1. Arthur Koestler, “Holons and Hierarchy Theory,” in From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Se lected Writings in the Life Science, ed. Connie Barlow (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 88. Subsequent quotations are from pages 91 and 98. Koestler's essay on holons originally appeared in his 1978 book Janus: A Summing Up. I thank Mark Steger of osseus labyrint for bringing this anthology of biological essays to my attention. By magic or by fluke, this reference appeared at the right moment and contributed greatly to my preface, which I wrote after completing the rest of the book manuscript. [BACK]

2. Strictly speaking, Taipei is located in a basin and does not border on the ocean. It is a city on the northern tip of the island Taiwan, which is itself so small that most regions in it are geographically peripheral. In cultural terms, however, Taipei is certainly the most active center in Taiwan. [BACK]

3. For an analysis about concepts, percepts, and affects, see Gilles Deleuze, “Letter to Reda Bensmaîa, on Spinoza,” in Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 164–66. [BACK]

4. Michel Foucault, Preface to The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), xv. [BACK]

6. Author's interview with John Malpede on May 22, 1998, in Venice, Calif. [BACK]

7. Bonnie Marranca, “Bodies of Action, Bodies of Thought: Performance and Its Critics,” Performing Arts Journal 21, no. 1 (1999): 23. See Chapter 2 for more discussion. [BACK]

8. The term “dematerialization” comes from a 1968 article titled “The Dematerialization of Art” by Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler; see Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The De materialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973), 42–43. For performance art's position in twentieth-century art, see the useful anthology Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings, ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). See also Chapter 1 for other references. [BACK]

9. David James, “Tradition and the Movies: The Asian American Avant-Garde in Los Angeles,” Journal of Asian American Studies 2.2 (June 1999): 160. I thank James for sending me this article, a surprise present that grows apples. [BACK]

10. I coin the term “originary performance” to indicate the performance's status as the primary source of those other products of imagination that are inspired by and take off from it. I prefer the adjective “originary” to the more commonly used “original” for two reasons: to stay away from the connotation of originality and to echo other adjectives that indicate a chronological order: preliminary, primary, secondary, tertiary. [BACK]