Performance Art literature +

Action Art / Live Art / Performance Art books, writings, podcasts, thoughts, and other resources

Performance art is complicated and hard to pin down. These literature and other information sources will be a good beginning to delving deeper into the forms as a whole, specific regions, and focuses of the performance artists.

“Live Art is a way of thinking about what art is, what it can do, and where and how it can be experienced. “( from the Live Art Development Agency).

Therefore, it must be written about so performance art literature, Arts organizations, Festivals and more follows!

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Writings on Performance Art

Interviews

Regional Resources

Journals and websites

Podcasts

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Books, articles, writings on Performance Art
  • Acconci, Vito: Some Notes on Illegality in Art, Art Journal Volume 50, 1991 – Issue 3: Censorship I
  • Aravena, Christin ,Henaro, Sol, Moreno, Alejandra, Smith, Brian – Action art in Mexico
  • Arenas-Carter, Rodrigo: The Committed Body: Political Performance Art From Latin America
  • Political Performance Art From Latin America
  • Ruben Arevshatyan, “Between Illusions and Reality,” in Hedwig Saxenhuber (ed.) Adieu Paradjanov: Contemporary Art From Armenia, Springerin, Vienna, 2003
  • Arn, Jackson: When performance art takes to the streets, the results are moving. Artsy, 2019.
  • Zdenka Badovinac (ed.), Body and the East (Ljubljana: Moderna galerija, 1998).
  • Bao, Weihong et al., Reflections on Durational Art, Berkeley: University of California Press Books Division
  • Barber: The Function of Performance in Post Modern Culture
  • Andrea Bátorová, Aktionskunst in der Slowakei in den 1960er Jahren. Aktionen von Alex Mlynárčik (Berlin: Lit, 2009)
  • Battcock, Gregory and Robert Nickas: The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology, eds. Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984; repr., ed. Lucia della Paolera, New York: UbuWeb, 2010. In three sections—”Historical Introduction,” “Theory and Criticism,” and “The Artists”—the volume contains essays by scholars, critics, curators, and art historians, including Peter Gorsen’s “The Return of Existentialism in Performance Art,” Françoise Pluchart’s “Risk as the Practice of Thought,” and David Shapiro’s “Poetry and Action: Performance in a Dark Time,” as well as interviews with artists Terry Fox, Chris Burden, and Laurie Anderson, and writings by Vito Acconci and Les Levine. (English)
  • Becker, Jürgen and Wolf Vostell:Happenings: Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Realisme: Eine Dokumentation, eds. Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell, Rheinbeck: Rowohlt, 1965, 470 pp. Historical resource for the original interconnection among these four overlapping, once mutually enhancing, artistic movements, aesthetic concerns that have subsequently been pried apart in the history of art. (German)
  • Bhattacharya, Malini. “Performance as Protest: Cultural Strategies in the Era of ‘Globalisation.’” Social Scientist, vol. 26, no. 7/8, 1998, pp. 21–31. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3517612 –
  • Blocker, Jane: Where Is Ana Mendieta: Identity, Performativity and Exile (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999)
  • Boon, Errol: Art and Migration: on cultural internationalisation in the age of displacement
  • Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg and Peter Weibel: The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds
  • Bishop, Claire: Installation Art – a critical history, Tate Publishing (2005)
  • Blocker, Jane: Where Is Ana Mendieta: Identity, Performativity and Exile (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 24
  • Brentano, Robyn; “Outside the Frame: Performance, Art, and Life,” in Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, A Survey History of Performance Art in the USA since 1950 (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995), 31Bourriaud, Nicholas: Relational Aesthetics
  • Broms, Gustaf: 9Questions, an artist project by Gustaf Broms
  • Bronson, A.A. and Peggy Gale: Performance by Artists, eds. A.A. Bronson and Peggy Gale, Toronto: Art Metropole, 1979, 318 pp. Begins with a section of texts by artists not often cited in anthologies, such as Chalemange Palestine, Clive Robertson, Tom Sherman, Ben d’Armagnac, and Ulricke Rosenbach, among others. “Commentaries” follow written by artists and art historians, including Bruce Barber’s pivotal essay “Indexing: Conditionalism and Its Heretical Equivalents” on how the term “performance art” came to dominate a once open and variable nomenclature defining a broad field of live art activities. Extensive bibliography. (English),(French)
  • Bruguera, Tania: Vigilantes: The dream of Reason
  • Amy Bryzgel, Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960 (Manchester University Press, 2017).
