Yorkshire Sculpture Park
RESOURCE FILE
Mel Brimfield
Mel Brimfield
Mel Brimfield is a British artist and curator, born in Oxford in 1976. She gained a BA (Hons)
Fine Art at Bath Spa University (1995-98) and MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and
Design (1999-2000). Brimfield is particularly interested in Performance Art and creates
playful alternative histories inspired by real artists, artworks and pop culture influences. She
looks at a rich history of collaboration between artists, dancers, theatre makers, political
activists and comedians. Recognising that Performance Art is difficult to document and
represent accurately, Brimfield toys with the truth and produces fabricated information,
objects and ephemera to support her often comical parallel realities. Low-end showbiz
memoirs, sensationalist biographical documentaries and cheap-to-make TV clip programmes
compiling lists of 'The 100 Top/Best/Greatest...' are referenced in her work alongside
formal museological displays of performance ephemera and documentation.
Mel Brimfield is represented by Ceri Hand Gallery in Liverpool. Between 2006 and 2008 she
was Associate Producer at the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, and also founded Brown
Mountain College of the Performing Arts with Sally O’Reilly and Ben Roberts. She is the
curator of The Comic Book Project publication (published by Revolver). Brimfield has
worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art; the Liverpool Biennial; Pump House Gallery;
Battersea Arts Centre; Camden Arts Centre; Whitstable Biennial; The International 3; De
Appel and Frieze Art Fair, London, UK.
1976
Born in Oxford, UK
1998
Gains BA (Hons) Fine Art from Bath Spa University College
2000
Gains MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design
2001
First group exhibition Salon, The Centre of Attention, London, UK
2004
Curated Radio Radio, a touring gallery exhibition, radio programme,
web archive, audio publication at The Trade Apartment, London, UK, The
International 3, Manchester, UK, De Appel Curating Institute, Amsterdam and
Resonance FM, London, UK
Record Collection, (with Elaine Forde), VTO Gallery, London, UK, The
International 3, Manchester, UK, Forde Espace d'art Contemporain, Geneva,
Switzerland
2006
Curated project: Whitstable Biennale performance programme with
Sally O'Reilly.
Hearing Voices, Seeing Things, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
2007
Curated project: The Real Writers' Residency Programme, gallery
exhibition, performance events, and spoof documentary, G39 gallery, Cardiff
Curatorial residency The Golden Record at The Collective Gallery,
Edinburgh, UK
Curated project: The Comic Book, exhibition, touring performance
programme and publication (Revolver), Collective gallery, the Traverse
Theatre and Edinburgh International Art, Film and Book Festivals. Tours
to the COMICA festival at the ICA, Edinburgh, North Wales and London
2008
Curated project: The Golden Record - Sounds of Earth, Collective Gallery
(Edinburgh Art Festival) and the Pleasance (Edinburgh Fringe). Tour to
The Collection Museum, Lincoln UK
First solo exhibition Waiter Waiter, There’s a Sculpture in my Soup at
Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool Biennial, UK
Group exhibition Future50, Project Space Leeds, UK
2009
Solo exhibition Waiter Waiter there's a Sculpture in my Soup – Part II,
Pump House Gallery, London, UK
2010
Residency and exhibition This is Performance Art: Performed Sculpture
and Dance, Camden Art Centre, London, UK
Awarded the Cocheme Fellowship, Byam Shaw School of Art, London, UK
Live performance at the Sculpture and Performance, Conference,
Tate Liverpool as part of the Henry Moore Institute Research programme.
Group exhibition LOCATE with Aura Satz and Sarah Pickering at
Jerwood Visual Arts, London, UK
2011
Solo exhibition at Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool, UK
This is Performance Art: Performed Sculpture and Dance,
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK
Mel Brimfield: This is Performance Art. Part One: Performed Sculpture and Dance
Bothy Gallery 09.04.11–03.07.11
For her exhibition in the Bothy Gallery at YSP, Brimfield re-imagines the space as
‘Room 27’ of a major museum survey entitled This is Performance Art, presenting
her interpretation of its history. Room 27 considers Performed Sculpture and
Dance and begins with the framed gallery plan of the imagined exhibition. Key terms
in Brimfield’s history are displayed on the black walls and in a particular font, to be
deliberately reminiscent of Tate Modern’s Artist Timeline. Brimfield’s history of
Performance Art includes Alex Owens, the character from the film Flashdance, as a
highly important artist of the late twentieth century, and the pioneering performance
duo Morecambe and wise, rather than Gilbert and George.
I aim to actively examine what can be said to constitute the ontology of ‘live art’
within current discourse and record. I aim to interrogate its parity with, and exclusion
from, both wider art practice and other performance genres, foregrounding a history
that demonstrates a strong tradition of cross-disciplinary work. In addition, the
project instigates a unique production methodology that will enable structured
collaborative development of new performance work
for film and live formats. Mel Brimfield
The Semiotics of the Kitchen 2011
He Hit Me 2011
Richard Serra’s ‘Cut Piece’ 2011
Richard Serra’s ‘Cut Piece’ 2011
Rubble Without a Cause 2010
Sculpture or Bust 2010
BODY/ROCK (Choreographic score) produced in collaboration with Alice Capitani at Camden Arts centre 2010
Pose Work For Balls – Alex Owens.
Produced in collaboration with Jo Neary, 2010
Mel Brimfield: This is Performance Art. Part One: Performed Sculpture and Dance
Bothy Gallery 09.04.11–03.07.11
Walk through of the exhibition
Room 1
A display of key terms and people from popular and high culture that inform Brimfield’s exploration of
Performance Art, presented in a font and layout reminiscent of Tate Modern’s Artist Timeline.
Please see glossary.
The framed drawing is by Edward Ward and Mel Brimfield and is a blow-out plan of Brimfield’s imagined
major museum exhibition This is Performance Art. The Bothy Gallery is conceived as room 27 of this
display: Performed Sculpture and Dance. The accompanying texts reveal highlights of Brimfield’s version of
history. Poster edition of this plan, limited to 100, available priced £10.
