Boris Nieslony is recognized as one of the most prolific and significant contributors to performance art. Born in Cologne, Nieslony has worked extensively as a performance artist, curator, archivist and independent scholar; staging various installations, interventions and artist projects since the 1970s. He is the founder of Black Market International, a performance group that meets regularly in various configurations to realize group performance projects and ASA, a foundation for self-organizing a network of performance artists and theorists.