Essays and Articles by: Anna SIMINA [2025], Liga BUSEVICA [2025], Harald SCHOLE [2024], Jennie KLEIN [2022 / 2016], Marga van Mechelen [2014- coming soon], Alex DE VRIES [2014- coming soon], Bart RUTTEN [2014- coming soon], Ines DEN ROOIJEN [2010], de APPEL Amsterdam [2009], Rob PERREE [2008], Anne STONE [2006], Paul GROOT [1997], Rob PERREE [1990], Rob PERREE [1989], Peter MCRAE [1986], Koos DALSTRA [1982], Koos DALSTRA [1981]
In English [otherwise in Dutch]
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2025
Anna Simina Let your crazy god in. Diary of the festival “STARPTELPA / Interspace” LSM.lv Latvian Public Media – Riga, 3 June 2025
Below: fragment on THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING HUMAN memento mori by Anna Simina
The tense atmosphere must be calmed by the next artist – I see a skier dressed in black slowly walking through the courtyard from the side of Lāčplēša Street. Following the image, the audience is led into the hall, where Dutch artist Peter Baren awaits us, greeting us with a hushed: “memento mori.” Cardboard signs with inscriptions are placed along the walls of the room, which gives me an immersive feeling – as if the white walls of Zuzeum were a skull and I had now entered the inside of my own head. The feeling is reinforced by various words (e.g. spirit, meatjoy) adorning black boomerangs on a table at one end of the hall, next to them is a pile of white embroidery with messages of a different nature (I noticed the word HOPE). In addition to the skier, there are other images in the room, which are more reminiscent of works of art – one of them literally, hanging about two meters above the ground on the wall of the space. They are all united by a mystique soundscape – they are exactly as scary and incoherent as dreams and sometimes thoughts usually are. At the end of the performance, the skier leaves his skis in the hall and walks back into the yard and disappears; I follow him without hesitation, because I don’t want to stay in my head for too long. The memento mori theme continues in its own right in the next performance titled “End of days”, however, the atmosphere in the room has become much brighter.
Liga Busevica Online with yourself. About the live performance program at “Starptelpa” festival LSM.lv Latvian Public Media – 9 June 2025
2024
kM Tijdschrift over Kunst & Materiaal. Voorjaar 2024. Speciaal nummer over LICHAAM. Tekst: DE TRAMS STONDEN STIL door Harald Schole. [DUTCH}
Magazine on Art & Material. Special issue on BODY. Text: THE TRAMS STOPPED by Harald Schole. Front cover photo: Wolfgang Traeger.
2022
Jennie Klein. PETER BAREN PERFORMANCE SUITES. Published in EL RIZO ROBADO Mexican online Art & Poetry magazine. March special issue on performance art.
2010
PETER BAREN OMGEKEERDE ZAKKENROLLER // REVERSED PICKPOCKET Ines Den Rooijen De Fabriek – Een Boek Om Mee te Slaan [DUTCH] // De Fabriek – A Book To Hit With
2009
THE MANIFOLD [AFTER] LIVES OF PERFORMANCE
About the symposium with lectures and live performances organised by De Appel Amsterdam and STUK Leuven [November 2009]
link to the full program https://www.deappel.nl/nl/archive/events/586-the-manifold-after-lives-of-performance
Hanna Holling Witness report on the Afterlife of Performance link below
below the link to De Appel Archive to more material about my previous presentations
https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/entities/1003-peter-baren
left image: Peter Baren FLEET OF ARKS [Under The Arches Of Societies] performances at Theater Frascati – 14 and 15 November 2009 / right image: Bertha Bermudez
2008
Rob Perree.
Peter Baren’s ARK series A COMMITTED SEARCH FOR LIMITS
“Whatever you call it, performance art, live art, time based art, I think it’s alive and kicking. Performance art continues and will always continue as long as the primal desires underpinning theatre and dance and a live action in front of people has contemporary relevance. I think that need is even more necessary now than ever before.”
Mark Russell, 2005.
