Over the history of Live Art, both as a practice and cultural sector, performance-based artworks have taken place in many different kinds of locations: from warehouses, to disused swimming pools, to public streets. These artworks are,... more
Over the history of Live Art, both as a practice and cultural sector, performance-based artworks have taken place in many different kinds of locations: from warehouses, to disused swimming pools, to public streets. These artworks are, colloquially as well as in academia, termed ‘site- specific’, as the location is considered to have significant impact on their meaning and form. However the term site-specific is rarely applied to performance-based artworks that take place in contemporary galleries, their spacious white-walled rooms assumed to be neutral environments. In this project, I argue that the contemporary gallery’s aesthetics and history is central to the form and meaning of performance-based artworks that take place there, and that conflating its aesthetics with neutrality obscures how Live Art practice questions and disrupts these spaces.