Room 2
Photographs and drawings relating to Alex Owens
Alex Owens is the character in the film Flashdance, re-imagined by Brimfield as a highly important
woman sculptor struggling against the macho world of US minimalism, which she overcomes through
choreographed dance and aerobic routines, and re-worked vaudeville techniques including juggling,
balancing and paper tearing.
The juggling series demonstrates Owen’s ‘now legendary juggling routine for the camera’ throwing
progressively more complex geometric shapes.
On Board, a complex balance between weight and gravity, and The Semiotics of the Kitchen are widely
considered to be a critique of traditional women’s roles in modern society.
The painted posters advertise imagined performances by Alex Owens and Hot Gossip. Legend has it that,
after years of Owen’s Body/Sculpture series, including pose work with balls, she persuaded a group of likeminded female sculptors to join her in becoming morbidly obese – forming the Roly Polys and performing on
TV programmes such as Top of the Pops. In their final metamorphosis, the group stripped off fat suits to
reveal newly toned athletic bodies, bending over to spell Hot Gossip across their perfect posteriors. The
photograph above the door is of Brimfield’s Hot Gossip troupe, the real-life Hot Gossip being a dance act in
the 1970s and 80s formed by Arlene Phillips.
Room 3
Bruce McLean is actually a pioneering British performance artist. Brimfield’s history presents McLean as
starting out as a stripper, working with Nice Style and the Pose Band and launched on the art world by the
influential Marxist dance quarterly Two Left Feet. The photographs document his work for Judson Dance
Theatre in 1971, bodiesthrowingthings, which is intended to appear as a complex vaudeville routine but
achieved with the help of assistants behind the curtains.
Similarly Morecambe and Wise (who Brimfield parallels with Gilbert and George) shows Morecambe
appearing to hover in mid air, supported by Wise in a ballet lift – the body as sculptural object.
The vitrine contains photographs of Morecambe and Wise’s much-imitated living sculpture technique
Action! Painting is documentation of one of the duo’s performances, inspired by Hans Nemuth’s
photographs of Jackson Pollock’s action painting technique, in which their heads both interrupt and become
part of the canvas.
In reality, Richard Serra is a pioneer of the US minimalist movement. One of his important early works being
a performance in which he throws lead against Leo Castelli’s warehouse wall. Brimfield’s history has Rolling
Stone sculpture magazine establishing Serra through photographs of this event, promotional posters and
magazine covers showing his: ‘brute machismo, with trademark welding mask and crucibles’.
Room 4
Film
This is Performance Art is Brimfield’s film that is a spoof of a TV series and that brings together her version
of the history of Performance Art.
Performance art
Performance art refers largely to a performance that is presented to an audience but which
does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or a formal linear narrative, or
alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted
interactions. It will often include some form of action or spoken word, which is a form of
direct communication between the artist and audience, rather than a script written
beforehand. Performance art often entails a dramatic performer who is directly aware of
and in communication with the audience, often to break the fourth wall.
Some performance art may utilise a script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still
constitutes performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of
creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world
dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirise or to transcend the usual real-world
dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays. In this way, the performance work
itself partakes of a form of direct communication with the audience, by relying on the
audience's familiarity with nominal dramatic premises and norms, in order to go beyond them
or circumvent them, even if the characters within the work themselves do not evince such
awareness.
Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream forms of
performance such as dance, music, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and
gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. Performance art is a
term usually reserved to refer to a more conceptual art, which conveys a content-based
meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own
sake for entertainment purposes. Performance art can include any type of physical stage
performance, which is not an exhibition of direct artistry such as theatre, music or dance,
but rather incorporates satirical or conceptual elements.
In performance art, the actions of an individual or a group at a
particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.
Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or
setting and for any length of time. It can be any situation that
involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's
body and a relationship between performer and audience. It
traditionally involves the artist and other actors. Other works
that involve the use of machines may also be seen as an
offshoot of performance art. In some cases the audience
unwittingly becomes part of that performance.
Origins
Performance artist Joseph Beuys in 1978 :
Jeder Mensch ein Künstler — Auf dem Weg
zur Freiheitsgestalt des sozialen
Organismus The first forms of performance art began in the Middle Ages, in the forms of itinerant poets
such as, troubadours, bards, and in some cases jesters. These were artists who often
composed and performed their own works. This evolved into various forms in various
cultures, such as Commedia dell'arte in Italy, pantomime in Great Britain, mime artists -
which are quite distinct from pantomime, harlequinade in various European societies,
skomorokh in Russia, and folk plays in various countries. In modern era, there continue to be
some paradigmatic roles, which fit this function, such as buskers.
Modern development
There have been a variety of new works, concepts and artists that
have led to new kinds of performance art. Andy Warhol was noted
for staging new types of mass events and performance art in New
York, notably with the Velvet Underground and the Warhol
Superstars. Laurie Anderson's performance art has been staged at
a number of major venues, such as Lincoln Centre. Modern artistic
concepts such as surrealism and Dadaism were used by several
artists to produce new kinds of performance art.
In the 1960s, an increasing number of artists produced new forms
of performance art, including Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow—who
coined the term Happenings—Carolee Schneemann, Hermann
Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Barbara T. Smith,
Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas, the women associated with the
Conceptual work by Yves Klein at Rue GentilFeminist Studio Workshop and the Woman's Building in Los
Bernard, Fontenay-aux-Roses, October 1960,
Angeles, and Chris Burden. But performance art was certainly
Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void)
anticipated, if not explicitly formulated, by Japan's Gutai group of
the 1950s, especially in such works as Atsuko Tanaka's Electric
Dress (1956). In 1970 the British-based pair Gilbert and George created the first of their
living sculpture performances when they painted themselves gold and sang Underneath
The Arches for extended periods. Jud Yalkut, a pioneering video artist, and others, such as
Carolee Schneemann and Sandra Binion, began combining video with other media to create
experimental works. Guerrilla theatre, or street theatre, including performances by students
and others, has regularly appeared within the ranks of antiwar movements.
