While experiencing contemporary art productions, the connections of art to philosophy, technology and daily life should be looked with critical socio-political lenses. The historical process of art should also be considered, yet the awareness of variability spreading from non-singular certain geographies of history is also necessary.  The concept of "Age of Knowledge", which settled especially into our contemporary art practice and almost defining our existence today, should be taken focally and discussed through various art practice forms. This variety is going to determine how does contemporary art exist in the concept of humanity as well as how do we percept contemporary art as human beings.  A performance, which belongs to this framework and also goes beyond, takes the body as a space by problematising representation that has settled in the centre focus on contemporary art as a thought and makes the audience experience with the context of  discourse), technology labour Performance: as an  art practice, it works on the basis of questioning and get it questioned the issues of horizon, space, time and body around the concepts such as existence, annihilation, gender, sex, conscious, subconscious. An introduction to performance art, which presents these concepts to the audience by getting it through a connecting filter, determines the subject matter of this article.

When I am thinking about performance, not only the performance art as a form of contemporary form of art, but I also include forms existing in art (art, sculpture, installation, literature, theatre, dance, cinema, opera etc.) as well as forms and spaces we live when we are continuing all the daily things. I think the concept of performativity is helpful providing especially these connections and sometimes reveal contradictions.[i] It is not a coincidence to run across a performative thought in every form of art apart from the art practices that take place on stage. When we look at the work of Jackson Pollock and Yves Klein, we see that performance is a thought, which exists in visual arts, yet formalised with a replaceable turning point.  “The Formations ” in the 50s' (Happenings) at least positioned this point geographically by developing it on the effect of North American axis. Concordantly, in the works of Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow a certain type of figural in the western sense that is different from any known art form such as painting, sculpture, literature, music, dance, theatre, opera; yet contains all or some part of it inside.

While the formation of entities continue, art went under the domination of political, social, environmental and technological changes in the beginning of 1960s. Artists of that time, who were against institutions and galleries that their own share of these changes, ended up believing that the painting is dead, sculpture is no more than a decoration for architecture and a new kind of understanding of art should be developed. Despite all these, contradicting their own statements most of the artists have chosen again the galleries, museums and institutes as spaces to exhibit their reformist understandings.

Performance, which evolved quickly with the speed of entities and Fluxus, it was accepted as a tool and style for artistic expression in 1970s. Within the same period 'conceptual art', which defends that the idea is more important than the work done or produced and art is not a bought or sold object, living its most colourful times and performance was used as one of the most effective tool to present this idea. International art centres, museums supported by the festivals were established for the performances that are made; performance courses were given in the art schools; the most important art magazines of the time were dedicating their issues to the subjects to performance.

Chronologically speaking, the first performance history in the western sense was published by Rose Lee Goldberg as Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. This was a history, which was introducing the artists, who are working in traditional mediums, inclining to performance and the performance artists, and explaining the journey of performance up to that date starting with Futurism. The interesting part was although performance was so near to the art agenda, it had remained so out of discourse.

As a discourse performance was among the effective opinions, in which it gains importance through actualizing many conceptual thoughts and fundamentally enabling the transfer these to an audience with art. As it is also written in the art history inclusive 20th century performance, performance exists with the limitless presentation of an open-ended material that is allowing any type of possibility, to an audience; due to the very same reason, it can be said that the thought of its roots being anarchistic inspired not only today's art, but even the cyber activism. Rather than an objective image or any activity that an audience can easily experience, according to Kaprow, performance is the difference of an artist eating a strawberry in front of an audience and the strawberry that they eat at home. Fundamentally this difference is the difference of life. It is to share the experience lived with a an audience in a certain place, time and situation. As an art form performance, which is also identified as an act, state, event, show, work or entity, is the statement of its discourse live by the artist with a clear and an easy visual language.  Performance art's subject matters generally generate from socio-political agenda and daily life. Surely it also makes the technology within the these subject matters its tool - for instance the performance documentation done with video or photography, performances done with interactive communication tools do include daily internet practice as well.  The materials used in performance can be technological or biological, can be touched or cannot be touched.

A performance can be done in front of an audience or in the absence of an audience. It is not necessarily done in front of an audience, yet how does the audience experience a performance does make that performance exist as a work. Most of the performances are body oriented and it is transitive with the figural side of "body art". Some of them can be seen as "moving sculptures" as well. Generally performance is a type of work, which exists within the time it was presented rather than identified as dramatic and finally continues with the experience of the audience after passing through the period and the space it existed. 

A lot of artists, who came into prominence by doing performance art in between the years 1970-1980, such as Marina Abramović (and Ulay), Joseph Beuys, Orlan from Europe; Vito Acconci, John Cage, Joan Jonas from North America; the performances of Gutai Group from Japan making work simultaneously with the Fluxus movement, became the reference source of today's performance art. Burden makes himself shot by his friend on his left arm in his performance "Shoot" on 8 November 1971. Burden had an international reputation with this work that turned into a scandal and even after all these years, he still is the first reference when the physical relationship of an artist with his body is being mentioned. 
Just like Burden, who has jolted the exhausted art world out by showing them an extreme form of art for that period of time, Marina Abramović is separated from the rest right from the beginning. Exploiting the psychology of the audience narcissistically, she expressed what she has to in a most simple, most direct way by using her body and minimal images.  In terms of capturing the essence of her works, she managed to freeze the audience even for a couple of minutes. This important difference becomes more evident in Abramović' "Rhythm O" performance in 1974 just like Burden's "White Light/ White Heat" in 1975. Another performance that should be mentioned together with these two works is German artist Joseph Beuys' "I Love America and America Loves Me Too" performance, which he did in 1974 and became the icon of performance history.

