Symposium papers
Published on
The Performances of Gina Pane through the Prism of Apulian Tarantism: Between the Repressive Economy of Blood and the Visibility of Popular Feminine Rituals
Janig Bégoc
Abstract
This article considers the use of blood in the performances of artist Gina Pane as the survival of popular feminine rituals that the repressive economy of menstrual blood has largely obscured. By confronting the gestures and wounds produced by G. Pane with those elaborated by the bite of tarantulas in the Apulian ritual of tarantism, this article aims to reveal how G. Pane made an ancient history of knowledge and menstrual blood that has been woven around the symbolic figure of the spider visible through reactivation.
Lecturer at the Université de Strasbourg, Janig Bégoc holds a doctorate in art history and was a former fellow at the Académie de France in Rome. Her research is based on the aesthetic, historiographical and anthropological issues in performance art. She was co-editor of the publication La Performance: Entre archives et pratiques contemporaines (Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011) and Le Texte au risque de la performance, la performance au risque du texte (Approches contemporaines de la création et de la réflexion artistiques, Université de Strasbourg, published in 2019).