Hermann Nitsch was an Austrian artist who is known for his transgressive performance art.

His seven minute short “Maria-Conception-Action: Hermann Nitsch” (1969) illustrates how the past is a foreign country.

The performance is a combination of a sadomasochistic performance, artsploitation and carnography.

A typical scene from Herman Nitsch’s happenings featured cruelty, sexuality, blood and violence.

In the “Maria-Conception-Action: Hermann Nitsch” a young women is crucified and defiled with a disemboweled lamb carcass.

That film is not featured on YouTube but it can be faintly seen on footage of a concert by the band Concrete Flesh.

The closest I ever came to witnessing a spectacle like this is, is seeing Tier Mon (1988) by La Fura dels Baus in Antwerp when I was 23. And then there was Abattoir Fermé, the Belgian theater group whose aesthetics sometimes flirt somewhat with that of Nitsch.