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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}

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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?



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The Usual Suspects

Jacques Derrida

  

Techniques