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| Yoko Ono, Cut Piece 1964 |
Is performance essential to our understanding of contemporary art?
Link to original article in French: https://www.bonart.cat/fr/n/46537/la-performativite-est-elle-essentielle-a-la-comprehension-de-l39art-contemporain
Translated from French into English by Bora Mici
Contemporary art often makes us uncomfortable because it no longer suffices for it to reflect reality like a mirror. In many cases, it intervenes in the world and modifies certain things: it creates situations, influences behaviors and creates new perspectives for relating to others. In this sense, the notion of performance becomes central. It is however important to specify that we are not talking about the same thing as the performing arts, which can be understood as simple “performances” in front of an audience. Here, the main idea is different: the work of art does not only create, but it encourages others to create too. As part of a constitutive logic, it functions like an apparatus that puts into motion the actions, decisions and relationships between people and which creates the conditions that favor the emergence of these phenomena.
Therefore, a work of art is performative when it mobilizes another’s actions and decisions, when it generates unexpected audiences, when it turns spectators into participants, and when it redefines what it means to be a creator, a work of art and a community. This point of view helps us understand that the way a work of art functions does not only depend on the artist because the audience and its degree of involvement, an institution and its norms, a space and its apparatuses, as well as the protocols and languages that assign roles and orient possible actions, also play a role. In the same way, the sociopolitical context with its material and emotional tensions shapes its effects.
However, there are no neutral actors. Performative art, in as far as it involves people and generates relationships and situations, cannot ignore the consequences of its implementation: it has to accept its responsibility. It is precisely for this reason that it becomes necessary to monitor its application and the conditions under which it is produced because performance can degenerate when it becomes stereotypical through eventification, instrumentalized participation or predictable and domesticated transgression.
It is why we must redefine our concept of its effectiveness, no longer to be seen as an immediate impact or a mediatic buzz, but as the ability to mobilize learning processes, to create relationships and modify habits, while leaving a mark as a process and not as an object. At a time when everything tends to devolve into quick consumption and fleeting attention spans, the crux of the matter shifts elsewhere: we no longer ought to ask “what this work is about?” but rather what it activates, what it transforms, how it affects us and what it encourages us to do. In this sense, we can perhaps understand performativity as a poetics of consequence: a way of articulating forms and situations that not only have meaning but also produce effects and leave a mark on our way of perceiving the world, our way of interacting with it and acting within it.
Therefore, a work of art is performative when it mobilizes another’s actions and decisions, when it generates unexpected audiences, when it turns spectators into participants, and when it redefines what it means to be a creator, a work of art and a community. This point of view helps us understand that the way a work of art functions does not only depend on the artist because the audience and its degree of involvement, an institution and its norms, a space and its apparatuses, as well as the protocols and languages that assign roles and orient possible actions, also play a role. In the same way, the sociopolitical context with its material and emotional tensions shapes its effects.
However, there are no neutral actors. Performative art, in as far as it involves people and generates relationships and situations, cannot ignore the consequences of its implementation: it has to accept its responsibility. It is precisely for this reason that it becomes necessary to monitor its application and the conditions under which it is produced because performance can degenerate when it becomes stereotypical through eventification, instrumentalized participation or predictable and domesticated transgression.
It is why we must redefine our concept of its effectiveness, no longer to be seen as an immediate impact or a mediatic buzz, but as the ability to mobilize learning processes, to create relationships and modify habits, while leaving a mark as a process and not as an object. At a time when everything tends to devolve into quick consumption and fleeting attention spans, the crux of the matter shifts elsewhere: we no longer ought to ask “what this work is about?” but rather what it activates, what it transforms, how it affects us and what it encourages us to do. In this sense, we can perhaps understand performativity as a poetics of consequence: a way of articulating forms and situations that not only have meaning but also produce effects and leave a mark on our way of perceiving the world, our way of interacting with it and acting within it.
