Envisioning High Performance

Abstract

The only magazine devoted exclusively to performance art, High Performance ran as a quarterly from 1978 to 1997. Based in Los Angeles, in the midst of a burgeoning performance art movement, the magazine provided a forum for both local and international artists, many of whom in the years beyond the 1970s and early 1980s became known as prominent and highly influential members of the vanguard. A significant document of a particular era in American cultural production, High Performance was central to the development, expansion, and legitimization of performance art as a medium distinct from theater, creating both an audience and a venue for the dissemination of live experimental and conceptual, body-based work.