Burden's performance starts with him placing a triangular platform hanging from 50 metres down from the ceiling of southeast corner of Roland Feldmen Fine Arts gallery and continues with him climbing on top of it to lie down.  The height, width and the depth of this platform was arranged so that it can't be seen by anyone. Staying on the platform for 22 days, Burden hasn't eaten anything, spoke to no one, been seen by anybody and he hasn't seen anyone.

As for Abramović, she informs her audience that they can use various 72 objects placed on the table in the performance area, with a notice on a piece of paper. Apart from that notice, she stands in front, side or in the middle of the audience naked and still from the beginning to the end of the performance. The artist doing the performance is passive, while the audience is active. The audience has used almost all of the objects on the table, which contains things like a loaded gun, scalpel, and paint, on the Abramović. When the artist, who was inactive up until that time, start to walk towards the audience after siz hours, almost everybody vanished not to confront Abramović.

In the performance of Joseph Beuys, who was brought to the States wrapped around a Red cross blanket and carried European tradition to America, the selections of symbolic objects  (two blankets made out of felt, shepherd's staff) and North American wolf Coyote are conscientious.

Despite the complicated allegory of Beuys, Burden and Abramović's minimal, almost formalist attitude reveal the differences and similarities in between these three performances. Beuys has left the gallery in order to sleep and eat every night; but he went back to his cage next to Coyote the next day. Burden has integrated his body with his performance by remaining his ghost on a shelf in the gallery each day and night. Abramović has trapped herself in the triangle of space, object, audience and she face the entire physical and psychological intensity with her body as a subject by leaving herself entirely to the mercy of the audience.

The formalist thought, which was dominant to performance and made it alive, has given its place to discourse, allegory and subjectivity towards the end of 1980s. For instance, Beuys' war story, which seemed like "utterly nonsense" up until that time, has started to make fetish connection with the audience.

Beuys needed fetish in his works especially to continue with his productivity. He has connected each and every material he used with a symbol and then chose to exhibit this around its myth as an image. A felt got combined with a suit to form "Felt Suit, 1970"; oil got combined with a wooden chair to form "Fat Chair, 1963"; 24 sleds got combined with an emergency kit made by Beuys and consist of felt, torch and a bit of oil to form “The Pack, 1969". Beuys tried to over come the traumas of 2. World War and share this experiences one-to-one with his audience, while presenting the reproduced objects in their own subject, back to the audience. Beuys maybe has showed the first post-modern movement (action) to the audience again with art practice while changing the subjectivity of art with discourse.

Performance art, which contains various paradoxes within itself, does not have a single history, single style and single narration. Surely the fetish of Beuys, skin-self of Burden or body-ego of Abramović does not give the subject matters or the history of performance fully. When performance art is in question, history betrays both the works and the artists by behaving peculiarly. The experience of performance art can not be replaced with the document; the objectivity of document can not get along with the subjectivity of performance and the recording of a performance that is being done, turn into something else and become a work by itself. This exchange brings a new understanding of production together with many other problematics. Therefore, performance art and performative tendencies in contemporary art are different subjects by themselves no matter how transitive they are. This point is a good stop in order to continue for later.


​[1]  We face with the idea of performance in the horizon in   philosopher J.L. Austin, who opens up horizons for us to see the construction and attraction in between language and action. He has evaluated the subject of  “speech act" in his lectures in Harvard University in 1955 and mentioned two varieties of it: "constative" and "performative". The term Austin uses when he is talking about the necessity of assessment according to the success and failure rather than correct and wrong, is the happiness and unhappiness or validity and the invalidity of these performances. The valid thing in Austin's theory is that he refers to a performance, an action and a movement when thought is being transferred into language. In the very same lecture, Austin also states that if some of these language performances are being done on stage by an actor or a poet, then this should be excluded from this process. (Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. New York: Harvard University Press, 1975. P. 22). This theory of Austin, which contains similarity with other structuralists, is deconstructed by Jaques Derrida and suggested the transitivity of constative and performative speech act, the proposal of performative that can not be constative, can not go any further than invalidating constative. (Derrida, Jacques. “Signature, Event, Context, “Margins of Philosophy. New York: University of Chicago Press, 1984). The speech act theory was embraced later by Eve Segdwick, Judith Butler and Peggy Phelan, who progressed in the post-structuralist thought and created queer/feminist performance theory, especially within the concept of gender and sex performances.  When Butler states in relation to this issue that "The constative speech acts are constative - especially when they define a normative", she refers to the moment a new born baby's gender is announced: "You have a daughter" (232) The statement of a baby as a boy or a girl is constative as much as promising the social, individual and institutional supervision, in which that baby is going to live in the future.