- “… Defined as constitutive of postmodernism because of their fundamental subversion of modernism’s assumption that fixed meanings are determinable through the formal structure of the work alone “
- Performance art takes influence from theater, dance, and visual arts (which will be useful to remember during my project)
- Emphasis on presence and/or absence of the body
- Body, site, audience, and time are the four pillars
other performers and audience members may be included in the performance- I want to try and include other people in my final performance - Why are performance artists so drawn to the idea of the endurance of the human body? There are so many performances involving the artist putting themselves in danger to explore this concept.
- The key difference between performing arts and performance art is “making not “faking”. Acting requires playing a character. Performance art is not acting, it is using the body as a medium. Every action and its result is a real occurrence and is not staged.
- “…History is not objective, it is a contextualized construction”
- Performance art took a lot of influence from the idea that the artist was a shaman and that art was the ritual
- Action-painting (think Jackson Pollock) is believed to also be a major cause for the rise of performance art
- Limited documentation of past performances (both intentional and due to technical limitations) has caused increased interest- raises them to an almost mythological level
- “Adrian Heathfield frames the current flux in performance practice as eventhood. ‘Eventhood allows spectators to live for a while in the paradox of two impossible desires: to be present in the moment, to savor it, and to save the moment, to still and preserve its power long after it has gone’ ”
“What Is…” Performance Art Notes
Published
ART 1120 Process Journal 