quotations about performance art
For me, the interesting thing about performance art is that it will have no tradition, in the sense that the pieces are made for the moment. They are not made to last, the way, say, a play of Shakespeare, Moliere, or Tennessee Williams is. They are events of our time, like a shooting star.
ROBERT WILSON
"Legend Robert Wilson Talks the Rise -- and Rise -- of Performance Art", Observer, July 29, 2015
In the beginning, I was a painter, but the moment I stood in front of the public and expressed my ideas using my body as the object and subject of the work, immediately it was clear that this is my best medium. I struggled with acceptance; my early career was hell. But it took me all these years to create a foundation so that performance would become accepted in the same way as photography and video. You have to believe that you're right, even if everybody believes you are wrong.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
Achieving fame in the world of performance art requires courting controversy in increasingly heavy-handed ways.
LIZZIE CROCKER
"The Latest Proof That Performance Art Is Bullshit", The Daily Beast, April 25, 2014
A key element of this kind of performance art is its virtual non-replicability. While the concept remains the same, each performance is somewhat random and, in that way, one of a kind. It is also the nature of this kind of composition that it doesn't translate well to a recording or to a screen.
KELLY MARTINEK
"SMTD concert highlights Alvin Lucier's experimental music", Michigan Daily, April 3, 2016
Imagine spending seven years at MIT and research laboratories, only to find that you're a performance artist.
GOLAN LEVIN
"Software (as) art", TED talk, April 2007
I felt limited after coming out of Transformers. Or all the stuff I'd done with Steven Spielberg, not to pooh-pooh those films, but you have no creative control.... That's why I turned to performance art, because it's just about the process. It's all aired out.
SHIA LABEOUF
"Shia LaBeouf: 'Why do I do performance art? Why does a goat jump?'", The Guardian, December 10, 2015
You create the space and time in which performance is going to happen. You physically enter. And whatever happens in that frame is the part of the piece that you can't control. If earthquake come, if electricity stop, if somebody scream or have epileptic attack. If people vomit. Everything is a part of it. The only thing is to give yourself completely.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Marina Abramovic: performance art is unconditional love", Sydney Morning Herald, June 12, 2015
Honey, come look at this! is this real? is this performance art? is this viral like cats playing keyboards? is this music?
MATTHEW MOYER
"Hijokaidan performance footage to further muddy April Fools' Day online waters", Orlando Weekly, April 1, 2016
I don't tell my students what performance art is. People know. But I don't just teach performance. I teach the theory, research and, on occasion, new genres. I teach the performativity of manners, tourism, other rituals. I don't have a narrow understanding of my art practice. I teach cultural activism, in which where we consider artistic responses, including social change through art.
KAREN FINLEY
"Q&A: Karen Finley", Theater Jones, March 26, 2016
Performance art is not confined to a gallery, it's often out in public. Which is sort of like doing it out in the wild west.
GREGG DEAL
"Performance art challenges public's perception of indigenous stereotypes", CBC Radio, December 12, 2015
Therein lies the truth about contemporary performance art: It encourages people to do ever more outrageous things, resulting in spectacles that resemble not so much an ironic Theater of the Absurd as a bad TV game show.
LIZZIE CROCKER
"The Latest Proof That Performance Art Is Bullshit", The Daily Beast, April 25, 2014
In certain respects performance art is like theater with the priorities reversed. The text recedes or disappears altogether, while the supporting elements of ordinary theater--the acting style, the gesture system, the sound, the lights, the mise-en-scene--emerge singly or in combination as the focus of attention.
SALLY BANES
Subversive Expectations: Performance Art and Paratheater in New York
The history of performance art in the twentieth century is the history of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables, executed by artists impatient with the limitations of mere established art forms, and determined to take art directly to the public.
ROSELEE GOLDBERG
attributed, Critical Theory and Performance
Performance art is a format that can be in any place. It needs some core basic elements. It needs audience-performer interaction, it needs time, it needs space, it needs some presence of the performance body. Performance art is grounded in some of the more traditional forms of performance: theatre, dance; but it's not that. It's at the intersection of all of those works.
ADA PINKSTON
"Busting Borders: LabBodies makes space for performance art", City Paper, June 23, 2015
Performance art may be something of a moving target, but there's a prevailing sentiment among critics, dealers, and curators that it might also just be "the medium of our time."
JULIE BAUMGARDNER
"How Performance Art Entered the Mainstream", Artsy, November 3, 2015