Performance is a medium that is not only on the move, but also a subject of discussion. Actually it has always been so. It arose in the 1960s and 1970s as one of the forms of expression of conceptual art, a form of art where “artists work with meaning, not with shapes, colors or material”, as Joseph Kosuth formulated it in 1996. There was, however, never any strict definition. In this way it granted itself the freedom to experiment. “Undefined, there were no rules to break. Artists were able to employ the widest range of subject matter, using virtually any medium or material; they could present their work at any time, for any duration of time, at the location of their choosing, in direct contact with their audience.” (1) It was art that served as a vehicle for ideas and actions, as Martha Wilson describes it on the Franklin Furnace website. Such ruleless forms of art are extremely nice and challenging for its practitioners, but are often experienced as difficult for art critics and others who have to deal with them professionally. Such people still have the tendency to trouble them with a definition so that they better lend themselves to being described and reviewed and to conform more to traditional forms of presentation. They want to determine the limits. These limits start to live a life of their own and then the remarkable fact arises that the practitioners of these forms of art are ultimately held to account for and to be judged by them.
The discussion that arose a few years ago in the Netherlands in connection with an issue of Metropolis M devoted to performance should also be seen in this light. In this, the editor-in-chief Dominiek Ruyters denied the medium the right to claim “the here and now, with every suggestion of authenticity and originality, let’s say the special line to life itself.” A remarkable reproach, since it was not the performance artists who had demanded such a definition, but art critics like Ruyters who imposed this restriction on the medium. He was passing over a history of performance in which there had always been much ground in common with theatre, dance and music; in which ‘static’, materialised art had never been sidelined; where recordings of performances in the form of videotapes, drawings or photographs had always led an independent existence. That artists were emerging in the late 1990’s who reenacted their own performances or those of others – by way of research or from the need to compare an earlier experience with an experience at a different age and in a different location or as an attempt at interesting a new public – was less strange for the practitioners of the medium than for the critics who followed it professionally. The common factor in the whole history of performance was never more than, and never wished to be more than, an “action for an audience”.
Peter Baren (b. 1954) has always occupied an idiosyncratic position within performance. His work cannot be captured in a simple description. From the outset his performances couldn’t have cared less about restricting definitions (for a long time he didn’t even want to use the word ‘performance’). He has always regarded the medium as experimental and open. He decided to use it in the early 1980s because he felt a need for more direct contact with the viewer and because he was fascinated by “stretching time”, so that you start seeing things that are actually not there.
Over the course of the years he has tried out a number of different variants. Sometimes he carries out an action on his own in a particular space. Usually he surrounds himself with others. In these cases he not only conceives and carries out the performance but also directs it. With a number of performances he feels that it is not necessary to take part himself. He then leaves all the actions to ‘occasional actors’ or even to a dummy. In this way he makes a contribution to the discourse about authorship. “Almost from the beginning he abstracted his personal problems, choosing a stylised or symbolic manifestation. For him, performance has always been ‘a profession’ rather than ‘life itself’. This is why it is always possible for his ideas to be expressed in other forms.” (2) The one performance is closer to the tradition of physically oriented, realistic body art, the other has more in common with the rules and laws of theatre. Usually the members of the audience are spectators, but in a number of cases he makes them participants. Indoors or outdoors, he never imposes restrictions. He always adapts himself to the local circumstances. While sound and light were important elements in his older works, this seems to be rather less the case in recent years.
Almost all of Peter Baren’s performances leave traces behind in the space where they are performed. Sometimes he affixes photographs, paintings, drawings or texts in advance, but the writing of words or sentences is often part of the action and sometimes the space has the allure of an installation. In that case the performance is comparable with an inauguration ritual of a work of art whose task is then to live an independent life. Although it is difficult to discern themes in his works, there are certain subjects that recur through the years in varying forms. He often gives a tilt to reality, so that confusion is created and the viewer is forced to reflect on his ideas. In addition, he shows people in vulnerable situations, situations of abandonment, oppression, fear or impotence. He lets them fight against the element of time that makes such things as enjoyment and pleasure finite. Since he carries out his performances in all sorts of locations in the world, he tries to evoke questions among his audience that are related to the location concerned. In recent years in particular, a greater role has been assigned to engagement.
