In the rest of the book RoseLee creates six

chapters/catorgories to illustrate what her definition of

performance art is and where it can be found. By looking
at these I am hoping I will understand a points that
RoseLee mentions in her Introduction, and so be able to
better define what performance art is (hopefully).

1: Performance, Poltics, and Real Life

In this first chapter RoseLee writes that "these early
performances were a reation to a decade in which the
traces of postwar trauma were slowly erased by expanding
consumerism on both sides of the Atlantic." Then RoseLee
gives variouse examples of artists/groups of artists making
events where nothing was bought but that the experieance
was the art, later given the name 'Happening' by the
media. By 1960 there were regular festivals of
performance in most European cities. Later RoseLee
writes that "thier performances alerted viewers to the
continuing fragility of human life in the frame of world
polotics, all but forgoten by thoose who lived through the
affluent 80s.." During the 90s RoseLee writes that
performance was used by artist "as critical evocation of
everyday life, now an extraordinary mix of visual
languages and value systems. Threaded through with
technology as much as with the traces of spirituality of
their own invention, contemporary performance artists
force us to confront our own particuliar moment in time,
and to attempt to name it."
note: write down afew examples

What these artists have in common is that they want to

confront the viewer in order not to give an object to amuse
or for contemplation but to make something more
challanging, for reason RoseLee i think, links to
Performance (the interest in it and how different it is to
more conventional art making methods), Politics (similar
to protest in some ways), and/or real life (as a way of
realising what matters at the time).
2: Theater, Music, Opera
In this chapter RoseLee about the influence of
performance art on Theater in the 50s and 60s. It created
"new performance-art Theater that had nothing
whatsoever to do with even the most basic of theatrical
concerns: no script, no text, no narrative, no director, and
especially no actors. 'No Previous"Theater Experience
Necessary' read an advertisment for Robert Wilson's The
Life and Times of Sigmnd Freud (1969)." in New York in
the 50s through to the late 60s there were lots of
'alternitive theater groups' influenced by the experiments
in the art and dance spheres. In Europe from the
traditions of theater performance artists where working in
the state-suburnized opera houses with great directors
such as Peter Brook, but it was not as 'free from traditions'
as it was in America although according to RoseLee
European ways of working in the theatre would undergo
dramticic transformantions.
Much of this new work was introduced to Europe through
the gateway of Amsterdam. Interested in time, motion,
space, imagery, the body, and sound by the 80s had
according to RoseLee "come to Marvalouse fruition."
Video tape technology introduced video art into this
theatre in the 90s.
Again it was used as away to confront politcal issues in the
Pre-Thatcher era and the miners strikes for example
(labour strikes and street marchs), and as away of
experesing the times that people lived in such as the
Rock'n'Roll theater of the The Rocky Horror Show which
camat the end of the swinging sixties.
Pop music was effected by this surge of creative youth and
in the North of England emerging from art schools were
the artists like David Bowie who where attempting to work
somewhere inbetween music and art, without regard what
is considered high and low art. The musicals where
effected in the same way by people like Phillip Glass who
took on the orcharstra which might once of been called
'high art' , and in the 90s of course the DeeJay would be
utilized in the same way.
It would work the other way round as well, for example
Laurie Anderson who trained as a classical violinist later
produced the kind of work in question.
The stage it self was stripped of everything that might
'distract' from what the bodies on the stage are doing (the
movements, ect..) for some, though others would embrace
the potentional for experimentation and working with
different kinds of media and create fantsic design for
performance, as these pictures show;