  • Amy Bryzgel: Performing in the East – An Explosion of Performance Art in Estonia
  • Amy Bryzgel, Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia and Poland Since 1980 (I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd., 2012),
  • Amy Bryzgel: The Trouble with Living Artists
  • Bueys, Joseph: Image of Humanity
  • Butler, Judith: Performative Arts and Gender Constitution
  • Calirman, Claudia: Brazilian Performance Art, 1960s to 1980s: An Aesthetics of the Margins
  • Calirman, Claudia: Case Study: Antonio Manuel’s Body Art and Media Appropriation
  • Luis Camnitzer et al., Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s‒1980s (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999).
  • Champagne, Lenora: Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists, ed. & intro. Lenora Champagne, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1990, xiv+185 pp. Anthology of writings exploring sex, race, religion, and autobiography, and containing texts by performance artists Holly Hughes, Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Laurie Carlos, Robbie McCauley, and Jessica Hagedorn, Rachel Rosenthal, Beatrice Roth, Leeny Sack, Lenora Champagne and Fiona Templeton. (English)
  • Cianetti, Alessandra: Performing Borders – A study room guide on physical and conceptual borders within Live Art
  • Clausen, Barbara: After the act : the (re)presentation of performance art, Wien : MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, 2007
  • Cohen-Cruz, Jan: Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz, London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Anthology on invisible theater, demonstrations and rallies, direct action, puppetry, parades and pageants, performance art, guerrilla theater, and circuses, with contributors from Eugenio Barba, Augusto Boal, Yolanda Broyles-González, Dwight Conquergood, Abbie Hoffman, Baz Kershaw, Adrian Piper, Nellie Richard, Richard Schechner, Diana Taylor, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and David Welch. (English)
  • Couillard, Paul: From Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars (2009)
  • Couillard, Paul: La Dragu: The living Art of Margaret Dragu (2002)
  • Couillard, Paul and Liva, Alexandra: Alain-Martin Richard: Performances, Manoeuvres and Other Hypotheses for Disappearing (2014)
  • Cox, Emily: Performance and Migration
  • Dixon, Steve: Digital Performance: A history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation
  • Duarte, E., Merkle, L., Baranauskas, M.: The Interface between Interactive Art and Human-Computer Interaction: Exploring Dialogue Genres and Evaluative Practices
  • Dupuy, Jean : Collective Consciousness: Art Performances in the Seventies, ed. Jean Dupuy, New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1980, 245 pp. With introductory conversations between Dupuy, John Howell, Peter Frank, and Paul Miller, and an essay by Tim Maul, the anthology contains documents and statements by performance artists who performed at Dupuy’s loft space at 405 East 13th Street in New York, as well as actions that he documented in other spaces in the city. Vintage photographs of performances artists, both famous and obscure. [11] (English)
  • Exit Art, Endurance Art, The MIT Press
  • Finley, Karen: Constant State of Desire
  • Finley, Karen: Enough Is Enough: Weekly Meditations for Living Dysfunctionally
  • Forte, Jeanie: Focus on the Body: Pain, Praxix and Pleasure in Feminist Performance Art
  • Maja Fowles, The Green Bloc. Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (Budapest‒New York: Central European University Press, 2015).
  • Fuentes, Marcela A. , Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America (University of Michigan Press, 2019; Eterna Cadencia, 2020)
  • Fuentes, Marcela A.: 2019 Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
  • Fusco, Coco: The Other history of Intercultural Performance
  • Getnick, Brian and Rubbak, Tanya: Final Transmission: Performance Art and AIDS in Los Angeles
  • Gilroy, Paul: The Negative Dialectics of Conviviality
  • Goldberg, Roselee: Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present
  • Goldberg, Rose Lee : Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979).