The anarchist antiwar group the Yippies, partly organised by Abbie Hoffmann, performed
street theater when they dropped hundreds of dollar bills from the balcony of the Stock
Exchange in New York. Latino, Latin-American, and other street theater groups, including
those like the San Francisco Mime Troupe, that stem from circus and traveling theater
traditions, should also be mentioned. Although they may not be not direct antecedents of
art-world performance, their influence, particularly in the United States should be noted—
as should that of the U.S. conceptual artist Sol Lewitt, who in the early 1960s converted
mural-style drawing into an act of performance by others. Performance art, because of its
relative transience, had a fairly robust presence in the avant-garde of East Bloc countries,
especially Yugoslavia and Poland, by the 1970s.
Western cultural theorists often trace performance art activity back to the beginning of the
20th century. Dada, for example, provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional
performances of poetry, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck
and Tristan Tzara. There were also Russian Futurist artists who could be identified as
performance artists, such as David Burliuk, who painted his face for his actions (1910–20).
However, there are accounts of Renaissance artists putting on public performances that
could be said to be early ancestors of modern performance art. Some performance artists
and theorists point to other traditions and histories, ranging from tribal to sporting and ritual
or religious events. Performance art activity is not confined to European or American art
traditions; many notable practitioners can be found in Asia and Latin America.
In performance art, usually one or more people perform in front of an audience.
Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways
about theater and performing, break conventions of traditional performing arts, and break
down conventional ideas about "what art is," a preoccupation of modernist experimental
theater and of postmodernism. Thus, even though in most cases the performance is in front
of an audience, in some cases, notably in the later works of Allan Kaprow, the audience
members become the performers. The performance may be scripted, unscripted, or
improvisational. It may incorporate music, dance, song, or complete silence. Art-world
performance has often been an intimate set of gestures or actions, lasting from a few
minutes to many hours, and may rely on props or avoid them completely. Performance may
occur in transient spaces or in galleries, room, theaters or, auditoriums.
Despite the fact that many performances are held within the circle of a small art-world
group, RoseLee Goldberg notes, in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present that
‘performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking
audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely,
public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that
public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct
community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that
the artists devise.’
Allan Kaprow's performance art attempted to integrate art and life. Through Happenings,
the separation between life, art, artist, and audience becomes blurred. The Happening
allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken
texts, and even smells. One of Kaprow's earliest Happenings was the Happenings in the
New York Scene, written in 1961 as the form was developing
Performance art genres include body art, fluxus, happening, action poetry, and intermedia.
Some artists, e.g. the Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists, prefer to use the terms live art,
‘action art’, intervention or ‘manoeuvre’ to describe their activities. These activities are also
sometimes referred to simply as "actions".
Live Art
Live Art is a term used to describe acts of performance undertaken by an artist or a group
of artists, as a work of art. It is an innovative and exploratory approach to contemporary
performance practices. Live Art can also be referred to as time-based art, as the exploration
of temporality tends to be a key theme of this sort of work. The term came into usage in the
United Kingdom in the middle of the 1980s to recognise both new and existing performance
work as a form of creative expression. Live Art is influenced by a diverse array of other
forms including visual art, Experimental theatre and dance. Live Art is a varied and diverse
practice. By its very nature live art "defies precise of easy definition beyond the simple
definition that it is live art by artists". Below are a series of definitions of the term Live Art:
Tate Collection:
"Live Art mainly refers to Performance art and Action art and their immediate
precursor Happenings, together with the developments of Performance since the
1960s.
Live Art Archive:
"Live Art can be defined as "art work that broadly embraces ephemeral, time-based,
visual and performing arts events that include a human presence and broaden,
challenge or question traditional views of the arts".
The Live Art Development Agency
"Live Art should not be understood as a description of an artform but as a strategy to
‘include' a diversity of practices and artists that might otherwise find themselves
‘excluded' from all kinds of policy and provision and all kinds of curatorial contexts
and critical debates".
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art)
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of
performance art, born in New Jersey, USA in 1927. Kaprow studied at the High School of Music and
Art in New York, USA. As an undergraduate at New York University, he became influenced by John
Dewey's book Art as Experience. He studied in the Arts and philosophy as a graduate student. He
received his MA degree from Columbia University in Art history. He started in the Hans Hofmann
School of Fine Arts in 1947. He helped to develop the idea and theory of ‘Environment’ and
‘Happenings’ in the late 1950s and 1960s. During the later years his Happenings evolved and
eventually Kaprow shifted his practice into what he called ‘Activities’ - intimately-scaled pieces for one
or several players, devoted to the study of normal human activity in a way congruent to ordinary life.
Fluxus, Performance art, and Installation art was influenced by his work.
Happenings
In 1958, Kaprow published the essay The Legacy of Jackson Pollock. In it he demands a ‘concrete
art’ made of everyday materials such as ‘paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old
socks, a dog, movies.’ In this particular text, he uses the term Happening for the first time stating that
craftsmanship and permanence should be forgotten and perishable materials should be used in art. The
Happenings first started as tightly scripted events, in which the audience and performers followed
queues to experience the art. Kaprow stated a Happening was ‘a game, an adventure, a number of
activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing’ and events that put simply happen.
