About the Series · Donating the “Self”
The artist made himself entirely over to the public realm as a “donatable object.” Any individual or organisation whose intention and motive were recognised could call upon his body and his actions. The artist became a volunteer and a helper, entering care homes, orphanages and charitable activities, intervening in society in a posture of “de-selfing.” In the process of actively relinquishing subjectivity, he paradoxically obtained a freedom and joy that exceeded individual boundaries.
Core themes: the ceding of subjectivity, the dissolution of the self, the paradox of freedom, ethical art
Full Essay
Donating the Self
August 2011 — August 2012
This project is a year-long practice of performance art in which the artist made himself entirely over to the public realm as a “donatable object,” constructing a framework of social intervention whose only mechanism of admission was “the vetting of motive.” Any individual or organisation needed only to submit an intention and motive that were recognised in order to call upon the artist's body, time and capacity for action, making him the executing subject of a particular social affair.
In the course of this year, the artist's identity underwent continuous flow and reconstruction: volunteer, helper, server in care homes and orphanages, participant in charitable activities of every kind. Through the decision to actively relinquish subjectivity, the artist shifted his making from the production of aesthetic objects to the reshaping of networks of relation, entering deep into the tissue of society in a posture of “de-selfing.”
This project is situated within the lineage of the “social turn” in contemporary art, forming a dialogue with Nicolas Bourriaud's “relational aesthetics” while also constituting a radical advance upon it. Bourriaud emphasises the artwork as a catalyst of “social encounter,” yet still presupposes the artist's subject position as producer of relations; the “Donating the Self” project, by turning the artist himself into a “social resource” that can be called upon, thoroughly dismantles the division between creator and work, subject and object.
The core paradox of the project lies in this: by relinquishing free will, the artist paradoxically obtained a more fundamental freedom. When the “self” no longer exists as a stable frame of reference, the fixed burden of identity is dissolved, and a lightness of existence appears. This experience approaches the state of “no-self” in Eastern philosophy, yet is realised through the practice of social intervention — by embedding oneself entirely in the tissue of social relations.
“Serve the people,” explicitly cited in this project, here constitutes a practice of translation within the context of contemporary art. Unlike the top-down structure of mobilisation in political discourse, “serve the people” here is a state of existence following the voluntary dissolution of the subject — “the people” is no longer an abstract collective noun but specific individuals with needs; and “service” is no longer an ideological performance but an ethical practice carried out with the body.
The “Donating the Self” project finally poses a methodological proposition for contemporary art: when the artist donates himself as material, making extends into the generation of relation, the flow of identity and the opening of ethical experience. At the edge of the self's cancellation, it touches the most radical question of contemporary art — the meaning of making may lie precisely in what one disappears into.