  • Goldberg, Roselee: Performane Now: Live art for the 21st century
  • Gomez-Peña, Guillermo: Ethno Techno
  • Gorashi, Hannah: ‘…But We Can’t Pay You’: Performance Art and Money’s Knotty Relationship
  • Graver, David: Violent Theatricality: Displayed Enactments of Agression and Pain
  • Gray, John. Action Art: A Bibliography of Artists’ Performance from Futurism to Fluxus and Beyond. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993.
  • Gubord, Guy: Theory of the Dérive
  • Harutyvunyan, Angela: The Political Aesthetic of the Armenian Avant-Garde
  • Vít Havránek (ed.), Jiří Kovanda, 2005‒1976. Actions and Installations (Zürich: tranzit & JRP Ringier, 2006)
  • Heathfield, Adrian: Live Art and Performance
  • Hernandez, Bernadine: The Next Stage: The Legacy of Latinx Performance Art in L.A. Lives On
  • Hincapie, Maria Teresa: Accion, Corporeidad y el Dominio de lo Feminino en Columbia
  • Hiuni, Dahn: Education, Activism, Performance Art: Sharing Metaphors for Cultural Work
  • Hiuni, Dahn: Performing Identity: The Politics and Pedagogy of Witnessing the Self
  • Hoptman , Laura and Tomáš Pospiszyl: “Body Unbound”, ch. 4 in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002, pp 196ff. [12] TOC. (English)
  • Howell, Anthony: Being Clothes: The Analysis of Performance Art
  • Humbert, Brianna: PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP: DECOLONIZING PUBLIC SPACE THROUGH PARTICIPATION IN CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN ART (downloads PDF)
  • Hung, Wu and Peggy Wang: in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, eds. Wu Hung and Peggy Wang, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Primary documents and review of Chinese avant-garde art from 1976 until 2006. (English)
  • Victoria Hunter: Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance
  • Huxley, Michael, and Noel Witts, eds. The Twentieth Century Performance Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1996/2013, 514 pp. First edition contains 50 critical, theoretical, and some canonical 20th-century texts on performance. Reviews: Chamberlain (Contemporary Theatre Rev), Grady (TDR), Makeham (Australasian Drama Studies), Taylor (TDPT). (English)
  • Irani, Tara Fatehi : Mishandled Archive
  • Irwin, ed. East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe. London: Afterall, 2006.
  • Jane Franklin Dance co. Migration Project
  • Johnson, Caleb and Pratt, Geraldine: Migration in Performance: crossing the colonial present
  • Jones, Amelia: Body Art / Performing the Subject
  • Jones, Amelia: Pollackian Performative
  • Amelia Jones, “‘Presence’ in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation,” Art Journal 56 (no. 4, 1997), pp. 11‒18.
  • Kaprow, Alan: Assemblages, Environments and Happenings, ed. Allan Kaprow, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1966, 341 pp. Survey of the evolution of happenings as partially rooted in assemblage and environments, with attention to the happenings of Wolf Vostell (Germany), Jean-Jacques Lebel (France), the Gutai (Japan), Kudo (Japan), Oldenburg (United States), a.o. [10] (English)
  • Kaprow, Alan: Happenings in the New York Scene
  • Kaye, Nick: Site-Specific Art Performance Place Documentation
  • KAJIYA Kenji: Japanese Art Projects in History
  • Klara Kemp-Welch, Antipolitics in Central European Art. Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956‒1989 (London‒New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014).
  • Kirby, Michael; Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology, ed. & intro. Michael Kirby, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1965, 287 pp. Analyzes happenings as a new form of theater comparable to collage and “compartmented” theater. Composed of statements, scripts, and illustrations of happenings by Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenburg. (English)
  • Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik: Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces
  • Knížák, Milan: Aktual Schmuck, Czechoslovakia, ed. Milan Knížák, Cullompton, UK: Beau Geste, 1974. Assembled by Knížák, who was the principal theorist and leader of the Aktual group, and the publication by Beau Geste Press a much admired alternative press includes texts, photos, drawings, and ideas related to Aktual art actions, happenings, rituals, and ceremonies; profusely illustrated. (English)
  • Helena Kontová, interview with Petr Rezek, Karel Miler, Jan Mlčoch and Petr Štembera, April 4th 1977, published in the catalogue Karel Miler, Petr Štembera, Jan Mlčoch, 1970‒1980 (Prague: Gallery of the City of Prague, 1997), pp. 78‒79.
