[Marina

Abramovic]

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE ART?

A STARTING POINT

A woman walks on stage. She unfurls two large scrolls of white paper and arranges a few
objects alongside: two tape recorders and 10 knives.

She presses the record button and kneels.

Placing her left hand on the thick paper, she picks up a knife and begins to stab
rhythmically, the knife jumping between her five splayed fingers.

With each accidental wound she retires a knife and picks up another. This dance of knife,
paper, and flesh is repeated until all 10 knives have been bloodied.

Moving onto the second sheet of paper, the woman plays the previous recording and
wields the first knife for a second time. Listening intently, she attempts to replicate the
previous event, stab for stab, knife for knife, wound for wound.

She exits the stage leaving behind two bloody sheets of paper and two tape recorders
playing simultaneously, the overlapping sounds of stabs and moans occasionally lining
up in near-perfect harmony.

This is Marina Abramovics Rhythm 10 (1973). This is performance art.

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE ART?
Performance art is a diverse and experimental art form that is not easily defined and
may even actively attempt to subvert or resist its own definitions.

At its core there are typically four variables: time, space, the performers body, and a
relationship between performer and audience. These variables are extremely flexible,
and do not adhere to strict rules.

The performance itself can be comprised of any situation conceived by an artist which is
then enacted in the world.

It may be scripted or unscripted, carefully planned or entirely spontaneous, highly

orchestrated or completely anarchic or it may be any combination of these elements.

It can occur with or without a direct audience, viewed live or by proxy, or merely
performed and documented.

Performance art can happen anywhere and last for any length of time.

It is the act of performance itself -- enacted by the performer or group of performers, in

its time and place -- that constitute the piece of art, although the performance may
incorporate a variety of media.


DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PERFORMANCE ART AND THE PERFORMING ARTS

Performance art is often interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of painting, sculpture,
dance, theater, music and other visual and performative arts.

What differentiates performance art from visual arts such as painting and sculpture is its
main goal: the creation of an event rather than a physical art object. If there is a primary
medium used in performance art it is the human body.

What differentiates performance art from the performing arts such as theater is that
performance art is not a space of make believe. In the theater, a knife is fake and the
blood it draws is fake. In performance art, the knife is real and the blood is real.

Performance art, however, in its many incarnations, does not exclude the use of
theatrical elements and does not inherently dismiss the legitimacy of the performing
arts, but it typically blurs the line between art and life.

WHAT ARE SOME FREQUENT CONCERNS OF PERFORMANCE ART?

De-objectification of art
Relationships between performer/audience and time
Relationships between performer and audience
Relationships between performer and him or herself
Relationships between performer/audience and environment
Relationships between performer/audience and art medium
Relationships between performer/audience and the body
Limits of bodily endurance/experience
Slowing down, speeding up, or repetition of physical movement
Incorporation of chance events
Execution of highly staged and dramatic events
Execution of self-imposed instructions
Voluntary abandonment of free will
Juxtaposition of media or phenomena that do not normally coincide
Publication of private experience
Privatization of public experience
Personal and social implications of voyeurism
Personal and social implications of art as commodity
The nature of subjective experience
 The nature of universal experience
Social, political, and existential concerns such as racism, sexism, politics, history,
mass media, economics, poverty, philosophy, spirituality, mortality, interpersonal
relationships, empathy, the human condition, and more
Explorations of artist as art-object or art medium