Performance art

Or simply, performance.

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT Growing up in Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to work as a press intern on Capitol Hill throughout high school and college. Later, I worked as a press staffer on the Obama Campaign. Spending my formative years immersed in the world of politicians and PR led to a fascination with the possibilities of repackaging source texts and adding superficial modifications that would profoundly alter perception. What the audience ultimately unpackaged was a personal interpretation of an already mediated re-presentation.

In my current work, I construct and then photograph ephemeral installation sets that feature an assemblage of found objects and live models, which I have covered in layers of acrylic paint. I paint the surfaces of the human subjects, the material objects, and the architecture of the installations so as to collapse the subject, foreground, and background into one continuous plane. I present my ephemeral portrait/performances as both live, interactive installations as well as permanent photographic indices of these experiences.

By using paint as a mask that mimics the surface attributes of my source materials, I repurpose the common codes of painting and create a reciprocal self-referentiality in which the reference envelops its referent. The time-based portrait/performance installation is mediated through still photography, providing a record of the performative act in which the codes for representation/painting and indexicality/photography converge.

Development
Warm up: Users watch the two performance videos. The tutor asks if both videos can be considered art. Users will likely give a negative answer on one of the videos. Users read the slides with the definition of performance art and the statement of one of the artists in the videos. The tutor encourages a discussion about the second video and its artistic nature. Development: Upon learning what performance art is, users will be divided in groups to create performance installations of their own. They should use different materials for this, such as paint, cardboard, make-up etc. The installation will be presented in the common areas of the facility and representatives of each group will explain the message they are trying to convey. Follow-up: The tutor will provide feedback on pronuncuation and the groups will evaluate each others performances.