Performance Art

 https://youtu.be/Nd-NuMcImKQ

Performance art is an artform in which the artist combines visual art and dramatic performances. Most of the time, these performance art pieces are designed with a hidden meaning, one that might not be obvious to the audience. This could either be a comment on daily life or question the values that people hold in today’s society. There have been many performance artists throughout history, some of which comment on similar aspects. For instance, Wafaa Bilal, Mireille Astore, and Ai Weiwei. All three of these performance artists deal with political issues. Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-American artist, is known mostly for his piece ...and Counting. In this performance art piece, Bilal cuts his back with 5,000 red ink dots to represent the American casualties in the Iraq war and tattooed 100,000 dots for the forgotten Iraqi victims. This art piece deals with a general issue while also having a personal reasoning, being his heritage. A similar artist is Mireille Astore, known for her performance piece Tampa. This piece is similar to Bilal’s because they both use their cultural background to explain their reasoning behind the piece. In her performance, she places tall sticks in a ship-like shape that also resembles a jail cell. She stands there in silence as others watch, almost as if she is an exhibit in a zoo. This is meant to represent the ship that Afghan refugees were on when they attempted to seek asylum in Australia in 2001. Thus, this piece shows the artist political activism on the issue with refugees and our conception about the Middle East. The third artist, Ai Weiwei, performed a Study of Perspective  series in which he takes photographs of his middle finger in front of various monuments and political buildings. This shows his civil disobedience against political institutions. However, it can also represent his separation from any form of government completely. While all three of these artists performed different acts for their performance pieces, they all dealt with politics and how they view the perfect world should be. In the context of technology, only Ai Weiwei’s had as essential technological aspect, being that the artpice was the montage of pictures of the monuments. However, technology can be a big aspect of every performance art piece since an audience member can can video documentation and easily spread the artist’s work through the internet with the help of social media. When asking the question “what is to be done?”, it is all up to the artist themselves. They could comment of politics, cultures, social values, and many more. In the cases of these three artists, political institutions are questioned on the basis of if the government is actually affecting the general population in a positive manner. On the basis of what the artist can do to perform these questions, that is all up to the artist. Art could be anything, simple or complex, thus anything the artist does can be considered a form of art itself.