Performance Art is Now.

This is Performance Art

by Marilyn Arsem, translated by Daniela Beltrani

Performance art is live.

Performance art reveals itself in the present.
The artist engages in the act of creation while performing.
The manifestation and outcome of performance art cannot be known in advance. Re-enacting past works is theater, not performance art.

Performance art is real.

Performance art operates on a human scale.
It exists on the same plane as its witnesses. The artist uses real materials and real actions.
The artist is nothing but themselves.
There are no boundaries between art and life.
Time is only now.
Place is only here.

Performance art involves risk.

Artists take physical risks using their bodies.
Artists take mental risks confronting their limits.
Witnessing a performance challenges the audience’s sense of self.
Sponsoring performance art, with its unpredictability, requires taking risks.
Failure is always possible.

Performance art is not an investment object.

The work cannot be separated from the creator. It cannot be held.
It cannot be preserved.
It cannot be reproduced.
Performance art is experience: time, space, and actions shared between people. The documentation of performance art resides in the bodies of the artist and the witnesses.

Performance art is ephemeral.

It is an action created by an artist for a specific time and place.
Witnesses experience something unique that will never happen again. Performance art reveals the vulnerability of life.
Performance art reminds us that life is fleeting.
We are here only now.