Hello everyone. It looks like the site I use to upload these pages is having issues so I will have to do this in a slightly different way. I apologize for any weirdness this may cause in the layout etc. of this post.
If you’d like to see more examples of performance art than what is shown on this page Performance Art YouTube Playlist.
THE CASE FOR PERFORMANCE ART VIDEO In the video above from PBS’ “The Art Assignment” is a great overview of the origins as well as the current state of performance art. If you haven’t done so already please take the 9 minutes to watch it to get a better idea of the performances I’ll be showing in the rest of this post.
The Beginning
Many would say that the beginning of Performance Art and its distinction from the theater and the other disciplines now know as the performing arts was with Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings founding of The Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, This became part of the Dada movement which if you’ll recall from the section on sound art was a direct response to the insanity of the first world war. Below is a performance of Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Karawane” which was performed by Ball in several strange costumes. This isn’t the last time that sound and performance art will cross paths.
The 40’s and the mixing of fine art and performance
Below is a film of Yves Klein and his assistants at a performance in a gallery. As you can see the point of this piece was to get women naked to paint themselves blue and use them as human stamps to create impressions on the canvas. The final paintings were sold after the performance (usually to one of the gentlemen who saw its creation). This is an interesting period in performance as it creates an artifact that can be sold something many later performance artists (and many from the Dada period) would speak against. It’s up to you if you see this as a true expression of art or a brilliant piece of marketing. Note: please feel free to jump around in the video just to get an idea, you don’t need to watch the entire piece.
The 60’s and the Happening
With the rise of the counter-culture Allan Kaprow created the idea of Happening an event that exists outside of the gallery in the general unsuspecting public. The idea was to break people from their day to day routine by creating an experience that the general public could be a part of. Below are a few images of his work as well as a recording of his “How to Create a Happening” record feel free to listen to part of this but, don’t feel like you need to listen to the whole piece.
The Body and Vulnerability
While many performance pieces including those from the Dadaists, many happenings and contemporary performance art such as improv everywhere have a sense of humor and play about them many other pieces deal with the vulnerability and immediacy of having a living breathing person doing something in front of other living breathing people. Below are pieces by Yoko Ono, Marina Abromovic and Chris Burden that focus on this idea
Cut-Piece by Yoko Ono
Yes, that Yoko Ono, please try to watch this in its entirety keep in mind that both Yoko Ono and the audience are only a few years older than you are now, she doesn’t know everyone in the audience who are in their early to late 20s. Also, remember that Ono is from an upper-class Japanese family at a time where modesty is one of the most important “virtues” a woman can have.
Yoko Ono ~ Cut Piece from paulanow on Vimeo.
Rhythm 0 by Marina Abromovic
Marina Abromovic is one of the most well know working performance artists there is. She’s collaborated with Jay-Z and had a piece of her’s cribbed by Shia LaBeouf. In Rhythm 0 Marina invites gallery-goers to do whatever they like to her for the duration of the piece. Just like Cut Piece be aware that people may do the unthinkable even if the gun is loaded.
Marina Abramovic on Rhythm 0 (1974) from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo.
Shoot – Chris Burden
Chris Burden is also well known for his endurance pieces which first started as a protest against the Vietnam war. In Shoot, he gets a person to shoot him with a gun.
The Fluxus Movement and Scores
The Fluxus movement was a movement where you were an artist first and you worked in many different mediums. We’ve seen many members already in both video art – Nam Jun Park and Sound – John Cage. The emphasis of this movement was on the randomness of chance below is a link to a pdf with a collection of scripts for a Fluxus performance. Download it, flip through it to get an idea of what performance meant to some of the members. Keep in mind that many of these scripts were never actually performed.
Download the workbook hereThe 80’s and Commercialization
As the ’80s came into being art became a commodity performance artists such as Lori Anderson were given record deals, had touring stage shows and had music videos on MTV. This is the point where all of the different disciplines that the Fluxus movement was playing with where commercialized and funded. Below is a piece by Klaus Nomi a german opera singer who had a few radio hits, his songs and stage presence where created to show the alienation he felt growing up gay in Germany.
The 90’s and culture hacking
In the ’90s with the advent of the Internet and the availability of media, several political performance pieces were taken online. The Yes Men are a group of culture jammers who use media to get invited on a television or too large events as representatives of corporations. They then make announcements as those corporations to start a discussion.
The Current Century and Technology
Current performance is a mix of many of the things that came before it, in the early 2000’s improv everywhere started creating performances similar to the happenings of the ’60s.
Technology allows performance to go online with YouTube projects such as Benjamin Bennett’s Sitting and Smiling performances and Wafaa Bilal’s – Domestic Tension.