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Performance, a Personal History

Performance, a Personal History PERFORMANCE, A PERSONAL HISTORY Bonnie Marranca I A fter a century of hybridization in the arts, the concept of “performance” has come to the forefront of contemporary thought on art and culture. The word “performance,” whether it describes a live event or personal acting out; or the features of a car, a perfume, a sound system; and whether it refers to economy or therapy or the act of mourning, performance now shapes contemporary thinking about people and things. Some of the chief preocccupations of our time—namely, spectatorship, memory, the body—are framed within the terms of performance. Offering a vocabulary of human action that can be used to shape a view of the world and its histories, performance is the condition to which American culture increasingly aspires. Who doesn’t want to be an American “idol”? Reality shows have brought to the culture the national theatre America always lacked. The borders delineating art, culture, and commerce, art and entertainment, and experimental art and popular culture, have been blurred for a long time. Likewise, the separation between visual and theatrical arts has become less pronounced. Museum shows on post-war American art have increased the attention given to performance, video, dance, and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Performance, a Personal History

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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2005 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
Subject
Features
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/152028106775329679
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

PERFORMANCE, A PERSONAL HISTORY Bonnie Marranca I A fter a century of hybridization in the arts, the concept of “performance” has come to the forefront of contemporary thought on art and culture. The word “performance,” whether it describes a live event or personal acting out; or the features of a car, a perfume, a sound system; and whether it refers to economy or therapy or the act of mourning, performance now shapes contemporary thinking about people and things. Some of the chief preocccupations of our time—namely, spectatorship, memory, the body—are framed within the terms of performance. Offering a vocabulary of human action that can be used to shape a view of the world and its histories, performance is the condition to which American culture increasingly aspires. Who doesn’t want to be an American “idol”? Reality shows have brought to the culture the national theatre America always lacked. The borders delineating art, culture, and commerce, art and entertainment, and experimental art and popular culture, have been blurred for a long time. Likewise, the separation between visual and theatrical arts has become less pronounced. Museum shows on post-war American art have increased the attention given to performance, video, dance, and

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and ArtMIT Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

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