  • Kostelanetz, Richard: Scenarios: Scripts to Perform, ed. Richard Kostelanetz, Brooklyn, NY: Assembling Press, 1980. This veritable treasure trove of difficult to find, primary texts provides readers immediate access to the musical and conceptual scores, poetry, plays, commentaries, drawings, and performance practices driving experimental art of the period. (English)
  • KuroDalaiJee or Kuroda Raiji: Video Screening of Performance Art in the 1960s Japan
  • Krauss, Rosalind: he Originally of the Avant-Garede and Other Moderist Myths, MIT press 1986
  • Kwok Kian Chow: Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art, Singapore Art Museum 1996
  • Kwon, Miwon: One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art pp38-63 University of Minnesota Press
  • Kwon, Miwon: Genealogy of Site-Specificity
  • La dècada de 1990: Rewind & Forward. Cap a una competència pública de l’art
  • La Ribot, Maria: Art and Performance Live: La Ribot
  • Lamarque, Peter, Stein Haugom Olsen: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: and Anthology, Blackwell, 2004
  • Langenbach, Ray: Performing the Singapore State 1988-1995 PhD Thesis Center for Cultural Research University of Sydney aug 2003
  • Lasch, Christopher: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Dinimishing Expectations, W.W. Norton London 1991
  • Layton, James; Bergson and durational performance : (re)ma(r)king time
  • Lee Wen: A Waking Dream drawings and poetry 1981 Select Books, Singapore
  • Lee Wen: The Future of Imagination 3, Catalog, Singapore 2006
  • Lee Weng Choy: Chronology of a Controversy and A Review of Joseph Ng’s Performance edited S.K. Sanjay Krishnan 1996
  • Lee Weng Choy, Ansar Sadali: Lim Tzay Chuen Makes a Proposition Broadsheet Vol. 33 No. 2 2004 p 33-34
  • Lippard ,Lucy: Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 (ny Praeger 1973)
  • Loeffler, Carl E. and Darlene Tong: Performance Anthology: Source Book for a Decade of California Performance Art, eds. Carl E. Loeffler and Darlene Tong, San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1980, xii+500 pp; 2nd ed., upd., as Performance Anthology: Source Book of California Performance Art, San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1989. The second edition begins with introductory statements by Loeffler, Tom Marioni, and Allan Kaprow, followed by Tong’s literature review and her valuable annotated chronology (beginning in 1970) of performance art in California realized by US and international artists. Also contains essays by Loeffler, Linda Frye Burnham, Judith Barry, and Moira Roth. Many b&w photographs. (English)
  • Marcal, Helia, Matos de Oliveira, Fernando, Barques, Bruno, Mourao, Rui, PINA, Osnia, Carmo, Alexandra: Portuguese Performance art: Special Issue
  • Maretti, Franco: Dialectic of Fear, New Left Review 136 (Nov. Dec>) p 67-85 1982
  • Martel, Richard ed: Art Action 1958-1998 Quebec 2001
  • Md. Matiul Hoque Masud, Md. Niaz Morshed: Internal Migration of Dubaiwala Families to Suburban Areas in Bangladesh: Exploring Links between Internal and International Migration
  • Mbembe, Achille: On the postcolony, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001
  • McLuhan, Marshall: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Ginko Press, 1964
  • Meerzon, Yana, David Dean, Daniel McNeil: Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture
  • Neery Melkonian, “Azat Sargsyan: Azatapolitanas,” in Alfons Hug (ed.), Catalogue 25th Bienal de São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 2002
  • Mengesha, Lilian: Indigenous Theater
  • Metello, Verónica: From first Portuguese Performance Art to Transmission MoMA, Varsóvia, 2015
  • Meyer, Mónica: Mujeres y Performance en México
  • Meyerhold: The Biomechanics of worker management theory
  • Miller, Tim: My Queer body
  • Miller, Tim and Roman, David: Preaching to the Converted
  • Miyamoto, Bénédicte, Ruiz, Marie: Artand MIgration: Revisioning the Borders of Community
  • Morandi, Jessica: Performance Art as an Activist Tool, Harvard Political Review, March 7, 2020
  • Pavlína Morganová, Czech Action Art. Happenings, Actions, Events, Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain, Karolinum Press, Prague 2014, p. 233, also Tomáš Poszpiszyl, “A Replica Does Not Represent Merely a Copy but Part of a Dialogue,” in Barbora Klímová (ed.), Replaced, Brno 2006.