Happenings had no structured beginning, middle, or end, and there was no distinction or hierarchy
between artist and viewer. It was the viewer's reaction that decided the art piece, making each
Happening a unique experience. These Happenings were participatory and interactive, with the goal of
tearing down the wall between artist and observers who would often interact with the piece, becoming
part of the art. The Happening Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts
involved an audience moving together to experience
elements such as a band playing toy instruments, a woman
squeezing an orange, and painters painting. His work
evolved, and became less scripted and incorporated more
everyday activities. Another example of a Happening
created by Kaprow involved bringing people into a room
containing a large abundance of ice cubes, which they had
to touch, causing them to melt bringing the piece full circle. His most famous happenings began around 1961, when he
would take students or friends out to a specific site to perform
Allan Kaprow’s Fluids 1966
a small action. He developed a technique to prompt a creative response from the audience,
encouraging audience members to make their own connections between ideas and events, which he
rarely recorded giving them a one time occurrence piece. Happenings attempted to integrate art and
life, bringing together art, artist, and audience, allowing the artist to experiment with body motion,
recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells.
Kraprow has published extensively and was Professor Emeritus in the Visual Arts Department of the
University of California, San Diego. Kaprow is associated with the idea of ‘un-art’, featured in his
essays Art Which Can't Be Art and The Education of the Un-Artist.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Kaprow)
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure
in post-war European art, born in Nice, France in 1962. He is
the leading member of the French artistic movement of
Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre
Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of
Performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a
forerunner of Minimal art, as well as Pop art.
From 1942 to 1946, Yves Klein studied at the École Nationale
de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues
Orientales and began practicing judo. At this time, he became
friends with Arman Fernandez and Claude Pascal and started
to paint. At the age of nineteen, Klein and his friends lay on a
beach in the south of France, and divided the world between themselves; Arman
chose the earth, Claude, words, whilst Yves chose the ethereal space surrounding
the planet, which he then proceeded to sign: With this famous symbolic gesture of
signing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from that time
onwards—a quest to reach the far side of the infinite.
Between 1947 and 1948, Klein conceived his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally
The Monotone-Silence Symphony) that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained
chord followed by a 20-minute silence – a precedent to both La Monte Young's
drone music and John Cage's silent 4’33”. During the years 1948 to 1952, he
traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In Japan, at the early age of 25, he
became a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt)
from the Kodokan, which at that time was a remarkable achievement for a
westerner. He also stayed in Japan in 1953. Klein later wrote a book on Judo called
Les fondements du judo. In 1954, Klein settled permanently in Paris and began in
earnest to establish himself in the art world.
Artwork
Klein experimented with various methods of
applying paint; firstly different rollers and then
later sponges, created a series of varied
surfaces. This experimentalism would lead to a
number of works Klein made using naked
female models covered in blue paint and
dragged across or laid upon canvases to make
the image, using the models as ‘living brushes’.
This type of work he called Anthropometry.
Other paintings in this method of production
include recordings of
rain that Klein made by driving around in the rain at 70 miles per hour with a canvas
tied to the roof of his car, and canvases with patterns of soot created by scorching
the canvas with gas burners.
Aero works
Klein is also well known for a photomontage, Saut dans le vide (Leap into the
Void) originally published in the artist's book Dimanche, which apparently shows him
jumping off a wall, arms outstretched, towards the pavement. Klein used the
photograph as evidence of his ability to undertake unaided lunar travel. His work
revolved around a Zen-influenced concept he came to describe as ‘le Vide’ (the
Void). Klein's Void is a nirvana-like state that is void of worldly influences; a neutral
zone where one is inspired to pay attention to ones own sensibilities, and to reality as
opposed to representation. Klein presented his work in forms that were recognised
as art—paintings, a book, a musical composition—but then would take away the
expected content of that form (paintings without pictures, a book without words, a
musical composition without in fact composition) leaving only a shell, as it were. In
this way he tried to create ‘Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility’ for his audience.
Instead of representing objects in a subjective, artistic way, Klein wanted his subjects
to be represented by their imprint: the image of their absence. Klein's work strongly
refers to a theoretical/art historical context as well as to philosophy/metaphysics
and with his work he aimed to combine these. He tried to make his audience
experience a state where an idea could simultaneously be ‘felt’ as well as
‘understood’.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein)
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist,
sculptor, installation artist, art theorist and teacher of
art. Beuys was born in 1921 in Krefeld, Germany and
is considered one of the most influential figures in
modern and contemporary art. His extensive work is
grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy
and anthroposophy, culminating in his ‘extended
definition of art’ and the idea of social sculpture as a
gesamtkunstwerk – a work of art that makes use
of all or many art forms – for which he claimed a
creative, participatory role in shaping society and
politics. His career was characterised by passionate
public debate. Beuys' extensive body of work
principally comprises four domains: works of art in a traditional sense (painting, drawing,
sculpture and installations), performance, contributions to the theory of art and academic
teaching, and social and political activities. From an early age, Beuys displayed a keen
interest in the natural sciences and had considered a career in medical studies, but in his last
years of school he became influenced by sculpture by German artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck. In
1946 Beuys enrolled in the Monumental Sculpture program at the Düsseldorf Academy of
Fine Arts, Germany. Throughout the 1950s he explored a range of unconventional materials
and developed his artistic agenda, exploring metaphorical and symbolic connections
between natural phenomena and philosophical systems. His drawings were often difficult to
interpret - these drawings constitute a speculative, contingent and rather hermetic
exploration of the material world and how that world might be connected to the realm of
myth and philosophy.
Academia and public (1960 - 1975)
In 1961 Beuys was appointed professor of Monumental Sculpture at the Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf. His students included artists Katharina Sieverding, Jörg Immendorff, Blinky
Palermo, Peter Angermann, Elias Maria Reti, Walter Dahn and Friederike Weske. What
served to launch Beuys into the public consciousness was that which transpired following his
performance at the Technical College Aachen in 1964. As part of a festival of new art
coinciding with the 20th anniversary of an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, Beuys
created a performance or Action. The performance was interrupted by a group of students,
one of whom attacked Beuys, punching him in the face. A photograph of the artist, nose
bloodied and arm raised, was circulated in the media. It was for this 1964 festival that Beuys
produced an idiosyncratic CV, which he titled Lebenslauf/Werklauf (Life Course/Work
Course). The document was a self-consciously fictionalised account of the artist’s life, in
which historical events mingle with metaphorical and mythical speech (he refers to his birth
as the ‘Exhibition of a wound;’ he claims his Ulysses Extension to have been carried out ‘at
James Joyce’s request’ – impossible, given that the writer was, by 1961, long dead). This
document marks a blurring of fact and fiction that was to be characteristic of Beuys' self-
created persona, as well as the source of much controversy (although, significantly, there is
no mention here of the famous plane crash).
