• THE ARCHITECTURE

• OF ANATOMY

• (1993)

Solo performance • Installation • Duration • Sculpture

The Architecture of Anatomy was a five-hour solo performance about land, nationhood, identity and rage. It was created for It’s Not Unusual, a season of live work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, dedicated to the memory of Derek Jarman and Ron Vawter.

Presented in the ICA’s Brandon Room gallery space, a Grade I-listed Regency drawing room in close proximity to Buckingham Palace, The Architecture of Anatomy was a durational performance installation. The core physical task Pacitti set himself was to turf the room with grass and use this new verge, adjacent to the Mall, as a base from which to construct a new Union Jack.

The flag was made from bucketloads of rotting meat and fish, offal, innards, sausages, eggs, sliced white bread, rat poison, bleach, salt, sugar, coal, vinegar, fabric poppies, small plastic soldiers, toy cars, painkillers and soiled toilet roll. Some ingredients were used raw; others were boiled or fried on a small electric stove set up in a corner of the space. A bent Full English.

At one end of the room, a large white screen carried a projected outline of the British Isles. An overhead projector was used to fill this outline with other images throughout the work: close-ups of insects, needles and pins, and handwritten texts. Beside the screen, Northern Ireland appeared on a TV monitor, boxed, secondary, annexed.

With viewers standing or sitting around the edge of the room, some for the entire five-hour duration, The Architecture of Anatomy was a performance task set up with nowhere to hide. It was hot and loud inside the heavily curtained space - hymns, stately music, the constant sound of rain and rumbling thunder played throughout. The fish, meat, turf and chemicals gave off powerful odours. Alongside this, Pacitti recounted difficult real-life confessional experiences, speaking softly into a microphone while blindfolded or looking away from the viewers, creating an intense environment.

Polaroids taken by Robert during the work and shown on this page are all that now remain physically of this early work. Poor-quality video documentation also exists.