With Tate Modern's Tanks, & RosaLee Goldberg's Performa, Performance Art is receiving far more mainstream attention than it has for decades (perhaps more than ever before). How does this reshape the (hi)story of art since the end of WWII? What are the ways in which performance as a medium (as well as an aesthetic) is being reconfigured through this renewal of practice and focus on performance art? There are many good articles on this issue, but I believe this is a topic ripe for rich, patient discussion, debate, dialogue, and development, which could conceivably branch out in many rewarding and interesting directions.

Tate Liverpool's exhibition Art, Lies & Videotape (2003-2004):

tate.org.uk

guardian.co.uk

along with The Whitechapel's 2003 series of A Short History of Performance:

whitechapelgallery.org

- kick-started the renewal of focus on performance after a lull of interest during the '90s. Not only is there an increasing amount of new scholarship on performance, it is also the uptake of performance by young artists as their practice which is of interest, & foregrounded by projects at this year's Documenta & Tino Sehgal's Turbine Hall commission. RosaLee Goldberg's creation of Performa has been a galvanising force in this reassertion of performance art as a primary medium within contemporary art practice.

What's your account?

Catherine Wood, curator at Tate Modern, on Performance Art: tate.org.uk

PS - at the end of the brief Tate video above, there was an excellent point about the migration of performance art away from an almost ontological / phenomenological focus on the body in performance as this intimate connection between body art and performance art, which is - perhaps - no longer the case.

Think of books by Peggy Phelan, Amelia Jones [Body Art / Performing the Subject], or Lea Vergine [Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language]...

Was performance art almost synonymously tied to the body / body art in the '60s and '70s? Further, would you say that this connection has been severed in today's resurgence / reinvention of performance (& its concerns, engagements, & manifestations)? And if so, how (& examples...)?

The Tate Tanks--although I have not yet experienced them--are such an interesting development in museum history. The idea that museums now integrate spaces for live art into their infrastructure is amazing.

I do wonder, though, about how the institutionalization of performance will change its role. In the past it was usually coming from a place of resistance. It will be interesting how its support will enable it to evolve... The idea of having a department budget, allocated space, etc, for live art is fascinating.

How will it change? Will traditional painting become the new medium of resistance? Is it already? It's going to be interesting...

As I suppose WAGE would argue--why shouldn't live art have a budget? Why should performance artists starve to make their work? Why should an ephemeral experience not cost millions? Perhaps this will become the new luxury experience--performance art. Now it's here, next moment it's not. Would be interesting!

Andrea Fraser's overnight performance has already been testing those waters of the market...