DECKER WU
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE ART?

Is performance art either performance or art, or is it little more than a socially acceptable way for talentless poseurs to behave in a bizzare manner in public?

At first sight, the latter alternative would seem to be the obvious answer. But give a charitable few minutes of thought and the deeper intentions of the seemingly meaningless vogueing will come through. Which is the main intention of performance art, not incidentally.

Performance art is often minimalist, a live show done sans the ornate sets of a musical, the grand images of opera, or the plots that drive a play. Indeed, there is seldom even an actor in the usual sense of the word; the performance artist instead projects himself or herself. Props are few, actions are drawn out or repetitive, speech is sparse. Small wonder, that many people, used to and familiar with older and more traditional forms of performance, fail to understand this newer art form, and dismiss it as all pretentiousness, a scam even.

Performance art's impact hinges on a psychological trait of humans: the innate tendency to look for recognisable elements when faced with apparent chaos, a jumble of seemingly unrelated items. The human mind is a great pattern-seeker; its obsession with finding patterns is likely hardwired into the brain.

The artist is deliberately minimalist, giving a minimum of cues and hints to the meaning and motive of the performance. lt is the job of the audience to fill in the gaps, to put the pieces together so as to see the picture whole.

Notice how the traditional role of the audience member has been changed. No longer passive spectator, but now active participant in the unfolding action. A huge (forgive the language) paradigm shift. (So despite the mind's natural propensity to look for patterns, why do so many people fail to appreciate and unterstand performance art? Perhaps they're not used to.

Happening Performance Features


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