Arts & Culture Magazine - November/December 2007 - (Page 65)

L ike a bird, you cannot defeat your nature. If you are making performance art, your nature is to challenge the conventions of performance art. This paradox is heightened by the fact that performance art has long been given a niche in the Post-Modern Academy, while many examples of performance’s affinity for manipulating signs and symbols flourish independently of the Academy. It is an art form still defining itself, all while dancing and singing to a different kind of ornithology to that of any other art form. Performance art defines itself by what it is not as much as what it is. It is not theater or circus, poetry, pop or fine art music, opera, dance, film or video footage, iPods, cell phones, laser lights, live animals, blood, earth, water or fire, painting or sculpture; but instead, all of the above. Performance can be thoughtful, entertaining, amusing, shocking, or horrifying, but when fully realized, always unforgettable. Being a new art form, its character is not fixed and certain, but some elements of performance art are common to all. First, it is live, giving it a visceral immediacy and a relation to its audience unique to this form of expression. Often unscripted or marginally so, performance art, like conceptual art, can be an activity or group of activities by an individual or a cast of hundreds. Performance shares with conceptual art a belief in the primacy of phenomenological theories that maintain human knowledge is confined to collections of sense data and that we know nothing that is not given to us by sense experience. In this, performance art creates a psychic dialogue with its audience that obliquely directs the development of the performance in a way that is more intimate than traditional theater. An opposing position in the theory and practice of contemporary art is ontological. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature and essence of things or of existence. In terms of this simplified polarization of two kinds of contemporary art theory, the ontological approach to art has historically in the west been the dominant meme in the making and understanding of the purpose of art. Ontological art, having its roots in the figurative art of the ancient Greeks, tends towards mimesis, or naturalistic representation. “It is an art form still defining itself, all while dancing and singing to a different kind of ornithology to that of any other art form.” arts and culture magazine : : 65

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Arts & Culture Magazine - November/December 2007

Arts & Culture Magazine - November/December 2007 Contents Extra! Extra! Modern Times Gallery Interview - Jopseph Caulkins Exhibitions Dodi Reifenberg and Bradley Wester Profiles Center Stage Carnevale Horse Feathers Grill & Lounge Dancing on the Stage of Life Gallery Guide Calendar of Events

Arts & Culture Magazine - November/December 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.