The Thousands

It’s like mindlessly flipping between channels on a Sunday and accidentally hitting the ABC Arts afternoon programming. Another boring doco on arty wank, you think, but wait, here come scenes of animal corpses being cut open, their guts being played with by white-clad people and their blood splattered across nude bodies on crucifixes. Welcome to the world of Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, the subject of HN Hermann Nitsch, a documentary about his “action” art, which is screening as part of Revelation.

Emerging in the 1960s with one sheep carcass and a few friends, Nitsch began to communicate his vision of ‘total art’, which comprised of immersive, confronting, ritualistic ceremonies meant to offend the conservative sensibilities of the day. HN Hermann Nitsch works as a documentary in that it’s informative – I didn’t know anything about this guy or his pieces like The 6 Day Play before seeing it. But the problematic aspects of Nitsch’s art aren’t explored too deeply; interviewees bang on about him like he’s their cult leader. There’s no denying his blood-strewn pageantry has effect though I leave it up to you to decide which side of the art/wank divide it sits on.