I do not wish to just sling the contemporary art theory once learned within the milieu of academia. Call me a sophist if you must but I am sincerely not a charlatan. Even thou my personal studies have lead me to the simple doctrine that life and “A”rt are synonyms, and the only difference is the sensibilities of the percipient. So I come here to pontificate that perhaps all action is “A”rt and that the artifacts are just a transmitters of the art making process. I submit that all “A”rt is a performance thus music, painting, sculpture, etc. are just mere dialectic subsets of Performance Art to make it easier for people to understand and cirque the various manifestations of Art and/or of the meaning of life.
Performance art is an “A”rt that cannot be done by any other single art form in of it’s self. That is not to say that various forms; poetry, dance, spoken work, etc. lose their own sensibilities and strengths, but rather that the dynamic nature of the performance transcends the form to give the participants something that wasn’t there before, thus making the performance a new and extraordinary “A”rt form that not just reflects life but is life. The primary apparition of the performance raises the sensibilities of the participants (doer and/or seer) to the combined effect of the performance shows the art within the action(s).
role of the artist
While I feel the likes of Langer would not agree with me. I have found that I agree with some of Langer’s work, as well as the works of her contemporaries. The French Poet, essayist, playwright, actor and director Antonin Artaud working from 50′s through the 90′s and often denied that there was any difference between life and thought, between poetry and truth. He believed that art-making was a trope for the functioning of all consciousness – of life itself. I suspect he was not alone as Duchamp after putting a bottle rack on a podium took 15 years off to play chess to show that the artistic mind was at par with that of the intellectual. Duchamp once said of “A”rt that “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act” This act is not beholden to merely the creative act but all acts between humans. There is marriage of artist and spectator, action and artifact, life and thought.
Langer feels that there are quote “no happy marriages in art – only successful rape.” These cold stocking words leave me hurt and wondering if she felt the same on other maters of marriage. There is no such thing as a successful rape! I believe Langer is wrong and perhaps could not see that the genus of art can be seen as a whole and not just a signaler event. With the performance something unique is created that transcends the mere realm of traditional “Art”. Whether the art is good, bad or indifferent we still see a painting, or a sculpture, a poem or a play as art, thou most do not see the art in all performance. However, the greater our sensibility the more we come to understand the sublime nature of all things and the medium becomes irrelevant, that the line between art and physics end and become an invisible pointless distinction. Whether it is a painting or poem of refracted light, it is mere semantics it is the artifact of the actions of the art of life.
When Kirby designs this artist actions, he is choreographing a dance of the mind. That is to say that the actions are to get the participant in touch with what it is to be human. Were as Langer might say that dance is hard wired to the core of our being and naturally would do the something. One only needs to do is dance and they are fundamentally in touch with their relationship to time and space. The artist action is a more esoteric form acting in a unique way to get the spectator and/or percipient to their destination. Where as the dance doesn’t always needs a logical analysis for us to understand it, the artists action demands more from us. The nature of the artist action demands that we reflect on our performance to come to terms with our relationship to our actions whether spectator and/or percipient thus raising our sensibilities to the connection of life and “A”rt.
Languor said “Each genus, for instance creates a different kind of experience altogether; each may be said to make its own peculiar primary creation.” This being said I think we can safely say that performance art is the unique experience that can not be manifested through any other art form, say sculpture, painting, poetry etc. Even thou the geneses of the art my take its root in one of the traditional forms its virtual identity comes apparent only through the form of the performance. If I were to use Langer’s words I would say the performance becomes the “outward showing of inward nature, an objective presentation of subjective reality”. That is to say that the performance is art personified.
While the performance “A”rt I call life may not always be visible or tangible to others, it never the less ratifies my relationship to the act of living and making my life a work of “A”rt.
