Performance: Art With Physical Engagement

Art could hardly be more alive: In a performance, situations are created in which people become artistic mediums. Performances can consist of movements, language, small scenes, or even just gestures and facial expressions. Interaction with the audience is possible and often even desired. Through direct engagement with people, emotions and audiovisual impressions can be conveyed particularly intensively. Unlike painting and sculpture, where the artist, audience, creative process, and artwork are spatially and temporally separated, in performances, they exist simultaneously in the same space. This also means that performances are absolutely unique and can never be reproduced in the same form again.

Unlike theatre, performances do not have choreography or scripts. They are often not fully planned and sometimes entirely improvised. Especially when the audience is involved, the course of events can only be partially predicted.

The origin of performance art can be traced back to the early actions of Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists in the early 20th century, who started incorporating the process of creating their works into their artistic concepts. Happenings and Fluxus further developed these ideas until performance established itself as an independent art form in the 1970s. Even in the 21st century, there is still a growing interest in artistic performances, and museums and art fairs are increasingly collaborating with performers.

Performance Offers Space for Reflection, Criticism and Experiences

A performance is never just entertainment. It always carries a message that may be more or less evident. Like hardly any other art genre, performance art has the ability to convey content and pose questions on multiple levels. First and foremost, the entire concept questions the art world and its mechanisms. Since performances cannot be easily compared to classical visual arts, music, or theatre, they fundamentally raise the question of how we define art. Additionally, alternative forms of presentation, evaluation, and commercialisation need to be found for these artistic presentations.

Closely related to this is the critique of the increasing commercialisation of the arts. Due to their typical characteristics, performances are difficult to sell or permanently exhibit, which often leads to less emphasis on the economic aspect (much to the dismay of the artists). Does this mean that painting and sculpture are more valuable?

In addition to these general themes, performance artists pursue many other, very different intentions with their works. Some aim to confront the audience with unfamiliar, sometimes extreme situations to evoke specific reactions. They seek to question human behaviour, routines, and habits and encourage reflection on specific behaviours. Performances are particularly effective in making people aware of unconscious or uncomfortable affects such as voyeurism or violence, more so than any other art form.

For many artists, in addition to the audience's reaction, their performances are about their own experiences. They incorporate personal stories or traumas, often pushing their physical limits. Marina Abramović described the experiences in her extreme projects as follows: "Pain in art is for me a door to a higher level of consciousness. It is a kind of enlightenment, it releases energies."

Beyond the personal experiences of performers and the audience, performances can address a wide range of topics. These typically include current and controversial issues in politics, history, or society, such as criticism of capitalism, media, feminism, or racism.

Conversations, Gestures, and Violence: The Diversity of Performance Art

Since the mid-20th century, the performance art scene has grown continuously and developed a wide range of content and forms of presentation. The spectrum of performance ranges from the bizarre and unsettling to the humorous. Some performances have even gained fame beyond the art world. One example is Joseph Beuys' legendary performance "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" from 1965. In this performance, he allowed the audience to observe him as he covered his head and face with gold leaf and honey and spent an hour explaining the pictures in an exhibition to a dead hare on his arm.

Marina Abramović also created performances that attracted a lot of attention. In "The Artist Is Present," she sat in the New York MoMA for over three months, eight hours a day, continuously staring at visitors who chose to sit across from her.

Another extreme performance was "Sky Kiss" by American artist Charlotte Moorman. In 1982, as part of the Linz Ars Electronica, she was lifted several meters into the air by balloons while playing the cello. But performances can be even more drastic: Ron Athey shoved needles into his scalp, Wolfgang Flatz hit his head against a metal plate and Chris Burden had his arm shot in a gallery.

However, performances do not always have to push the boundaries of what is bearable for both artists and the audience. For example, Simon Pfeffel simply lay on the sidewalk and engaged in conversations with passersby. Whether spectacular or subtle, the aim of the artists is never pure provocation or a shock moment, but rather to raise relevant questions behind the performances.

How Can a Performance Be Marketed?

Over centuries, various forms of presentation and marketing have been established for painting, sculpture, music, and theatre. Due to its distinctive characteristics, performance art does not have access to these traditional channels, or only to a limited extent. Performances are usually unique live events, often tied to a specific location, and audience interaction is often a crucial factor. Moreover, no material works that could be sold or reproduced are produced during the artistic process.

In light of these facts, artists, galleries, and museums have developed various alternative strategies to integrate performances more into the art world. In recent years, large art fairs have increasingly staged performances. For example, at Art Basel 2014, live acts were performed in 14 rooms.

Performances from the past are also being shown more frequently in museums as reenactments. However, these reenactments are controversial in the art scene and are strongly rejected by some performers. They argue that in a performance, art should only exist for the moment. To at least earn some money from their art, photographs and film recordings of the events are sometimes sold, as well as objects used during the performances, such as sketches, texts, or costumes. Some artists go even further. For example, Tino Sehgal strictly prohibits photo, film, and sound recordings of his works, but he sells licenses to museums and exhibition houses, granting them the right to perform his performances.

Despite these and other efforts, most performance artists still earn significantly less than their colleagues in painting and sculpture, whose works are sometimes sold for millions.