The arts world can be difficult to navigate. But newbies and those who want to brush up their knowledge, our performing arts series has got you covered with its breakdown of technical terms and concepts. This time, we explore performance art
Performance art comes in a wide variety of formats: live music, acting, dance and other forms of art, where creators or performers prioritise unconventionality and provocativeness over aesthetics. However, it’s not to be confused with “visual art” and “performing arts”. If you look up Merriam-Webster, it will tell you it’s “a non-traditional art form often with political or topical themes that typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers (as on a street) and draws on such arts as acting, poetry, music, dance or painting”.
Performance art can be planned or impromptu, and it draws from audience interaction, and reaction. In an extreme example of performance arts, American artist Chris Burden arranged to have himself shot with a rifle for his art piece Shoot (1971) (in case you are wondering, he survived).
But what are the criteria of a performance art piece? Where does it come from? What purpose does it have?
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The history of performance within the visual art world goes back to the 1910s, when a group of radical anti-war artists, many of whom sought refuge in Switzerland, created nonsensical, satirical art pieces and avant-garde performances of poetry, music and dance to mock the folly of World War I. They were exploring a new form of art, or what French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp described as “anti-art”, and were contemplating the role of art against war and capitalist culture.
In different eras and cultural contexts, the development of performance art differs. Hong Kong’s performance art scene can be traced back to the 1960s, when early practitioners focused on the temporality of an art piece.
For example, in 1979, conceptual artist Kwok Mang Ho, who goes by his artist name Frog King, experimented with colour gradation in his artwork Fire Collage, by burning a stack of papers, whose burnt edges resembled abstract ink art.