Bodies in action: Performance art in China

Abstract

This editorial considers the role of action in the development of performance art, from the late 1970s until today. It is based on the original call for articles for this Special Issue on ‘Performance Art in China: Bodies in Action’ that called for papers on a diverse range of topics. Topics that relate to Chinese terms and conditions for performance art and topics that cover a broad range of histories and conditions related to the art historical development of performance art in China, from the late 1970s until the present day. The editorial raises the important role performance art has played in the history of contemporary art in China. It extends this position to an argument for understanding the important role of performance art in the development of contemporary art worldwide, including in Asia. It does this by considering the art historical study of practices of performance art – and their relation to art, action, space and time – pointing at how each of these performances is considered a prepared action (happening or performance) by the artist, involves the preparation of materials, and invokes temporal and durational experiences, including in performance remediations. The editorial sees the social context of performance art as apparent. Yet, it also raises the important conditioning of performance art as a medium, a medium that can be trained as well. And, as a medium, linked to other mediums and media. The editorial raises concern with past and present urgings that consider performance art a restricted field and instead raise broad conditions of performativity and performative art, positioning the study of performance art as study of art conditioned by action and by the (urgent) condition to perform. In China, as well as elsewhere in Asia, the condition to perform is often urgent and unavoidable, including in the way performance art (art to perform) concerns artists working through conditions of art in relation to social reality. The articles in this Special Double Issue feature a range of examples of such conditions, which are introduced in this editorial, to strengthen the knowledge that performance art is an important field in the study of Chinese contemporary art and countering some of the ongoing criticism and censoring of performance art in China.