PERFORMANCE ART

This is a 1980s epithet for a presentational genre that had previously been called Happenings or Mixed-Means Theater, which is to say a live performance, drawing upon dance, music, drama, and sometimes motion pictures. Performance art shares two elements. The various parts function disharmoniously, in the tradition of Collage, which is based upon the principle of assembling elements not normally found together; aliveness, because a recorded piece, whether on video or audiotape, lacks spontaneity...