Beuys manifested his social philosophical ideas in abolishing entry requirements to his
Düsseldorf class. Throughout the late 1960s this renegade policy caused great institutional
friction, which came to a head in 1972 when Beuys was dismissed from his post. The
dismissal, which Beuys refused to accept, produced a wave of protests from students,
artists and critics. Although now bereft of an institutional position, Beuys continued an
intense schedule of public lectures and discussions, as well as becoming increasingly active
in German politics. Despite this dismissal, the walkway on the academy's side of the Rhine
bears Beuys as its namesake.
Artworks and performances
In 1962 Beuys befriended his Düsseldorf colleague Nam June Paik, a member of the Fluxus
movement. This was the beginning of what was to be a brief formal involvement with
Fluxus, a loose international group of artists who championed a radical erosion of the
boundaries of art, bringing aspects of creative practice outside of the institution and into the
everyday. Although Beuys participated in a number of Fluxus events, it soon became clear
that he viewed the implications of art’s economic and institutional framework differently.
Indeed, whereas Fluxus was directly inspired by the radical Dada activities emerging during
the First World War, Beuys in 1964 broadcast (from Second German Television Studio) a
rather different message: ‘Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet’ (‘The
Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overrated’). Beuys’s relationship with the legacy of Duchamp
and the Readymade is a central, often unacknowledged, aspect of the controversy
surrounding his practice.
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (performance, 1965)
Beuys’s first solo exhibition in a private gallery opened on 1965 with
one of the artist’s most famous and compelling performances: How
to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. The artist could be viewed
through the glass of the gallery’s window. His face was covered in
honey and gold leaf, an iron slab was attached to his boot. In his
arms he cradled a dead hare, into whose ear he mumbled muffled
noises as well as explanations of the drawings that lined the walls.
Such materials and actions had specific symbolic value for Beuys.
For example, honey is the product of bees, and for Beuys (following
Rudolf Steiner), bees represented an ideal society of warmth and
brotherhood. Gold had its importance within alchemical enquiry, and
iron, the metal of Mars, stood for a masculine principle of strength
and connection to the earth. Some critics have described a photograph from the
performance, in which Beuys is sitting with the hare, as a new Mona Lisa of the 20th
century, though Beuys disagreed with the description. Beuys explained his performance
thus: “In putting honey on my head I am clearly doing something that has to do with thinking.
Human ability is not to produce honey, but to think, to produce ideas. In this way the
deathlike character of thinking becomes lifelike again. For honey is undoubtedly a living
substance. Human thinking can be lively too. But it can also be intellectualised to a deadly
degree, and remain dead, and express its deadliness in, say, the political or pedagogic fields.
“Gold and honey indicate a transformation of the head, and therefore, naturally and logically,
the brain and our understanding of thought, consciousness and all the other levels necessary
to explain pictures to a hare: the warm stool insulated with felt…and the iron sole with the
magnet. I had to walk on this sole when I carried the hare round from picture to picture, so
along with the strange limp came the clank of iron on the hard stone floor—that was all that
broke the silence, since my explanations were mute… “This seems to have been the action
that most captured people’s imaginations. On one level this must be because everyone
consciously or unconsciously recognizes the problem of explaining things, particularly where
art and creative work are concerned, or anything that involves a certain mystery or
question. The idea of explaining to an animal conveys a sense of the secrecy of the world
and of existence that appeals to the imagination. Then, as I said, even a dead animal
preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality.
“The problem lies in the word ‘understanding’ and its many levels which cannot be restricted
to rational analysis. Imagination, inspiration, and longing all lead people to sense that these
other levels also play a part in understanding. This must be the root of reactions to this
action, and is why my technique has been to try and seek out the energy points in the
human power field, rather than demanding specific knowledge or reactions on then part of
the public. I try to bring to light the complexity of creative areas.”
Beuys produced many such spectacular, ritualistic performances, and he developed a
compelling persona whereby he took on a liminal, shamanistic role, as if to enable passage
between different physical and spiritual states. Further examples of such performances
include: EURASIA (1965), Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony (1970), and I
Like America and America Likes Me (1974).
I Like America and America Likes Me (performance, 1974)
Art historian Uwe Schneede considers this
performance pivotal for the reception of
German avant-garde art in the U.S.A., it paved
the way for the recognition of Beuys' own
work, but also that of contemporaries such as
Lüpertz, Baselitz, Kiefer and many others in the
1980s. In May 1974 Beuys flew to New York
and was taken by ambulance to the site of the
performance, a room in the René Block Gallery
on East Broadway. Beuys lay on the
ambulance stretcher swathed in felt. He shared
this room with a wild coyote, for eight hours
over three days. At times he stood, wrapped in
a thick, grey blanket of felt, leaning on a large
shepherd's staff. At times he lay on the straw,
at times he watched the coyote as the coyote watched him and cautiously circled the man,
or shredded the blanket to pieces, and at times he engaged in symbolic gestures, such as
striking a large triangle or tossing his leather gloves to the animal; the performance
continuously shifted between elements that were required by the realities of the situation,
and elements that had purely symbolic character. At the end of the three days, Beuys
hugged the coyote that had grown quite tolerant of him, and was taken to the airport. Again
he rode in a veiled ambulance, leaving America without having set foot on its ground. As
Beuys later explained: ‘I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America
other than the coyote.’
