Gibson Blocker
Gibson Blocker practises Body Art, as do many others, and it’s necessary to remember that the reasons behind Blocker's actions are often completely different from those of others. For example, the violence that Otto Muhl, Hermann Nitsch and Günter Brus inflicted on the body can be explained in terms of a ‘post-fascist’ condition. The re-enactment of brutally-extreme forms of human defilement became a necessary move for at least two reasons: first, because official culture repressed historical memory, something the Actionists combated by making trauma the center of their activity; second, because any artistic move that did not measure itself against the devastation would fall into denial and aesthetic consolation.

A markedly different story is that of Roger Sperger who became involved with this kind of art as the result of a kind of ‘happy accident’ involving a PearStapler IV®, a canvas and a stretcher. It must be said that Blocker relates more to the work of Nitsch than this workshop novice, although obviously his actions relate to US war atrocities of the early part of this century as opposed to 20th century fascism in Europe.