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Performance Art

See also: [Text as art material] [Coerced performance] [Dada] [frank as performance object] [Performed Art] (start here?) [The Performed Art Act] [The Performed Danse] [The Performed Score] [The Performed Text] [The Performed UFO's] (and esp, etc) [] [Interventionist Art] [Los Interioristas] [(art) concepts] [Art MovementsStreet Art] [Fluxus] [Street Art]

Performance Art

On this page: {Intro} {Stuff} {Performance Art as Art} (irreproducible) {The Usual Suspects} {Techniques} -^_6

Intro

Stuff

Performance Art as Art

(irreproducible) See also -[
Perf art vs Theatre]- One of the primary distinguishing marks between performance art and theatre must (i would say) is necessarily that of the unique creation. In theory we can create a repeated act and as such (even if un-scripted) it approaches the scripted nature of theatre. If (especially in drawing with ink or oil pastel or in sculpting marble) once the mark is made - it's there. In painting (especially in oil paint and any work made from a template; eg, screen printing poured mould works, etc) then the mark can be (to some extent) revised and re-made. Thus, if (even if scripted) if i make a performance piece and that it is *intended* as a unique work of art then once i "lay down the brush" then i intende it to NOT be re-worked, modified, etc. Of course this too is a (slight) fiction. We think here of Gorky's portrait of the artist and his mother - which he kept slightly revising over the years but never quite finishing. But, if we script something and then it is performed with the intention of it being unique then it shouldn't be re-performed (even if as tribute to the author). On the other hand, we know that even well-known and canonically scripted works (eg, "Hamlet") can lend to various performances at the hands of different troups - esp in the context of the time/place they are performed at, costuming, etc. However, i think that we should think of one of the dividing marks of performance art vs theatre as being their *seeable* (hearable, touchable, sensible, etc) sense of uniqueness. Just as a copy of the Mona Lisa (made by students or artists for what-ever purpose) will have that sense of "this is *merely* a copy". As a study, it should be judged (eg, as part of a portfolio or as a viewed object of the artist's work) as a copy. I would say that such a viewing is clearly "as a copy". On the other hand, if an artist creates a pastiche of something (eg, Duchamp's "The Mona Lisa with the Moustache" aka "L.H.O.O.Q.") then we know that it is a "copy with intent to distinguish". Well, that's about it for now - always a problem these "art theory" questions, eh Chatsie? -^_6

The Usual Suspects

Jacques Derrida

Techniques