The concept of Social Sculpture
Beuys formulated his central theoretical concepts concerning the
social, cultural and political function and potential of art. Indebted to
Romantic writers such as Novalis and Schiller, Beuys was
motivated by a belief in the power of universal human creativity and
was confident in the potential for art to bring about revolutionary
change. These ideas were founded in the body of social ideas of
Rudolf Steiner known as Social Three folding, of which he was a
vigorous and original proponent. This translated into Beuys’s
formulation of the concept of social sculpture, in which society as a
whole was to be regarded as one great work of art (the Wagnerian
Gesamtkunstwerk) to which each person can contribute creatively
(perhaps Beuys’s most famous phrase, borrowed from Novalis, is
‘Everyone is an artist’). In 1982 he was invited to create a work for
Documenta 7. He delivered a large pile of basalt stones. From
above one could see that the pile of stones was a large arrow
pointing to a single oak tree that he had planted. He announced that the stones should not
be moved unless an oak tree was planted in the new location of the stone. 7,000 oak trees
were then planted in Kassel, Germany. This project exemplified the idea that a social
sculpture was defined as interdisciplinary and participatory. Beuys's wanted to effect
environmental and social change through this project. The Dia Art Foundation continues his
project still and has planted more trees and paired them with basalt stones too.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys)
Bruce McLean
Bruce McLean is a Scottish performance artist and painter
born in Glasgow in 1944. McLean studied at Glasgow School
of Art and St Martin's School of Art, London. Whilst studying
under sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, McLean began making
sculpture from rubbish. In 1965 he abandoned conventional
studio production in favour of impermanent sculptures using
materials such as water, along with performances of a
generally satirical nature directed against the art world. He
has gained international recognition for his paintings,
ceramics, prints, and work in film, theatre and publishing in
which humour remains central. McLean was Head of
Graduate Painting at The Slade School of Fine Art London
and has had numerous solo exhibitions including Tate Gallery,
London, The Modern Art Gallery, Vienna and Museum of
Modern Art, Oxford.
Nice Style
Nice Style was a collaborative performance group established
in London in 1971 by performance artist and painter Bruce
McLean. Nice Style was described as ‘The World's First Pose
Band’, which also featured artists Ron Carr, Gary Chitty,
Robin Fletcher, and Paul Richards. Nice Style focused on the
increasing role of image and self-fashioning in a modern
society. Their collaborative performances were often
elaborate and dramatic works that simultaneously co-opted
and satirised the art establishment and what they saw as the
social pretensions and superficiality of contemporary lifestyles
in general. Nice Style was active until 1979.
Bruce McLean 1987
Bruce McLean in Nice Style
Leigh Bowery
Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club
promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer, born in
1961 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Bowery is considered
one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s
London and New York art and fashion circles influencing a
generation of artists and designers. His influence reached
through the fashion, club and art worlds to impact, amongst
others, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne
Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, John
Galliano, the Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny
plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and
New York which arguably perpetuated his avant garde ideas.
While studying fashion at Melbourne High School, Bowery became inspired by the by reading about
the London new romantic scene from British fashion magazines such as i-D. This led him to
reinvent himself at the centre of the avant-garde art world in London. His family was conservative
and he often reflected on his parents who were actively involved in the local Salvation Army. He
was the older of two children, his sister Bronwyn being several years younger. He described his
father as kind but macho and had a particularly close relationship with his mother from whom he
inherited a love of dressmaking. In 1980 he left Australia to move to London initially to make his
career as a fashion designer. Although this was a financial failure, it did garner him a small cult
following and media interest. Bowery became known by his dramatic performances of dance,
music, and extreme exhibitionism, often performed while wearing bizarre and original outfits of his
own design. He befriended two leading clubbers: ‘Trojan’ Guy Barnes, and David Walls. He moved
in with the pair who became the first people in London to wear Bowery's creative designs.
Collectively they were nicknamed the Three Kings. Up until 1986 Bowery would describe himself
as a fashion designer and club promoter. Although his early fashion career is often ignored, he had
considerable artistic success and it included several
collections in London Fashion week, shows at the ICA, The
Camden Palace, New York, and Tokyo.
In 1985 he founded the disco club night Taboo, originally an
underground venture, it quickly became known as London's
Studio 54, only described to be ‘much wilder, extremely
more fashionable, and without the masses of celebrities’ –
although these came flocking in later. Over the coming
years he w as invited to host numerous club nights in New
York, Tokyo, Rome, and elsewhere. Bowery, who grew up
to often be uncomfortable in his skin, and used his
frequently bizarre designs as armour for his insecurities. As
he got larger he used his costumes to exaggerate his size,
and the effect was frequently overpowering and
unforgettable for those who encountered him, the more so
because of his confrontational style.
Unlike many of his club contemporaries Bowery was highly intelligent, widely read, and
passionate about all forms of artistic expression. While he could be extremely witty and
charming, he would often be a malicious fashion bully, intimidating friend and foe alike with his
sharp tongue and accusations. These all reflected a sign of the times where "hardness" went
hand in hand with the club scene. Although Taboo closed by early 1987, Bowery was at the
very heart of London's alternative fashion movement. He collaborated with the famous 1980s
dancer Michael Clark and participated in multi-media events like I Am Kurious Oranj and the
play Hey, Luciani, with Mark E. Smith and the band, The Fall.
In 1988 he had a week-long show in Anthony d'Offay's prestigious Dering Street Gallery in
London's West End, in which he lolled on a chaise longue behind a two-way mirror, primping
and preening in a variety of outfits while visitors to the gallery looked on. The insouciance and
audacity of this overt narcissism captivated gallery goers, critics and other artists. Bowery's
exquisite appearance, silence and intense self-absorption were further accentuated by his own
recordings of random and abrasive traffic noises, which were played for the show's duration.
