for me as I watched the performance artist Kira O’Reilly fall backward, naked, down a grand curling light of stone stairs at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In Stair Falling, O’Reilly fell so slowly that her movements became majestic in their granularity. Over the course of her four-hour fall, her body assumed postures along its descent that seemed to defy gravity, time, and sense—a productive efect of her extensive physical training and the commitment with which she undertook her endeavor—daily, for seventeen days over the course of the exhibition (Marina Abramović Presents . . ., Manchester International Festival, July 3–19, 2009), beggaring possibility and human logic. The afective immensity, durational extremity, and formal strangeness of this performance became staggering, frightening, heartbreaking. O’Reilly’s Stair Falling is a consummate example of endurance art. The audience was free to come and go, though many stayed for long stretches of time. Watching for three hours or so (other durational performances transpired concurrently, too, to draw my attention away at times), I would move through phases of looking and being, including sustained bouts of microscopically fascinated attention cut through with pangs of a distracted semi-presence akin to boredom. It was hard not to see O’Reilly’s body—a naked body, a woman’s body, a body marked with visible scars—as having been lung from the top of the stairs by an unseen hand, by an invisible agent of authority or violence, perhaps one that represents domesticity, or family, or an institution of the state. There are few clues to the latter in the work, beyond our situation within an august, national institution of art and the presence that lorded symbolically over the exhibition, namely, its curator, Marina Abramović, herself a pioneer of endurance in and as art. The semiotics of O’Reilly’s scene was fully overwhelmed by the phenomenal or material experience of the encounter. Erika Fischer-Lichte usefully describes this dynamic as a fundamental demand of the encounter with physical risk in performance art, noting, “This is not to say that there [is] nothing to interpret,” but,

中文翻译：

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鸡、圣人和尸体：美国的耐力艺术

艺术中的胁迫、持续时间延长和忍耐的奇观可能会引发目击和语言危机。例如，在 2009 年，当我在曼彻斯特惠特沃斯美术馆看到表演艺术家基拉·奥莱利（Kira O'Reilly）向后倒下时，我就明白了这一点，赤身裸体，从巨大的石阶卷曲的灯光下跌落。在《Stair Falling》中，O'Reilly 下落得如此缓慢，以至于她的动作在粒度上变得雄伟。在她四个小时的跌倒过程中，她的身体在下降过程中采取了似乎无视重力、时间和感官的姿势——这是她广泛的体能训练和她每天努力付出的努力的成果——17展览期间（Marina Abramović Presents . .，曼彻斯特国际艺术节，2009 年 7 月 3 日至 19 日），乞讨的可能性和人类逻辑。这场表演的情感浩瀚、持续的极端和形式上的陌生变得惊人、可怕、令人心碎。O'Reilly 的《Stair Falling》是耐力艺术的完美典范。观众可以自由进出，尽管许多人停留了很长时间。观看三个小时左右（其他持续性表演同时发生，有时也会吸引我的注意力），我会经历观看和存在的阶段，包括持续发作的微观迷恋注意力被分心的半存在类似于无聊。很难不看到 O'Reilly 的尸体——一具赤裸的尸体，一具女人的尸体，一具带有明显伤痕的尸体——被一只看不见的手从楼梯顶上肺，被一个隐形的权威或暴力代理人，也许是代表家庭生活的，或家庭，或国家机构。在作品中几乎没有关于后者的线索，除了我们在一个庄严的国家艺术机构中的处境以及象征性地统治展览的存在之外，即其策展人玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇，她本人是艺术耐力和作为艺术的先驱。奥莱利场景的符号学完全被相遇的现象或物质体验所淹没。Erika Fischer-Lichte 有用地将这种动态描述为在行为艺术中遇到物理风险的基本需求，并指出，“这并不是说没有什么可解释的，”但是，它的策展人玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇 (Marina Abramovic) 本人是艺术耐力的先驱。奥莱利场景的符号学完全被相遇的现象或物质体验所淹没。Erika Fischer-Lichte 有用地将这种动态描述为在行为艺术中遇到物理风险的基本需求，并指出，“这并不是说没有什么可解释的，”但是，它的策展人玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇 (Marina Abramovic) 本人是艺术耐力的先驱。奥莱利场景的符号学完全被相遇的现象或物质体验所淹没。Erika Fischer-Lichte 有用地将这种动态描述为在行为艺术中遇到物理风险的基本需求，并指出，“这并不是说没有什么可解释的，”但是，