  • Pavlína Morganová ‒ Terezie Nekvindová ‒ Sláva Sobotovičová (eds.), Czech Performance Art: Film and Video, 1956–1989 (Prague: VVP AVU, 2015).
  • Pavlína Morganová, “Fluxus in the Czech Period Press,” in Petra Stegman (ed.), Fluxus East. Fluxus Netzwerke in Mittelosteuropa (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH, 2000), pp. 177‒196; also Pavlína Morganová, “České akční umění 60. let v dobovém tisku” (Czech Action Art of 1960s in the Press), in Akce, slovo, pohyb, prostor / Experimenty v umění šedesátých let (Action, Word, Movement, Space / Experimental Art of the Sixties), catalogue of the exhibition, Gallery of the City of Prague, Prague 1999.
  • Morganová, Pavlína. 2020. “Performance Art in Czechoslovakia – Remembered, Described, Interpreted, Photographed and Filmed, Sometimes Even Reenacted.” Sandra Frimmel, Tomáš Glanc, Sabine Hänsgen, Katalin Krasznahorkai, Nastasia Louveau, Dorota Sajewska, Sylvia Sasse (eds.). 2020. Doing Performance Art History. Berlin: Apparatus Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2020.0000.206
  • Pavlína Morganová, „Untitled“, in: Jiří Kovanda – I Haven’t Been Here Yet (Wroclaw: Muzeum Wspótezesne Wroclaw, 2013).
  • Pavlína Morganová, A Walk Through Prague: Actions, Performances, Happenings 1949−1989 (Prague: VVP AVU 2017), Czech Action Art / Happenings, Actions, Events, Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain (Prague: Karolinum Press 2015).
  • Peggy Phelan, “The ontology of performance: representation without reproduction,” in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York, Routledge, 1995).
  • Muñoz, José: Performing Disidentifications
  • Munroe, Alexandra: Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Harry n Abrams NY 1994.
  • Noguera, Ana María Enciso : How performance art has united women’s voices in Latin America and throughout the world
  • O’Donnell, Darren: Social Acupuncture
  • Oliver, Valerie Cassel; “Putting the Black Body on the Line: Endurance in Black Performance” in Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art Catalogue (Houston: Contemporary Art Museum Houston, 20
  • Olsen, Andrea; The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making
  • Open Research Amsterdam various resources
  • Paltriwieri, Roberta, PArmiggian, Paola, Musaró, Pierluigi, Moralli, Meissa: Right to the City: performing arts and migration
  • Pather, Jay and Catherine Boulle, Ed.: Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa; Wits University Press, 2019
  • Pearson, Mike: Site-Specific Performance
  • Petrešin-Bachelez, Nataša: Resilient Practices: A Few Case Studies on Performances in Public Spaces and their Controversies in the former Eastern Europe
  • Phelan, Peggy: Ontology of Performance
  • Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (Reaktion Books, 2009).
  • Pope, William: Sandwich Lecture
  • Purseglove, Laura Ed.: Bodies of Knowledge
  • Quick, Sophie, Putting in time : long-durational performance art spectatorship
  • Ramirez, Mari Carmen, and Héctor Olea, eds. Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Assembly of primary documents on and writings by Latin American artists and critics. (English)
  • Reckitt, Helena: The Art of Feminism: Images that shaped the fight for Equality, 1857-2017, Chonicle Books
  • Karen Gonzalez Rice. Long Suffering: American Endurance Art as Prophetic Witness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 206 pp., 15 b/w ills.
  • Ritter, Julia; Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance
  • Rivera, Nelson; Visual Artists and the Puerto Rican Performing Arts, 1950-1990: The Works of Jack and Irene Delano, Antonio Martorell, Jaime Suarez, and Oscar Mestey-Villamil. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. xvii + 232 pp. $47.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8204-2620-4
  • Zora Rusinova (ed.), Action Art 1965‒1989 (Bratislava: SNG, 2001),
  • Sandoval, Rosemberg: artist catalog 2004, bogota
  • Schneider, Rebecca: Explicit Body in Performance
  • Lara Shalson, Performing Endurance: Art and Politics since 1960.