The very intimate and private was flung in the face of the public complete with a ‘street life’
sound track, hinting perhaps at something still darker. In some outfits he appears like some
strange roadside creature, like a cat that finally got the cream (of art world attention); in
others he is the ‘Satan's Son’ that he would whisper, years later, on his deathbed. For all his art
world exposure and contacts it seems peculiar now that no one suggested to Bowery that he
might adopt the very viable strategy of Gilbert and George – an earlier generation's living
sculpture – and derive an income from selling images of himself rather than rely on occasional
commissions, modeling work for Lucian Freud, or design consultancy for Rifat Ozbek. In the
later years of his life the advantages of having an independent income started to become more
obvious and Bowery looked to music, in the form of art rock/pop group Minty. He later excited
the fashion crowd with a performance at SMact, a short-lived SM Night at Bar Industria.
Influences
Glimmers of the influences of film maker John Waters and artist Andy Warhol can be seen in his
keen appreciation of bad taste, truly outlandish self presentation and a deep desire to shock
and confuse. Friend Boy George as described Bowery as modern art on legs. Other art
historical parallels include an early 80s attempt at Vincent van Gogh type ear-cutting with
friend Trojan and as a result inflicted facial perforations that he was warned would not heal
(reminiscent of Warhol's weeping wounds). Bowery made a full auto-couture appearance at
the 1986 Warhol show Success is a job in New York at London's Serpentine Gallery. He
became known to a wider audience by appearing in a Post-Modernist/Surrealist series of
television and cinema and commercials for the Pepe jeans company, MTV London and other
commissions such as stage work for rock band U2. He also appeared regularly in articles, vox
pops and as cover star in London's i-D magazine. Bowery was also Art Director for the famous
video for Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy.
Gilbert and George
Gilbert and George are two artists who work together
as a collaborative duo. Gilbert Proesch was born in San
Martin de Tor, Italy in 1943. He studied art at the
Wolkenstein School of Art and Hallein School of Art in
Austria and the Akademie der Kunst, Munich, before
moving to England. George Passmore was born in
Plymouth, UK in 1942. He studied art at the Dartington
College of Arts and the Oxford School of Art, then part
of the Oxford College of Technology, which eventually
became Oxford Brookes University. The duo has
become famous for their distinctive, highly formal
appearance and manner and their brightly coloured
graphic-style photo-based artworks.
Singing and living sculptures
Gilbert and George first met in 1967 while studying
sculpture at St Martins School of Art in London. They
established their reputation in 1969 whilst still students,
with The Singing Sculpture, first performed at Nigel
Greenwood Gallery in 1970. The Singing Sculpture is a
performance which sees both artists coated in metallic
make-up standing together on a table, dancing and singing
Underneath the Arches – the 1930s music hall song by
Flanagan and Allen which describes the experiences of
homeless men sleeping under railway arches during the
Great Depression. Although they gave up such ‘living
sculpture performances’ in 1977, Gilbert and George
adopted the identity of ‘living sculptures’ in both their
art and their daily lives, becoming not only creators, but
also the art itself. The suits they wore for The Singing
Sculpture has become a uniform for the duo. They
rarely appear in public without wearing them and it is
unusual for one of the pair to be seen without the other.
They refuse to disassociate their art from their
everyday lives, insisting that everything they do is art.
The Pictures
The Singing Sculpture by Gilbert and George
The pair is perhaps best known for their large-scale
photo works, known as The Pictures. The early work in this style is in black and white, later
with hand-painted red and yellow touches. The duo began to use a range of bolder colours
often backlit and overlaid with black grids. The artists themselves frequently feature in these
works.
In 1986 Gilbert and George were criticised for a series
of pictures seemingly glamorising 'rough types' of
London's East End. Some of their work has attracted
media attention because of the inclusion of imagery,
such as nudity, depictions of sexual acts, and bodily
fluids (faeces, urine and semen). For many years,
Gilbert & George have been residents of Fournier
Street, Spitalfields in East London. Their entire body of
work has been created in, and focused on, London's
East End, which they see as a microcosm - a world in
miniature where nothing happens that doesn't
happen in the East End of London.
Here 1987
Jack Freak Pictures
Jack Freak Pictures is to date the largest series of work created by Gilbert & George.
According to British writer and novelist Michael Bracewell the Jack Freak Pictures are
among the most iconic, philosophically astute and visually violent works that Gilbert &
George have ever created. The Union Jack and Gilbert & George are the two dominant
pictorial images appearing contorted, abstracted, and sometimes complete. The entire series
is set in the East End of London indicated by flags, maps, street signs, graffiti and other less
obvious motifs such as brickwork and foliage that can be found there. The duo have
exhibited internationally including the Croatian Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; The
Kröller-Müller Museum, Amsterdam; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain;
Arndt & Partner gallery, Berlin; the Baronian Francey Gallery, Brussels; and the Bozar
Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels.
Awards
In 1981 Gilbert & George won the Regione Lazio Award (Torino), in 1986 the Turner Prize, in
1989 the Special International Award (Los Angeles), in 2007 they won the South Bank
Award, as well as the Lorenzo il Magnifico Award (Florence). In 2005 they represented the
UK at the Venice Biennale. Their 2007 retrospective at Tate Modern was the largest of any
artist held at the gallery. In 2008 the duo were awarded an Honorary Doctorate by London
Metropolitan University, London, UK and in 2010 conferred with Honorary Doctorates by
the University of East London, UK.
Robert Morris
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and
writer born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA in 1931. He is
regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism
along with Donald Judd but he has also made important
contributions to the development of performance art, land art,
the Process Art movement and installation art.
Morris studied at the University of Kansas, Kansas City Art
Institute, and Reed College. Initially a painter, Morris’ work of
the 1950s was influenced by Abstract Expressionism and
particularly Jackson Pollock. While living in California, Morris
also came into contact with the work of La Monte Young and
John Cage. The idea that art making was a record of a
performance by the artist (drawn from Hans Namuth’s photos
of Pollock at work) in the studio led to an interest in dance and
choreography. Morris moved to New York in 1960 where he
staged a performance based on the exploration of bodies in
space in which an upright square column after a few minutes
on stage falls over. Morris developed the same
idea into his first Minimal Sculptures Two Columns shown in
1961, and L Beams (1965).
