Performing vs. Performance

At the beginning of this course, I (wrongfully) assumed that performance art was just another way of talking about performing arts like ballet, concerts, etc.. Performance art could also be body art, where the artist uses their body as a canvas. A few of the individuals we discussed as performance artists were Marina Abramovic and Stellarc.

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist who puts her body in danger for the sake of art. In one of her earlier works, Rhythm 0 (1974), she laid down on a table surrounded by 72 objects, including a gun loaded with one bullet, a whip, scissors, and knives among other things. The audience was allowed to use these objects to do what they would like to her body. How scary is that? Abramovic commented on Rhythm 0. She said: “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.” I feel I would be very uncomfortable watching this piece unfold. The piece could have left her with large amounts of psychological and physical damage, but she endured it for the sake of art. People may say its crazy, but its her passion. Another project she worked on was that she sat at a table for 700 hours in silence. Patricipants then would sit across from her at the table in silence, and this was her whole piece.



Stellarc was an individual who took body art to a big extreme. For art, he had a human ear grafted to his forearm. For what purpose does someone need a human ear grafted to their arm? Just for the sake of doing it? It serves no purpose, other than maybe to scare off other individuals, but to me, this seems like an abuse of medical technology and capabilities.