Have you ever seen any performance art?

"SUNLIGHT! Why are there no LUMBERJACKS, in big cities, BIG CITIES!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/portrait/story/0,11109,739709,00.html

Can we talk more about this?

Performance art is one of those things that you can't talk about.

Although I dig performance art, I like Greil Marcus' idea that the only real example of it would be if someone out of the audience stood up, took over the "stage" and announced: "I am the artist now."

http://www.uiowa.edu/~artlearn/ASJHR/images/image003_001.png

or rather, that idea of griel marcus's isn't really his idea. beauys, to name one, got there before him.

that's a really beautiful photograph.

Maybe not traditional performance art but some of the performance work here

http://www.semihemisphere.com/

is really good. She mixes animation and back-projection and live performance so well. I saw Dreaming Of Lucid Living live and it was great.

I did some once. '92 maybe? Before, like, 3 audience members per show on Ludlow Street.

i went to that franklin furnace anniversary thing recently

When I was a child I saw a performance in a squat in Rome by a collective of Italian anarchists dressed up weird with heavy white face makeup, talking in an old dialect that none of the audience could understand. I think it may have been a play but it was quite performance arty. In hindsight I probably would have got a lot more out of it if I'd been older. The girls were good looking with nice haircuts.

Being an internet user, yes, I've seen my fair share of 'shops. It is a lot like stand up in that it can be really good but mostly it is pretty bad unless you're drunk too.

'shops?

Workshops?

Muttonshops?

I saw some when I was at Rutgers - Rutgers was actually pretty important in the Fluxus movement and that tradition continues to some extent. I seem to remember one involving a very thin man, a Rutgers art professor, who was holding himself in a difficult position and, I think, covering himself with twigs and leaves? I also vicariously learned about various performance artists through my wife when she was an art student.

Sometimes I make fun of performance art to my wife - usually either by standing on one foot and moving very slowly or very jerkily, or by doing that "OMG I'm covered in existential fire ants get them off me get them off me!" movement (also found in modern dance). Fun aside, it's really not something one can generalize about, as it's probably as broad as sculpture or painting or any other art, if not broader.

no, and i never hear about this anymore. does anyone still care?

The people doing it now, especially folks in their twenties, aren't calling it performance art anymore.

Same way there's a whole underground literary movement going on, but it has nothing to do with "spoken word".

what's the term used these days??

i think it has something to do with "voting"

Holly Hughes taught at my school so yes. She has definitely mellowed out since the NEA4 days :(

What's exciting about what's happening now is that it doesn't have a name yet. In Chicago, you have stuff like Pink: A (Love) Courier Service and The Anatomy Collective as well as more writerly events like the Reconstruction Room and Second Story.

80s performance art resulted in This American Life and Northern Exposure. The cultural battles were either won or abandoned (who is doing anything like United States Live now?). Whatever is happening now will have some new terminology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lmvX00TLY

my paradigms are totally fucking shattered now

Holly Hughes taught at my school so yes. She has definitely mellowed out since the NEA4 days :(

― Pillbox, Saturday, October 18, 2008 12:24 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Hey me too! I was in a performance piece she conceived/directed.

I know nothing about performance art, but I'm going to NYC over Labor Day weekend to see the Christian Marclay retrospective at the Whitney (and Gysin at the New Museum), and they're doing this as well. Worth a look? I mean, I'll check it out anyway, I'll be there, but anything I should read/see/watch beforehand that might help me appreciate it on more than just a surface level? Particularly major artists in the field I should read up on? The only names I recognize are Warhol, Ono and Longo, which is pretty pathetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRNZmdb8w9I

My friends and I were just discussing performance art...the butterdance came up. My friend really loves Marina Abramovic, says she is so pure. It's something I loved in high school and my first two years of college but now not so much.

http://taboofart.com/2013/08/28/an-open-letter-from-a-dancer-who-refused-to-participate-in-marina-abramovics-moca-performance/

taboofart.com seems like a desperate and ultimately pathetic domain name

weird timing on that blog post-- that happened two years ago