The infamous 1974 self-constructed body art
poster of Robert Morris.
In New York, Morris began to explore the work of Marcel Duchamp
making pieces that directly responded to Duchamp’s (Box with the
Sound of its Own Making 1961, Fountain 1963).
In 1963 he had an exhibition of Minimal sculptures at the Green
Gallery in New York that was written about by Donald Judd. In 1964
Morris devised and performed two celebrated performance
artworks 21.3 in which he lip syncs to a reading of an essay by Erwin
Panofsky and Site with Carolee Schneemann. Morris enrolled at
Bronze Gate (2005) is a corten steel work
by Robert Morris. It is set in the garden of
Hunter College in New York and in 1966 published a series of
the dialysis pavilion in the hospital of
influential essays Notes on Sculpture in Artforum. He exhibited two Pistoia, Italy.
L Beams in the seminal 1966 exhibit, Primary Structures at the
Jewish Museum in New York. In 1967 Morris created Steam, an early piece of Land Art.
By the late 1960s Morris was being featured in museum shows in America but his work
and writings drew criticism from Clement Greenberg. His work became larger scale taking
up the majority of the gallery space with series of modular units or piles of earth and felt.
In 1971 Morris designed an exhibition for the Tate Gallery that took up the whole central
sculpture gallery with ramps and cubes. He published a photo of himself dressed in S&M
gear in an advertisement in Artforum, similar to one by Lynda Benglis, with whom Morris
had collaborated on several videos.
Untitled of 1967/1986, steel and steel mesh, in the National
Gallery of Art. He created the Robert Morris Observatory in the
Netherlands, a ‘modern Stonehenge’, which identifies the
solstices and the equinoxes. It is at coordinates 52°32'58"N
5°33'57"E.
During the later 1970s Morris switched to figurative work, a
move that surprised many of his supporters. Themes of the work
were often fear of nuclear war. During the 1990s returned to his Untitled of 1967/1986, steel and steel mesh, in
the National Gallery of Art
early work supervising reconstructions and installations of lost
pieces. Morris currently lives and works in New York. In 1974,
Robert Morris advertised his display at the Castelli Gallery with a poster showing him barechested in sadomasochistic garb. Critic Amelia Jones argued that the body poster was a
statement about hyper-masculinity and the stereotypical idea that masculinity equated to
homophobia. Through the poster, Morris equated the power of art with that of a physical
force, specifically violence.
“Robert Morris's art is fundamentally theatrical. (...) his theater is one of negation:
negation of the avant-gardist concept of originality, negation of logic and reason, negation
of the desire to assign uniform cultural meanings to diverse phenomena; negation of a
worldview that distrusts the unfamiliar and the unconventional.”
(Maurice Berger, Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s, p. 3.)
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(artist))
Further reading and information
Live Art Development Agency
The Live Art Development Agency is the leading development organisation for Live Art in
the UK. The Agency offers a portfolio of resources, professional development schemes,
and projects and initiatives for the support and development of Live Art practices and
critical discourses. The Agency works strategically, in partnership, and in consultation
with artists and organisations in the cultural sector. Teachers and older students are
welcome to contact the Live Art Development Agency to make use of the extensive
resources contained within its study room. In particular, the study room guide by
Frenchmottershead may be of interest.
www.thisisliveart.co.uk
Unbound
Unbound is an online shop, which is run by The Live Art Development Agency, specialising in
publications and artefacts related to groundbreaking and risk-taking contemporary art
practices. Unbound offers a 20% discount on orders for primary and secondary schools.
www.thisisunbound.co.uk
Everything You Wanted to Know About Live Art But Were Afraid to Ask
Live Artists were invited to make short films saying something that they think younger artists
should know about Live Art. This excellent and accessible DVD provides a starting point for
further reflection.
http://thisisunbound.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_book_info&prod
ucts_id=257
The Live Art Collection
The Live Art Collection archive was initiated in late 2008 and is maintained by the British
Library in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency.
www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/collection/26312782/page/1
Websites of Live Artists
A list of the websites of Live Artists with whom Live Art Development
Agency has worked.
www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/weblinks.html
Live Art UK
Live Art UK brings together key promoters and facilitators to support and develop the Live
Art infrastructure for the benefit of artists and audiences. Their website contains critical
writing and information resources about Live Art.
www.liveartuk.org/
Artsadmin
Artsadmin’s website carries a comprehensive and regularly updated list of providers of
advice and information, and artists’ development opportunities in its Links and Resources
section. www.artsadmin.co.uk/home/
New Work Network (NWN)
NWN supports the development of new performance, live and interdisciplinary arts
practices. Their website has information about upcoming Live Art events. It is an artist-led
membership organisation, with widespread UK regional involvement and international
representation, NWN focuses on facilitating engagement and collaboration between arts
practitioners. It does this by providing access to new ideas and opportunities and through
developing networking opportunities and meeting points as spaces for dialogue, collective
action and collaboration.
www.newworknetwork.org.uk
The Live Art Archives at University of Bristol Theatre Collection
The Live Art Archives include the Record of Live Art Practice, the National Review of Live
Art Archive, the Digital Performance Archive, the Arts Council England Live Art and
Performance Archive the Franko B Archive, Performance magazine Archive and the David
Hughes Live Art Archive.
http://www.bris.ac.uk/theatrecollection/liveart/liveart_archivesmain.html
Books
Carlson, Marvin (1996) Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York:
Routledge
Carr, C. (1993) On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan
University Press
Goldberg, Roselee (1998) Performance: Live Art Since 1960. Harry N. Abrams, NY New
York
Goldberg, Roselee (2001) Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art).
Thames & Hudson
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo (2005) Ethno-techno: Writings on performance, activism and
pedagogy. Routledge, London
Heathfield, Adrian (2004) Live: Art and Performance: Routledge
Hill, Leslie and Paris, Helen (2001) Guerilla Performance: Continuum International Publishing
Group Ltd.