What is performance art?
DOBRICA KAMPERELIC (a.k.a. DOB KAMPER)
After the first Fluxus festival in Wiesbaden in 1962 the exciting transformation of contemporary art on a planetary scale began. The odyssey of expanded artistic media by Fluxus Expanded Arts Diagram and the Diagram of the Historical Development of Fluxus and other 4 dimensional, sonic, optical, smelling and tactile artistic forms began with George Maciunas in 1973. ART as ACTION started! Firstly with happenings in the 50s,then with Fluxus events and finally, with performance art. Some theoreticians and contemporary art historians/researchers have different opinions, often they talk about performance art as a product of conceptual art. My friend Prof. Dr Dusan Pajin, a philosopher and art historian has a theory about the first performance ARTicle taking place in the far distant past, 16th century China, made by one old Chinese artist...
Anyhow, time, space and performer - these are the basic elements for performance art. The performer sometimes uses verbal elements, depending on the context, also sound and light effects, and visual signs and objects. The performer shapes the space, his / her own body, face and voice, trying to fit into the setting in which he / she performs and when he/she feels the pulse of the setting and the response of the audience or collaborators, when there is a feedback reaction, then a satanic, mysterious circle is established, in a fluid form and only then does the artwork come into being and the performer ceases to be an individual.
The performer becomes one with the artwork, exposes him/herself to the judgment of the audience, unprotected. The performer's fate is the fate of one's own artwork, the sacred moment of the ritual devoted to the transient; there and then or here and now...
Interaction is very important, distance is wrong in performance.