3: the body: ritual, living sculpture, performed

photography
This part of RoseLee's book discuss artists who do wierd
stuff to thier bodys in public using (normally) excrement,
or blood or putting themselfs in danger. This can be by
asking people to take scissors and cut the clouths of
temselfs as they lye in the middle of a room, of covering
young woman in paint and using them as livig paint
brushes, or asking a friend to shoot you in the arm with a
real gun. Meanings function on both a visceral and
interlectuall level. "in the 70s many artist had turned to
incorrperate thier bodies in thier performances, that the
term 'body art' was broadly applied to a great variety of
work" in many different ways. As material for 'Ritual
Aktions', in rites connected to pagan belifes, or treated the
body more tenderly for other spiritual cerimonies, and
others seeing the body as "site" for formal art propostions.
Some used the body for transformation (gender).
Sculptors Gilbert and George presented themselfs as living
sculptures and so they 'actually lived inside thier art'.
Extreams where invoved in the performance art using the
body and pushing it tio extreams in variouse ways.
Often what interest these artist using thier bodies was the
collision it had with the audience.
Again confronting political issues was acheived by such
acts as people sewing thier lips shut, or the act of cutting
words into the flesh to raise awareness about HIV issues.
"the work of those artists using the body is aggressive,
real, and live: imagerery they invent is not for the
purposes of selling something else-a perfume, a pair of
sneakers-but in order to open a disquieting discourse on
contemporary polits and every day life." - RoseLee
Note: write down afew examples?

4: identities, feminism, multiculturalism,

sexuality
Postmodernism meant that female artist could make really
interesting art about feminist issues using ceramics,
embroidery, knitting, and weaving which would of been
thought of as mearly decrotive, in a subversive way.
Performance however being "un-goverend by conventional
art-world protocol" was ideal for the same female artists.
These pefromances differed and in America female artists
where making work that challanged 'perception' and at
other times the 'rituals' of eveyday life. Cival rights would
concern and motivate female performance work fading out
by the 80s, according to RoseLee.
'Multiculturalism' was in the minds of people living in
20th centery "in Europe, the term would mark the death
throes of colonialism and an attempt to acknoledge the
hunderds of thousands of immigrants from former
colonies, firmly established in thier host counteries."
and pefromances by artists would demonstrate the
ignorance of the ethinic culture within thier mist, using
often 'didactic' material. "Live performance provided a
face-to-face confrontation with the viewer that neither
litriture, nor even cinema, could equal."
Gay rights activist sought public displays to share what
they beliveved, such as the "PRIDE" marches seen in
cities.
"It is still the overwhelming realsim and immediacy of live
performance that continues to shock." - RoseLee.
Note: Write down afew examples.

5: dance
American inovators in the 50s challanged the classical
dance vocabulary using ordinary gestures "these were
accepted as movement in daily life, why not on stage?"
Merce Cunningham said. In the 60s different
experimental dance found through exploring different
"terains" combined with experimental music like that of
John Cage found the clues to what dance will look like. In
the 70s according to RoseLee conceptual concerns, a
dialouge about language, meant that artists had dancers
walking along the walls of the galleries using 'equipment'!
In the 80s a return to set design and 'visual narritives', and
in Europe these companies were widly supported by
goverment programs wanting to be known for provide
culture.
6: video, rock'n'roll, the spoken word
in New York in the 60s people where calling pop art 'low
art' as it was taking what is outside in the
streets/billboards and using that as material to make art.
It was infact to tap into the significance of mass culture,
and this continue and resurfaced in the 80s as art of the
media generation. In his 'Factory' in downtown New York,
Andy Warhol was making films in the 60s that where
opposed to the way Hollywood movies where made, ie; in
his film Empire (1964) where Warhol took a 24 hour long
shot of the Empire State Building, and in other films he
captures hours of 'real life' by filming the people who hung
out at the factory (bored), or of is boyfriend sleeping, Sleep
(1963). It was at around this time video cameras began to
enter the market and so all of a sudden artists had a cheap
and versitle way of recording and presenting video.
Making a video or doing a performance were practicaly
done the same way (although Performance usually meant
there being an audience). For these videos artists would
work in similar ways to Worhols eairlar films. Some of
these artists would do some pretty intensive and
desturbing private actions then present the video in the
gallerys, sometimes using other material when doing this
or using the moniter in different ways, "many of which
implied a polemical counterpoint to television".
There were venues for video art and the disscussions
surronding it, then it found its way into music clubs.
RoseLee writes that it was similar to the "criss-crossing
sensebilliys of 50s Beat Poetry and late 70s New Music."
By the early 80s saw in New York underground theater
with plays directed by artists, for late night party-goers,
with elaborate costumes (video recorded). monolouge
performers where popular through out the 80s and 90s
and in the 90s film and video had become the chose
medium for many young artists. Many of these film/video
artist's work showed sensibilitys explored by performance
artists over the last two decades. note: give a few examples