| Description |
The author, a choreographer, offers a critical study of the intimate relations between performance art and media production in contemporary culture. The text interweaves the author's recollections of his own work with commentary on contemporary artists from Nam June Paik to Madonna. At a time when new arts are being accepted and adopted by mainstream institutions, Birringer reclaims performance as process and movement, as political commitment to social activism and community, as aesthetic intervention into technological and economic structures of domination, and as anarchist disturbance of aesthetic pretensions. Birringer begins by tracing the origins of avant-garde dance and revealing how it has been transformed politically, sexually and technologically. Later chapters explore the creation of digital-based interactive art, the use of video, and the creation of video sculptures. The author discusses the performance aspects of such political events as the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the destruction of Sarajevo and examines the use of video and agitprop performance in political activity, including protests by the gay activist group ACT UP. |