Editing Performance art (section)

==Definition==
[[File:Arnold Genthe Nude Dancers-Celluloid Cyanotype.jpg|left|thumb|[[Helen Moller]]<ref name="carnegiehall/Helen-Moller-1918">{{cite book |last1=Moller |first1=Helen |last2=Jacobs |first2=Max |author3=Orchestral Society of New York |author1-link=Helen Moller |author2-link=Max Jacobs |author3-link=Orchestral Society of New York |title=Helen Moller and Her Pupils |date=March 20, 1918 |publisher=[[Carnegie Hall]] Archives |url=https://collections.carnegiehall.org/archive/Complete-program-of-Helen-Moller-and-Her-Pupils--March-20--1918-2RRM1TZL9KAZ.html |quote=Complete program  collections.carnegiehall.org/C.aspx?VP3=pdfviewer&rid=2RRM1TZL9KAZ  collections.carnegiehall.org/a2c80a53-b8fa-4327-b8cf-bbde0cc95651}}</ref><ref name="nytimes/moller-appear">
*{{cite news |title=Helen Moller and Dancers Appear. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1918/12/27/archives/helen-moller-and-dancers-appear.html |access-date=19 July 2024 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=27 December 1918}}
*https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/12/27/97056760.html
</ref><ref name="archive/dancinghelenmoll00moll">{{cite book |last1=Moller |first1=Helen |last2=Dunham |first2=Curtis |author1-link=Helen Moller |author2-link=Curtis Dunham |title=Dancing with Helen Moller; her own statement of her philosophy and practice and teaching formed upon the classic Greek model, and adapted to meet the aesthetic and hygienic needs of to-day, with forty-three full page art plates; |date=1918 |publisher=[[John Lane Company]] |location=[[New York City|New York]] and [[London]] |url=https://archive.org/details/dancinghelenmoll00moll |access-date=19 July 2024 |via= [[archive.org]]}}</ref><ref name="Musical-Courier-79/Helen-Moller">{{cite magazine |title=Helen Moller |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E-k6AQAAMAAJ&q=%22Helen+Moller%22 |access-date=19 July 2024 |magazine=[[Musical Courier]] |issue=V79 |publisher=Musical Courier Company |date=1919 |location=<!-- 437 Fifth Avenue, New York, --> New York |language=en}}</ref> dance performance. Photo by [[Arnold Genthe]], early 20th century.]]
[[File:Georgia O'Keeffe by Stieglitz, 1919.png|left|thumb|[[Georgia O'Keeffe]], photographed during a performative process, 1919]]

The definition and historical and pedagogical contextualization of performance art is controversial. One of the handicaps comes from the term itself, which is polysemic, and one of its meanings relates to the scenic arts. This meaning of "performance" in the scenic-arts context differs radically from the concept of "performance art", since performance art emerged with a critical and antagonistic position towards scenic arts. Performance art only adjoins the scenic arts in certain aspects such as the audience and the present body, and still not every performance-art piece contains these elements.<ref name=":25">{{cite book |last1=Carlson|first1=Marvin|title=Performance: A Critical Introduction |publisher=Routledge |year=1998 |orig-year=1996|location=London and New York|pages= [https://archive.org/details/performancecriti0000carl/page/1, 2, 103–105]|isbn=0-415-13703-9}}</ref>

The meaning of the term "performance art" in the narrower sense is related to [[postmodernist]] traditions in Western culture. From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to [[Antonin Artaud]], [[Dada]], the [[Situationist]]s, [[Fluxus]], [[installation art]], and [[conceptual art]], performance art tended to be defined as an [[antithesis]] to theatre, challenging orthodox art-forms and cultural norms. The ideal was an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased.<ref>{{cite book |last=Parr |first=Adrian |author-link=Adrian Parr |chapter=Becoming + Performance Art |editor=Adrian Parr|title=The Deleuze Dictionary|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|year=2005|pages=25, 2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OsVOy4s1QLMC|access-date=October 26, 2010|isbn=0748618996}}</ref> The widely discussed distinction between how visual art and performing art concepts are applied can influence the interpretation of a performance art presentation..<ref name=":25" />

"Performance art" is a term usually reserved to refer to a conceptual art that conveys a content-based meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own sake for entertainment purposes. It largely refers to a performance presented to an audience, but which does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or a formal linear narrative, or which alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted interactions. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand.

