# Performance Art [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art) (Late 1950s–present) ## Description Performance art, body art, and digital/technological performance practice — live, time-based work using the artist's own body and presence as primary medium, from Happenings and Viennese Actionism through contemporary cyborg, telematic, and networked performance such as [[Laurie Anderson]]'s multimedia work merging voice, technology, and body. ## Key Tags #performance-art #body-art ## Essential Works - Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. "1962b: Viennese Actionism." In *Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism*. Thames & Hudson, 2004. - Survey-text chapter situating Viennese Actionism (Nitsch, Muehl, Brus, Export) within the history of body art - Dixon, Steve. *Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation*. MIT Press, 2007. - Cited here via its "Cyborgs, Bodies, Avatars" and "Performance and Technology since 1960" chapters; core reference for technological performance practice - "The 1952 Untitled Event" - Black Mountain College event involving John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg et al., often cited as a founding American Happening ## Details ### Key Theorists - Steve Dixon - historian of digital/technological performance; theorizes the cyborg body and performance-technology hybrids since 1960 (no vault page yet) ### Exemplary Practitioners - [[Laurie Anderson]] - pioneering multimedia performance artist merging voice, technology, and body work ### Related Concepts - [[The Body]] - performance art foregrounds the artist's body as medium and site of meaning - [[Video Art]] - performance and video overlap heavily from the 1960s on, in documentation and closed-circuit performance ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Associated Movements or Institutions - Fluxus - international network central to the Happening and the event-score (active c. 1960s–70s) - Viennese Actionism - Austrian body-art movement (Nitsch, Muehl, Brus, Export) using ritualized action and the body (active 1960s–70s) ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography "The Guests Go in to Supper" (1986). ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. "1962b: Viennese Actionism." In *Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism*. Thames & Hudson, 2004. Dixon, Steve. *Digital Performance: Cyborgs, Bodies, Avatars*. n.d. Dixon, Steve. *Digital Performance: Performance and Technology since 1960*. n.d. "The 1952 Untitled Event." n.d.