Roddy Hunter’s reply to our projects: What is performance art? and Timeline of performance art

Roddy Hunter, 2013-07-29

I would not define performance art any more than I would define other (visual) art forms. As it would seem of limited value to continually re-iterate definitions of installation art, sculpture and painting (as examples), so it is the same with performance art.

What is performance art?


I would not define performance art any more than I would define other (visual) art forms. As it would seem of limited value to continually re-iterate definitions of installation art, sculpture and painting (as examples), so it is the same with performance art. In saying this, it may be true that many performance artists have become so, amongst other reasons, in opposition to seemingly fixed and axiomatic frameworks of assumption in other artforms. The long-term avowal of a 'suspension of disbelief' in theatre and the outmoded self-evidence of a premise of mimesis in 'representational' painting are examples of this. Put simply, I would only want to define performance art in broadly formal terms and in relation to my own practice. In my case, then, I would describe it as 'the act(ion) partially regarded from the perspective of visual art'. There are common features in any characterisation of performance art and visual art more broadly.

What is constant in both is an element of synthesis, and that is also to say some degree of 'framing' takes place. Robert RAUSCHENBERG once asked Willem DE KOONING to give him a drawing so that the former could erase it. RAUSCHENBERG wished only to leave the frame of the drawing intact, which is to say that he wanted to emphasise the material signifiers that determine an artwork. This work, 'Erased de Kooning', and others like Marcel DUCHAMP's 'Fountain' (a urinal installed in a gallery and signed 'R.Mutt'), deliver a manifesto and polemic to both the artist and a wider public. These implicit aspects of framing, recognition and identification in visual art practice lead me to be sceptical of any axiomatic relation between performance art and an imag(in)ing of a pre-sophisticated reality. It is rather the case that performance artists, and those like RAUSCHENBERG and DUCHAMP who originated a performative dynamic in other forms, are those who have encountered philosophy as a method of enquiry in art.

It equally troubles me when I hear the view that performance art is somehow more intrinsically 'authentic' or 'real' than other visual art practices. The audience for art seems to expect an artwork to allow a general navigation of our collective sensibility through a microcosmic real, without risking implications for the macrocosm. Performance, in its tendency to present encounters on a representational ratio of 1:1, clearly and properly threatens that model of engagement. Just because this tendency is perhaps clearest in performance art, however, does not mean it is exclusive to the practice. Performance art and other forms such as assemblage are obvious parents of installation art for example, and this means that this form may equally conduct investigations into encounter. It is unhelpful, I feel, to enforce a sectarian divide, based on the premise of there being a single 'real', between performance art and other visual art forms. Performance art, thankfully, does not carry any meaning axiomatic with its form. I find it ironic that these claims of 'authenticity' are often made 'in favour', and usually 'in defence', of performance art.

read more: RODDY HUNTER What is performance art?

Timeline of performance art

My first performance was called 'Autokopros (Fridge Sex)', Drama Studio, University of Glasgow, 1989.

The moment I decided that I was going to become a performance artist was probably the moment when a vinyl compilation album called 'You Bet We've Got Something Against You' released by Cathexis Recordings, Glasgow released in 1986 came into my possession. Cathexis Recordings was an independent record label run by Robert H. King covering industrial, electronic, avant-garde and experimental music. King was also a graphic designer and in designing the cover of 'You Bet We've Got Something Against You' saw fit to feature an image of Gunter Brus lying on the ground during one of his 'aktions' surrounded by razor blades, scissors, knives, forks and six inch nails (some of which were protruding from his mouth). The combination of this image with the music on the album (e.g. Sonic Youth, Mark Stewart and the Maffia, 93 Current 93) was dynamite in my hands. I never knew the images was the work of Gunter Brus at that time but that image was burned into my mind nonetheless.

read more: RODDY HUNTER Timeline of performance art?

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