Live Art / Performance Art Skillshare

Live Art!

Live art, or performance art, is an art form that grew out of the Dadaism and Avant-gardism of the early 20th century as well as the “happenings” from the 1960’s. Performance art can be defined as such:

“Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience” (Wikipedia).

RoseLee Goldberg states in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present:

“Performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture” (Goldberg).

In other words, performance art is often connected to radicalism, since the object is usually to shock the audience as a way to gain attention for an art piece and the motivations behind it. This intention to “shock” can be summarized in the term “agit-prop”, which is an abbreviation for “agitation propaganda.” Agit-prop can be described as any form of visual or aural aid that appeals strongly to a spectator as to agitate him or her to believe something to be true or to take action. In this sense, “agitate” does not have negative connotations-- it means simply to persuade. Television advertisements are a kind of commercial agit-prop, because they utilize auditory and visual cues to agitate the spectator into buying a good. Performance art is often agit-prop because it often has a personal or political agenda (or both simultaneously) that aims to shock the audience into believing something or doing something.

Karen Finley is an example of a feminist performance artist. She is well-known for disrobing before her audience and smearing chocolate on her body. In her book “A Different Kind of Intimacy,” Finley explains that the chocolate-smearing was to commemorate Tawana Brawley, a young black woman who alleged that some police officers raped her and smeared her with feces (the police officers were found innocent). Her performances often deal with sex, sexuality, rape, and objectification.

Another example of feminist performance art is the Guerilla Girls, a “bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. [They] have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large. [They] use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. [They] wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities” (from the official Guerilla Girls website). They also do performances at schools, museums, and organized events, in which they wear their gorilla masks and perform skits dealing with the issues they protest.

[Clare then expanded on the origins of live art in Dadaism and sound poetry]

To Do Live Art:
Here is a summary of what we did today to do live art.:

1. Clare and I led the class through two fun improvisational games: the Sound Circle, and "Yes, But...". This helped us loosen our vocal chords and allowed us to experiment with sound. Our final exercise was to warm up our bodies.

A) Sound Circle
Participants stand in a circle, and the first player makes a motion with their body accompanied by a sound. The sound/motion combination travels to everyone else around the circle until it gets back to the player who started it. The next player makes a different sound/motion combination, which again travels around the circle of players, and so forth.

B) "Yes, But..."
The first player comes up with a completely outrageous situation and tells it to the person on his or her left. The person on the left says "Yes, but" and then offers a response to the first person. Then the person on the left makes up a new situation which he or she relates to the person to his or her left, and the game continues around the circle of players.

C) Directional Movement
Players are told to move in ways that have to do with timing, weight, or space; or in directions or orientations. Examples: horizontal/vertical, downward/upward, light/heavy. Players cannot stand still and must move around the room.

2. We then split up the class into two groups of five people and worked on using our bodies as vehicles for agit-prop. We did this by experimenting with prototypical statements one might make using performance art as a medium (with the option to come up with an original statement), and using only our bodies to communicate these messages.

5. Then we introduced character development and incorporated specific character traits into our performances.

6. Finally, we performed!

Please feel free to repeat these steps if you are interested in warming up for or experimenting with performance art. :)