Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube

In the darkness of his studio, Bruce Nauman is sitting on the floor as in a dance exercise, a neon tube placed between his outspread legs. After a few minutes, he leans forward, closing one leg over the tube while maintaining the position of his feet. In the course of the film, he changes the relationship of his body to the tube several times, maintaining each position for a further few minutes. The flickering neon tube becomes an extension of his body and the only source of light. Object and body merge into a single entity that is fragmented by a light that sometimes dazzles and sometimes obscures.

Nauman understood that the process of artistic creation was as important as art itself, so everything he produced alone in his studio was also art. The important part of this process was no longer the product but the activity.