BEAUTY CONTEST: HUMAN BEAUTY
AND ITS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
Beauty in the social context and beauty in the context of art are to me two approaches that do not
necessarily coincide with each other. Taking as a starting point Darwin’s theory of beauty as a
condition in the struggle for survival and reproduction, in the animal kingdom beauty is most
compellingly represented by the peacock, who not only displays his glorious plumage to his preferred
sexual partners, but also to his enemies. I view it as an aesthetic of performance, what Hegel would
call a perception of beauty in a performative context. Apropos beauty in art and society, the idea of
beauty in reference to art is equally attributable to biological mechanisms. In this case, though, it’s not
about sensual/sexual attractiveness, but more complex forms of beauty. To me, then, the subtext of
“Beauty Contest: Human Beauty and Its Social Construction” represents a certain paradox since in a
social context an attractive person in the artistic sense does not necessarily have to be beautiful.
Beauty is not a question of taste or style, nor can it be explained with words subordinate to beauty, like
“elegance” and “grace.” Beauty brings us to the depths of art and aesthetics and to general principles
and fundamental values of appearance and visual perception. I feel that beauty is also defined by
coherent ideas that can have an unattractive appearance. This is why art can please us without being
pleasing. It can be pleasing without pleasing us in a deeper sense that could then be called beauty.
I would also like to take a look at beauty in the context of my own work. My current performance,
“Experimental Subject Silke Grabinger,” is a concept involving five choreographers, each of whom
created a ten-minute piece about my person and my body. They explored my abilities, weakness, and
aesthetics and the figure or brand Silke Grabinger. I am a projection surface, object, and concept. The
performance is a testing of my ability to transform, an assessment of the boundaries of my inner and
outer identity. For me, it is a search for my own aesthetics, my perception as reflected in another. The
performance does not slip into the concept; the only material in the performance is me. As one critic
wrote, my person remains the glue connecting the pieces of a puzzle. I have not postulated an
overarching theme. There is no common denominator.
The choreographer Phillipe produced a piece about my “beauty.” He first shows me in a Virgin Mary
pose, pious, pure, a saint, interrupted by the image of the woman who follows the orders of an
invisible choreographer called Philippe. He refers to it as poses from a photo shoot without a camera.
The piece is reduced to the interpretation of the words “I am beautiful!” pronounced by me to motivate
me for the next image. It is a response to the invitation uttered by an invisible photographer to repeat
the words. All of the sequences are interrupted by the transition to the characters and back to my
person. It is the reduced dialogue of a photo shoot. The first sequence is followed by an interpretation
of the “artificial, hypocritical bitch.” Perfection in outfit, sickening ugliness in articulation and in
dialogue, audible only as a nonstop monologue. After that we have a statement that appears to be
repeating Phillipe’s words: “Why in Beijing Opera are women’s roles traditionally played by men?
Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” As a response, there is a negation of
the choreographer, combined with the instruction to mingle with the audience and undress. I follow the
order as a willing enactor and ask the audience to collectively crowd-surf my body.
The choreographer’s comments on the piece:
This solo sees itself as a move. A move from an individual body to a collective body. Playing the world
as a collective experience seems even more relevant in a solo work... During the process we came
across this assumption: “Why in Beijing Opera are women’s roles traditionally played by men? It’s
because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” In other words, “this is a man’s world!”
Changes are to be expected.
Revolutions are on the move. We make a stop here in China.
- Philippe -
I selected this method of open choreography using me as an object without predefined specifications
because entrenched concepts are taboo for me and prompt me to seek reinterpretation and
reinvention. Why do we always stick to the structure we have been taught to follow? Why can’t it be
reversed?
As for the subject of my own beauty in the performance by Phillipe, I am caught up in my own cycle of
dissatisfaction, a lack that is implied by perpetual, prefabricated patterns I have acquired from the
media of society. I function according to these patterns, as an example of beauty, aesthetics – the
perception that evaluates me in society. My biological beauty classifies me within the system. My size
and my physical constitution define me. I can change and manipulate my identity with external
characteristics like hair color, gestures, vocabulary, fashion style, and so on. A societal resocialization
of my beauty: no body hair, no wrinkles, no excess weight, no styling faux pas...
As a dancer, I often get the impression that femininity flirts too much with the bounds of pop culture.
“Watch out for commercialization! Keep away from prominent issues or prominent sponsors or
companies, otherwise you run the risk of going mainstream! Otherwise, the word art will be equated
with the word money. Otherwise, you’ll fall from sophisticated culture and become commonplace. But
isn’t that already the status quo? Hasn’t the disappearance of cultural biotopes in Europe already
precipitated this double-edged trend in which art has to incorporate or imply a commercial idea, at
least in terms of its market value?”
People say that according to Darwin, external beauty makes survival easier and more secure, both in
the selection of partners and in nonsexual interpersonal relationships. Isn’t this precisely what triggers
pigeonholing? Isn’t external beauty immediately equated with commercialism? Why can’t a performer
be exceptionally beautiful? If so, she’d be able to prance along as a dancer in a big commercial
production.
Darwin’s sexual selection and beauty in art have a lot to do with each other, but they are not identical,
if only because the opposite of beauty, the ugly, distorted, and deformed, has a much better chance of
attaining attractiveness in art, and especially in contemporary art, than in everyday life.
What is beauty in 2011? A pure blasphemy of the body cult? The slow death of the current state of an
instant in contemporary cultural psychology? It is an aesthetic of the organized method that imposes
self-torture or chases after it, lost, with full strength and full conviction. I, Silke Grabinger, can be
feminine, but not too much. I can produce, but not too commercially. I can tour, but only with the “right”
festivals. I can become more beautiful, but only on the basis of a mathematical ideal, like the artist
Cindy Sherman or Cindy Jackson (http://www.cindyjackson.com/my-cosmetic-surgery/info_5.html) ,
who intervenes with their bodies as a god-like being: a recreation of the body in their own power of
autonomy.
When I think of beauty, I think of Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr, whose fame and beauty derives from
the first nude shot in the history of film (“Ecstasy,” 1933) rather than from the fact that she is the
inventor of a frequency hopping spread technology that today plays an important role in mobile
communications.
For me, beauty in art and in society is an unfinished project...
Silke Grabinger