The artist’s body and actions as the work, usually surviving only as documentation.
Ways in
Practice research, documentation analysis, audience studies, phenomenology.
The longer story
Performance art blurs boundaries between art, life, and ritual. The artist's body often becomes the medium; the event may be unrepeatable; documentation raises questions about what the work actually is. Historical research traces genealogies from Dada through Fluxus to the present. Practice-based approaches involve making work to understand it. What happens when the artist offers their body as art object?