Art Performance and Place

Framed within a self-referential context, performance's generative function concerns the medium's intrinsic aesthetic properties and their abilities to engender

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new performance works. It indicates performance's proclivity to revert back to its medium as a singular creative source. Among the three functions— reflective, redressive, and generative—this last function is the most common attribute that performance shares with other artistic mediums. The generative function may then be considered the least region-specific. Whereas the reflective and redressive functions ground performance in the geo-sociocultural context of L.A., performance's intrinsic generative function relates to the place of its production only in a tangential or incidental manner.

By stating that the place has little bearing on the generative function intrinsic to performance, I do not deny the subliminal influence that a place exerts on artists and their activities. Indeed, even the most “objective” factors of a place—say the climate, sunshine, earthquake threat, traffic, architecture, and ecology of L.A.—affect an artist's lived reality and thus her/his imaginary outputs. Besides, “the place” may be chosen by the artist as subject matter, a theme, or a character in a performance. I distinguish, however, between L.A. as a performative representation and L.A. as the surrounding environment. Should L.A. become thematized in a piece, I hold that the performance is about L.A., rather than necessarily of L.A. A performance about L.A. doesn't have to happen in L.A.; it can be conceived and produced anywhere. A performance of L.A., conversely, cannot exist the way it does without the particular L.A. that has inspired and produced it at a given time/space axis. A performance of L.A. may happen in L.A., or it may travel to other regions and countries as L.A. art. Given that all the performances treated here are fundamentally of L.A., I understate the import of L.A. in my present analysis only to emphasize art performance's individualistic, relatively autonomous, and self-referential qualities.

The generative function intrinsic to art performance has less to do with the external than the internal environment wherein the art-making takes place. Art performance gains momentum from the innate condition of the performance medium; the medium, however, encompasses simultaneously the artist, the method, and the formal contents (message), featuring a triangular zone of fluid interactions. The artists distill their methods from interacting with the medium, thereby creating the “internal environments” for their artmaking. Onthe whole, art performance practitioners generate new works after intensive studies of the medium's aesthetic/conceptual properties and limits. They immerse themselves in a gestating process whereby they gain a command of the medium through practice, a keen examination of other performances, and an awareness of the conventions, fashions, and innovations within the art world. The artists working in the vein of art performance usually have already achieved a certain level of technical expertise prior to the performance.

The generative function is tied in with performance'sstatus as art art, rather

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than nonart—to borrow Kaprow's idioms. The artists regard their performances as art-making. They do not question the meaning of making art; instead, they demonstrate their conviction in art—whatever meaning it has— by persisting in creating performances. I call this type of work art performance to distinguish it from redressive performance. Redressive performance finds its raison d'être in exceeding its own status as a mere performance. Art performance, in contrast, believes that the purpose of performance resides within itself. The laborious process of conceiving, preparing for, and rehearsing an art performance finds its validation and reward in the eventual sharing of its enactment with an audience. In this sense, art performance, among all performance genres, most approximates theater art.