What is performance art, and why should it matter to writers?
Where sentences move us, and where we need to move to find meaning
“I have climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life.” —Tenzing Norgay
The perfomance art movement was influenced by surrealism, conceptualism, the anti-art of Dada after World War I, and action painting in which one throws or drips or sprays paint in a way that is as much the art as the painting itself.
Conceptual art is about an idea. Performance art is about an action that represents an idea.
The act of ... the embodiment of purpose.
If you’ve been following my blog since the beginning of the year, I’ve asked you to get a dedicated notebook, to find the question behind your work. I’ve also asked you to get embodied.
Today’s concept (my current obsession) is where these things converge.
Performance art is the willingness to expose something, which often requires the appearance of absurdity or extreme vulnerability. It is becoming one with the message more so than the method or the words to communicate that message.
A genre distinct from acting or the “performing” arts, performance art is about the concept, rather than a narrative. Often, a societal question about life drives the thing. Performance art engages the audience in a literal way, asking them to interact with the live work, not just think about it and clap.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this genre because I’m writing a novel whose protagonist is a performance artist from the 90s. Over the last few months, I’ve been studying Marina Abramović, Adrian Piper and Joan Jonas. But why this topic?
Performance art might be on my mind because it seems to surface during difficult times. It exposes the emotional aspects of human nature, the injustices and frailties, and it does so both completely transparently and completely subversively.
It’s a way of asking the questions that are too difficult to put into words that people will actually listen to (or that are censored, so people don’t have a chance).
Truly beautiful storytelling does this too, taking a simple concept that no one wants to discuss and turning it on its side with metaphor and framing that allows it to be explored without glaring discomfort, an overt reflection of self.
Week 7: What would the performance art version of your story look like?
For instance, let’s say you are writing about a person standing up to inhumane treatment. The question driving your work might be: Why do people sacrifice truth for ease? What might this look like in a performance piece?
Perhaps a whistle blows incessently in the ear of a dummy whose plastic ears vibrate with the sound but never hear it. Perhaps a woman is being told to tell the truth by one person, while a soundtrack of laughter or threatening language plays in the background.
This is a strange post for some of you, I know.
But I’d love for you to play with the idea. Create a performance art piece in your mind, draft it out on the page.
What enactment could represent your concept, and, then, how can this inform your scenes, your storytelling, your ability to deliver (powerfully) what seems too obvious to say?
Subscribers! You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in March. Sign up here.
I love surrealism and theatre. The idea of expressing a written piece through performance has lots of energy. Great suggestion.