Some types of performance art nevertheless can be close to [[performing arts]]. Such performance may use a script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still constitute performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirize or to transcend the usual real-world dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays.

Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is". As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements; use robots and machines as performers, as in pieces of the [[Survival Research Laboratories]]; involve ritualised elements (e.g. [[Shaun Caton]]); or borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and [[circus (performing art)|circus]]. Performance art can also involve intersection with architecture, and may intertwine with [[religious]] practice<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Roussou
 |first1               = Eugenia
 |last2                = Saraiva
 |first2               = Clara
 |last3                = Povedák
 |first3               = István
 |editor-last1         = Roussou
 |editor-first1        = Eugenia
 |editor-last2         = Saraiva
 |editor-first2        = Clara
 |editor-last3         = Povedák
 |editor-first3        = István
 |year                 = 2019
 |title                = Expressions of Religion: Ethnography, Performance and the Senses
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=4tmRDwAAQBAJ
 |series               = Ethnology of religion, volume 2
 |publication-place    = Vienna
 |publisher            = LIT Verlag
 |pages                = 12–13
 |isbn                 = 9783643911100
 |access-date          = 12 November 2024
 |quote                = [...] a turn to ritual is observed in the early stages of Performance art [...] performance artists use their traumatized body to project their art and the nexus between body, violence and rituals, as a form of contemporary religious expression that transcends sociocultural and religious boundaries.
}} 
</ref><ref>
{{cite book
 |author1              = Karen Gonzalez Rice
 |editor-last1         = Bernier
 |editor-first1        = Ronald R.
 |editor2              = Rachel Hostetter Smith
 |date                 = 11 May 2023
 |chapter              = Revisiting 'Art in the Dark': Thomas McEvilley, Performance Art, and the End(s) of Shamanism
 |title                = Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=7Pi0EAAAQBAJ
 |publication-place    = Abingdon
 |publisher            = Routledge
 |page                 = 203
 |isbn                 = 9781000868456
 |access-date          = 12 November 2024
 |quote                = By locating performance art within the shamanistic tradition, McEvilley extended this heroic identity to performance artists. [...] As a form of shamanism, he claimed, performance art demands that we look beyond our knee-jerk reactions to confrontation and taboo [...]. This text was the first serious attempt to address performance art in terms of religion [...]
}} 
</ref>
and with [[theology]].<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Moody
 |first1               = Katharine Sarah
 |date                 = 3 March 2016
 |orig-date            = 2015
 |title                = Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity: Deconstruction, Materialism and Religious Practices
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=ulGrCwAAQBAJ
 |series               = Intensities: Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion
 |edition              = reprint
 |publication-place    = Abingdon
 |publisher            = Routledge
 |isbn                 = 9781317071822
 |access-date          = 12 November 2024
 |quote                = [...] [[Peter Rollins | Ikon]]'s practices [...] were [...] a complex interaction between practice, especially performance art, ritual and liturgy, and theory, including philosophy and theology but also psychoanalysis and Northern Irish politics.
}} 
</ref>

Some artists, e.g. the [[Viennese Actionism|Viennese Actionists]] and [[neo-Dada]]ists, prefer to use the terms "live art", "action art", "actions", "intervention" (see [[art intervention]]) or "manoeuvre" to describe their performing activities. As genres of performance art appear [[body art]], fluxus-performance, [[happening]], [[action poetry]], and [[intermedia]].