In 2004 he started a series of performances under the title ARK, which is still ongoing. The word series is somewhat misleading, as it threads together performances that do have a number of elements in common, it’s true, but also many that differ from one another. They often start from a basic form: an oval which is usually literally drawn on the floor. This oval could refer to Noah’s ark, but in the symbolic rather than Biblical sense of the word. As a sign of a new beginning, as a sign of hope. Fragments of texts or words are often written around it. These can be explained in all sorts of ways but they are most probably expressions of communication or mis-communication. In some of the ARK variants a man leads another man who can’t manage on his own as he is blindfolded. This could be a reference to the vulnerable, helpless man who often appears in Baren’s work. The idea of a ‘blind date’ likewise comes up, perhaps as an attempt at introducing an element of surprise. Or an incentive to make contact in one way or another. However, the blindfold can also symbolise introversion. That the man being led has satellites around his arms could be a way of making him part of the universe and thus even smaller than he already feels. Or more universal than the action suggested at that moment and at that place. Dangers that threaten man acquire the form of a boomerang: drawn with chalk, as an object fixed into the wall or actually thrown at the conclusion of a performance.
Peter Baren wants his audience to be involved in and carried along by these performances. This is why they are never unambiguous and never allow of one interpretation only. They are by definition puzzles asking to be solved. For this reason, he intensifies them by having the actions performed in a sort of mist, in close proximity to the audience, or by rubbing the participants with a sticky, sweet substance and/or by wrapping them in transparent foil, so that on the one hand they awaken (erotic) desires and on the other hand ruthlessly ensure that these feelings do not stand a chance. In short, Baren tries to mobilise all the senses of his audience. It cannot and should not be that the spectators leave the location unmoved. A performance by Peter Baren is not a spectacle, but an emotional experience.
He also achieves this by adapting his ARK performances to the city or country where they take place. He always employs local ‘actors’ or artists. People who bring with them their own story, their own history and their own culture. Moreover, he implicitly incorporates the (political) circumstances that characterise the location. The performance in Tel Aviv – outdoors, along places where outrages had once been carried out – was hence different than the one in Vancouver or Haamstede, for example. The Israeli public reacted more intensively than the Dutch one.
It is neither possible nor necessary to point to every element of every ARK performance. The series underlines all the more the proposition that, like few others, Peter Baren is seeking and extending the (alleged) limits of performance. He deals with it in such a way that the richness of the medium becomes visible. He turns it into a medium that does not bind itself to a particular period in (art)history and to a particular form. A medium that does not allow itself to be isolated or to be pushed into a pigeonhole. A medium that experts are unable to grasp. He brings performance back to its essence: an activity carried out at a particular moment at a particular place. And however paradoxical it may sound, he thereby gives the medium optimum space.
Rob Perrée New York/Amsterdam 2008 Translated from Dutch by Michael Gibbs.
1. The Art of Performance. A Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battock, Robert Nickas, New York 1984, p. X. 2. Rob Perrée. Peter Baren of hoe de werkelijkheid verbeelding wordt. Kunstbeeld, April 1989, p. 35
2008
Rob Perree. De ARK serie door PETER BAREN GEENGAGEERD OP ZOEK NAAR DE GRENZEN [DUTCH] 2012 – 2004
2006
Anne Stone. Peter Baren. LIVE Bienniale 2005. Vancouver.
1997
Paul Groot. LUST And Other Terminal Bodies. Bratislava SK installation [DUTCH and English]. Artist publication.
ECCE HOMO [THIRSTY LANDSCAPE III] 1985. 259 X 272 cm. Coll. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. ECCE HOMO 1985. 224 X 297 cm. Coll. the artist.
1992
April / May
PETER BAREN by IJsbrand van Veelen. Essay in HILLS + MILLS the catalogue that accompanied the groupexhibitions with Slovak artists in Amsterdam and Dutch artists in Bratislava.
1990
Rob Perree. Franklin Furnace / New York performances. Artist publication. [COMING SOON]
1989
Rob Perree. Performance in de jaren tachtig. Peter Baren of hoe de verbeelding werkelijkheid wordt.
Kunstbeeld nr. 13/3, April [DUTCH]
1986
PETER MCRAE EXPLOITATION-PERFORMANCES Performance magazine nr 43/44 November 1986 / January 1987
1982
Koos Dalstra. SMAAK EN MACHT Maak en Smacht over het werk van Peter Baren, Peer Veneman en Frank van den Broeck. Metropolis M. October 1982. Nummer 5 [DUTCH]
1981
Koos Dalstra. PETER BAREN. Metropolis M. December 1981. Nummer 2. Jaargang 3. [DUTCH]
