Performance has been, as described by Kristine Stiles, “difficult to accept and theorize...as a critical term of art history” (p 75). Stiles explains that this difficulty is due to performance having integrated the artist as both subject and object. While the self-portrait could arguably be, like performance, a coalescence of subject and object, the astounding difference arises in the interactive, interconnecting, and “transpersonal” nature of performance. This aesthetic, Stiles explains, “functions as an interstitial continuum linking subjects to subjects through mutual identification” (p 76). Stiles uses the term “commissure” to, “describe a key structural feature of performance art: its operation of connector” (p 83).
Performance art resonants deeply with me. I believe that we are spiritual beings in physical form. Fascinated by the notion that we are made of the same thing as the stars, interconnected and part of a larger whole, these ideas have become theme in my own work. Stiles says, “performance visualizes the otherwise invisible covenant take takes place between doing and seeing others doing and seeing” (p 83). The use of the word “covenant” speaks volumes of the power of this art form and the human element inherent in performance. I am particularly fascinated by the idea that performance transcends the boundaries of time and space that traditional static art works are beholden to.
I also quite enjoy that performance does not adhere to any form particularly, but changes with advances in technologies. “By the 1980’s, digital and electronic media made more explicit and transparent just how pervasively lens culture had become part of performance” (p 87). I like to think of performance as a harbinger. It predicts and informs, but often without knowledge of the magnitude of its relevancy.
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