Maria - Conception - Action (1969)
By Hermann Nitsch
Directed by Irm & Ed Sommer, Duration: 7 minutes Since 1963, the Austrian avant-gardist Hermann Nitsch has created a series of live happening, which (like Otto Muehl's Sodoma) combine cruelty, sexuality, defilement, and visual shock for purposes of purification, and "ab-reaction" of sado- masochist impulses. This is a film record of his most controversial creation: the crucifixion of a young woman, the disembowelling of a lamb carcass, and her defilement with it. "By the act of crucifixion, disembowelment, defilement, and dismemberment of a lamb carcass the sadistic urge to kill and masochistic wish for self-sacrifice are substituted. Historically, these drives have found no outlet in culture and religion, the potentialities of the sado-masochist instinct being guarded by secret and prohibition. The substitute act of the lamb crucifixion is a brief, forbidden, lustful glance into this potential and serves as partial resolution of that connection with displacement which Nitsch also calls ab-reaction." In the Maria-Conception-Action, the eroticisation and desublimation of the idea of redemption is intensified into pornography ... it complements the flesh of the lamb carcass with t…
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