Fight, Flight, or Freeze: Stilling the Moving Image in Bruce Nauman’s Contrapposto Studies, i through vii

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Bruce Nauman’s art installations provoke audience experiences analogous to those felt during traumatic events. A central assertion of the present study is that the looping mechanisms of Nauman’s video artworks produce a theoretical stilling of the moving image that is reflective of the fight-flight-or-freeze response to a highly charged incident, which often entails a temporal shift as time appears to slow to a halt. Whereas in the past, the human response to acute stress was typically prompted by a physical threat in the natural environment, today an evolutionary misfire occurs when this survival mechanism becomes prompted instead during everyday situations. Throughout human history, the experience of viewing an artwork has developed into an act of aesthetic appreciation involving a search for meaning. However, in this case, the sensory overload triggered by Nauman’s artwork purposefully impedes neuroprocessing, highlighting the adverse effects of mediation saturation in contemporary society; therefore, a stilling of the moving image in essence functions as a biological adaptation strategy in an attempt to come to terms with the puzzling nature of these artworks. By applying French philosopher Roland Barthes’s theories of the image, this article expands Barthes’s thought from the image to the performative as a reflection of human adaptation to technological advancement.