Joining (with Tom Marioni)

Petr Štembera, born in 1945, is a key player in Czech performance and conceptual art of the 1970s. During this time, he had many contacts to the progressive art world in the West. His performative actions and happenings are reminiscent of body art. They often had a politically subversive subtext and they struggled with the difficult political and cultural situation in Czechoslovakia after 1968. Life in a totalitarian regime, ideological manipulation and demagogy were frequent themes in Štembera’s works. His actions were documented in black-and-white photographs with clear descriptions of locations and plots. The action <k>Joining (with Tom Marioni)<k> took place during a visit to Prague by American conceptual artist Tom Marioni on September 27, 1975, in the attic of an art nouveau building in the district of Dejvice. The artist described this action as follows: “I joined our bodies together with two circles, the first made of condensed milk and the second out of condensed hot chocolate. In the center of the two circles I emptied a jar of hungry ants. Some of the ants moved toward the circles, where they sensed food and perhaps a way to escape. But they got stuck there. The other ants stayed in the center of the circle and began to bite our bodies.” There is no documentation of how long the two artists held out before calling this action to a close.