This video shows the action from a performance staged by Bruce Nauman a few years before in 1965, in which he manipulated (and played with) a neon tube 8 feet long to create different shapes with his own body. When Bruce Nauman did this performance, he realized that some of his positions were only simple modifications of body posture, while others triggered very strong feelings in him. When he repeated the performance to make the video in 1969, he mainly kept the postures with emotional resonance. In 1965-66, he did a similar performance, but with a T-shaped iron bar.

In the dark, closed space of his studio, Bruce Nauman is sitting on the ground, with his legs apart like in a dance exercise and the fluorescent tube of light placed between his legs as if to evoke his penis. After a time, he closes his legs on the tube, leans towards the ground while holding his feet and remains immobile in this position for several minutes. The neon tube becomes an extension of his body, a member which he then takes in his hands to touch his feet, raising it in front of him, placing it on his body and moving it around in space. In this way, he spends an hour trying out a whole range of positions and shapes. Every time he creates a new situation with the neon tube, he freezes in the position for several minutes. The object and body are treated as formal elements of the same order, turned over, moved and raised in harmony and in concert. In this way, Bruce Nauman creates shifts between the object and the idea. The object and the body almost merge into a single entity. Indeed, by using his body as a material for sculpture, he makes himself the raw material for his work: simultaneously material and artist, the perceiver and the perceived.

The camera is fixed and angled slightly downwards to show the floor. The neon tube is the only light source, illuminating and sometimes blinding, obscuring half his face. Indeed, we rarely see the whole of his body. The darkness of the room and the artist's multiple movements , sometimes with his back to the camera, only allow us to see fragments. The soundtrack is made up of the sound of his movements within the space and certain external elements, such as the noise of cars which we hear from time to time.

With the aim of highlighting the importance of the process compared with the result, Bruce Nauman developed the habit of drawing up detailed lists of all the possibilities and variations of the actions which he would subsequently execute. On the one hand, this was to keep his anxiety visible through these obsessive acts and, on the other hand, to retain a certain control over the situation.

Cristina Ricupero