  • Shanken, Edward A., ed. Art and Electronic Media. London and New York: Phaidon, 2009.
  • Sheren, Ila: Performing Migration: Art and Site-Specificity at the U.S.-Mexico Border
  • Smith and Sawchyn: Fluxus Performance Workbook
  • Somaya, Sandra: Primer Encuentro Mundial de Arte Corporal (caracas: Ministerio de la Cultura 2006)
  • Petra Stegmann (ed.), Fluxus East. Fluxus Networks in Central Eastern Europe (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethania GmbH, 2007).
  • Kristine Stiles et al., Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949‒1979 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998).
  • Stiles, Kristine: Performance Art -ch 8 in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, eds. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1996, pp 679ff; 2nd ed., 2012, pp 798-954. Introduction. Writings by an international selection of performance artists, with an introduction to the history of performance art from the 1950s to the present. See also chapter 5, “Art and Technology”, for video and multimedia performance, and chapter 9, “Language and Concepts”, for conceptual performance. (English)
  • Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Selz, eds. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
  • Studies in International Performance
  • Tankha, Akshaya, An Aesthetics of Endurance Art, Visual Culture and Indigenous Presence in Nagaland, India
  • Tarver, Gina McDaniel: Art Does Not Fit Here – Colombian Conceptual Art between the International ‘New Avant-Garde’ and Colombian Politics
  • Torrens, Velentín: How We Teach Performance Art – University Courses and Workshop Syllabus
  • Truax, Raegan: Durational Performance: Temporalities of the Untimely Body – focuses on global women and/or genderqueer artists who bend, suspend, and manipulate time as a political material.
  • Jiří Valoch, Epilogue to Akční umění (Action Art) by Pavlína Morganová (Olomouc, Votobia, 1999), p. 143.
  • Wagner, Anne: Performance, Video, and the Thetoric of Presence
  • Wark, Jayne: On the Road Again: Metaphors of Travel in Cultural Criticism in Resident Alien: Feminst Cultural Criticism Cambridge 1995
  • Wark, Jayne – Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance in North America
  • Warr, Tracey: “Documents”, in The Artist’s Body, ed. Tracey Warr, London: Phaidon, 2000, pp 190-287; abr., rev. & upd.ed., 2012. (English)
  • Wooden, Isaiah Matthew, Jefferson Pinder and the Art of Black Endurance
  • Wrights and Sites: A manifesto for a new Walking Culture
  • Wu Hung, and Peggy Wang, eds. Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.
  • Zinn, Howard: artists in times of war, New York, Seven Stories Press, 2003
  • Ziter, Edward: Migration in the theater, film and performance art. Class at NYU< Tisch
Interviews
  • Ellen H. Johnson (ed.), “Performance Art, Film, and Video”, in American Artists on Art: from 1940 to 1980, ed. Ellen H. Johnson, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1982, pp 225-244. Reprints of interviews with Nauman, Acconci, Burden, and Anderson. (English)
  • Re/Search 13: “Angry Women”, eds. Andrea Juno and V. Vale, San Francisco: Re/Search, 1991, 239 pp. Compilation of interviews with sixteen performance artists: Kathy Acker, Susie Bright, Wanda Coleman, Valie Export, Karen Finley, Diamanda Galás, bell hooks, Holly Hughes, Lydia Lunch, Kerr & Malley, Linda Montano, Avital Ronell, Sapphire, Carolee Schneemann, and Annie Sprinkle. Interviews address questions of male domination, racism, childhood sexual abuse, persecution of lesbians, reproductive rights, pornography and these artists’ effort to initiate social change through performance art. [13](English)
    • Ikareru onnatachi, 2 vols., trans. Michio Ochi, Tokyo, 1995 & 1997, 325 pp & 303 pp. (Japanese)
    • Angry women: die weibliche Seite der Avantgarde, trans. Kirsten Borchardt and Patricia Grzonka, St. Andrä-Wördern : Hannibal, 1997, 271 pp. (German)
    • Nu nu, Tai bei shi: Shang zhou chu ban: Jia ting chuan mei cheng bang fen gong si fa xing, 2005, 319 pp. (Chinese)
  • Herrera, Anahí Saravia: The street as an artistic/political space | Interview with Alejandra Del Carpio + Calle: Bienal del Performance  (English)
