Re-visiting Performance Poetic Terrorism?

Re-visiting Performance
Poetic Terrorism?
 
Performance art is a concept metaphor usually used to tag avant-garde/conceptual art which grew out of visual art practice and locates the body and space as the as the subject and the actual material for the artwork. Traditionally it is viewed as an interventionist challenge to Painting and Sculpture, and located in the realm of ephemeral artistic practices which resist the “commodity status” of art products. However Performance Art is also a resistant to main stream practices in theater, and has enacted the resistance through positing the performer as an artist (as against a character) and working in the margins/outside of the traditional understanding of plot or narrative and often actively subverting them.

Over the last two decades performance art has largely gained from trends towards dienchanments about the objecthood of art. There has been a significant growth in interest  towards the process; performance art often highlights ‘process’ as an anti-thesis to the ‘celebrated  finished hood’, often situating itself in an anti commodity protest. However it has also diversified into being a ‘new art’ which transcends boundaries of recognized media, encompassing those that have not been previously identified as artistic media....especially within fine art practices.

Although performance art claims a inter media status, it is still claimed from within a particular framework of visual arts practices. In its workings to create an ‘other’ vis-à-vis performing arts, performance art tends to become more comfortable with it’s another ‘other’ i.e. ‘fine arts.  The KHOJ  2004-05 November December International Residency was a step towards discovering, locating and showcasing newly emerging practices in an attempt to challenge the concept metaphor called ‘performance art in India’.

We have been exposed to various possibilities in performance through the various KHOJ worhshops where over the years a number of artists have worked with performance art. Even outside KHOJ, artists like Nalini Ramani, Rumanna Hussain, Sharmila Samant, Pushpamala and Monali Meher have been exploring possibilities and re defining performance art. In 2004 we decided to put it all together in a residential ‘process and display’ format and give performance art a new critical impetus through practice. The residency was a significant exploration of ‘performance’ within visual arts.

There is a need to challenge the ‘trans media’ claims of performance art and to interrogate the comfort it enjoys with a certain kind of ‘high’ within visual art practices. If performance art has to engage with allegations about it being a derivative practice, it has to it has to constantly rejuvenate it self ....possibly through pushing boundaries of performing and video. The KHOJ 2005-2006 residency is curated towards putting together artists from across the board in an attempt to rejuvenate the concept and practice of performance art in India.