Long Suffering productively links avant-garde performance practiceswith religious histories in the United States, setting contemporaryperformances of endurance art within a broader context of propheticreligious discourse in the United States. Its focus is on the work of RonAthey, Linda Montano, and John Duncan, U.S.-based artists whoseperformances involve extended periods of suffering. These unsettlingperformances can disturb, shock, or frighten audiences, leaving themunsure how to respond. The book examines how these artists workat the limits of the personal and the interpersonal, inflicting sufferingon themselves and others, transforming audiences into witnesses,straining social relations, and challenging definitions of art and of ethics.By performing the death of self at the heart of trauma, strategies ofendurance signal artists' attempts to visualize, legitimize, and testify tothe persistent experience of being wounded. The artworks discussed findtheir foundations in artists' early experiences of religion and connectionswith the work of reformers from Angelina Grimke to Rev. Martin LutherKing, who also used suffering as a strategy to highlight social injusticeand call for ethical, social, and political renewal.

About the Author
Karen Gonzalez Rice is Sue and Eugene Mercy Assistant Professor of ArtHistory, Connecticut College, USA.

Reviews
"The author's engagement with the actual performances through anintense immersion in archival material, primary sources, interviews withthe artists, and a broad and sustained engagement with the contextand historical circumstances of this work make this book particularlycompelling, and her attempt to counter the academic mistrust offundamentalism and embrace of secularism is laudable. Equallysignificant is her engagement with the relationship between ecstaticreligions, ethical actions, moral imperatives, and the history of religiousrevivalism and reform in the U.S." - Jennie Klein, Ohio University



Book Information
ISBN 9780472053247
Author Karen Gonzalez Rice
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press
Weight(grams) 320g