  • Nick Kaye, Art Into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents, Routledge, 1996, 280 pp. Includes interviews with John Cage, Carolee Schneemann, Barry Le Va, Dennis Oppenheim, Stuart Brisley, Joan Jonas, Linda Montano, Marina Abramovic, et al. [14] (English)
  • Conversations on Art and Performance, eds. Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Presents interviews on a variety of topics with various authors first published in PAJ journal: Susan Sontag (“Art and Its Audience”), Robert Jay Lifton (“Art and the Imagery of Extinction”), Edward Said (“Criticism, Culture, and Performance”), Carolee Schneemann (“Performance and the Body”), Laurie Anderson (“Acting and Nonacting”), Lee Breuer (“Interculturalism and Performance”), a.o. Review: Fortier (Modern Drama). (English)
  • Linda M. Montano (ed.), Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties: Sex, Food, Money/Fame, Ritual/Death, afterw. Kristine Stiles, University of California Press, 2000, 537 pp. Illuminating, humorous, and thoughtful interviews conducted by the performance artist Linda Montano with a diverse group of artists, who opine on sex, food, money/fame, and ritual/death, including artist’s biographies. (English)
  • Nicholas Zurbrugg (ed.), Art, Performance, Media: 31 Interviews, University of Minnesota Press, 2004, xxii+407 pp. (English)
  • Bruce Barber, Performance, [Performance] and Performers, ed. Marc James Leger, Toronto: YYZ Books, 2007, 141 pp. [15] (English)
  • Bruce Barber, Performance, [Performance] and Performers, Vol. 2, Marc James Leger, Toronto: YYZ Books, 2007, 160 pp. [16] (English)
  • Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Conversations across Borders: A Performance Artist Converses with Theorists, Curators, Activists, and Fellow Artists, ed. Laura Levin, London and New York: Seagull, 2011. Addressing a variety of topics, from border culture, postcolonial theatricalization, and urban hipsterism to art in the post-9/11 era, Gómez-Peña talks with such artists as Lisa Wolford Wylam, Tim Miller, Felipe Ehrenberg, Orlando Britoo Jinorio, Silvana Straw, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a.o. (English)
  • Dominic Johnson, Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, xiv+303 pp. (English)
Regional and focused Performance Art Resources
Performance Art / Performance Journals, websites and resources
  • Artishock – the most viewed digital magazine of contemporary art in Chile
  • AYMOlive – Streaming / worldwide
  • https://contemporaryperformance.com/
  • ECC – Performance Art (EU) – education, research, and exchange
  • Ecumenica: Performance and Religion – attends to the combination of creativity, religion, and spirituality in expressive practice. A peer-reviewed journal, Ecumenica regards performance and religion as overlapping and often mutually-constituting categories, preferring no particular form of creative expression, and privileging no particular religious tradition. The journal’s very aim is to consider the variety of modes in which creative and religious impulses might be realized. Ecumenica ’s interdisciplinary premise welcomes all critical approaches to such topics as performance art, theatre, ritual, contemplative and devotional practices, and expressions of community.
  • The International Performance Association. https://i-pa.org/international-performance-association/
  • Live art and per­for­mance stud­ies (LAPS), masters (Finland) – degree program)
  • monoskop.org/Performance_art
  • https://www.onlineperformanceart.com/
  • On The Move – (France, EU) On the Move provides information on cultural mobility that is clear, up-to-date, and always free to use. Drawing on the expertise of our network and partners, we source open calls for our website, maintain a collection of more than 60 funding guides, and point to external guidance on specialist topics like visa and tax law. We also publish thematic reports and publications, undertake research, and design mentoring programmes for artists and organisations. All our work is underpinned by a commitment to engaging with the context, environmental impacts and ethics of mobility.
  • Performance Art Index
  • Performance Philosophy
  • Performance Studies internationalhttps://www.psi-web.org/
  • Performers– Patrick Morarescu’s photo series of performance artists
Performance Art Podcasts
Site Specific Resources

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