Step by Step
1
Happenings and Fluxus
Allan Kaprow's "Happenings" (from 1959) were participatory, unrepeatable events. Fluxus, active in the 1960s, included George Maciunas and Yoko Ono, staging anti-art events and instruction pieces.
2
Body art
Vito Acconci and Chris Burden (who famously had himself shot for a piece) used their own bodies as the direct medium of their work. Marina Abramović pursued endurance and presence, most famously in The Artist Is Present (2010), during which she sat silently for 736 hours.
3
Video art pioneers
Nam June Paik pioneered video art, using television sets as sculptural material and incorporating satellite broadcasts into his work. Bill Viola created video installations exploring consciousness and death.
4
The documentation problem
A persistent challenge for performance art is how to collect and exhibit inherently ephemeral work. Tino Sehgal's "constructed situations" push this problem to its logical extreme, refusing all documentation of his work entirely.
Applied Walkthrough
1
Allan Kaprow's participatory "Happenings," beginning in 1959, existed as unrepeatable events rather than fixed objects — a spirit later carried forward by Fluxus artists like Yoko Ono, who staged deliberately anti-art events and instruction-based pieces throughout the 1960s.
2
This same use of the body as artistic medium reached a startling extreme with Chris Burden, who had himself shot as part of a performance piece, while Marina Abramović pursued a different kind of bodily endurance in The Artist Is Present, sitting silently and motionlessly for a total of 736 hours in 2010.
3
Around the same period, Nam June Paik pioneered an entirely different medium — video art — treating television sets themselves as sculptural material and incorporating live satellite broadcasts directly into his work, while Bill Viola later used video installation to explore consciousness and mortality.
4
This entire body of ephemeral, performance-based work raises a persistent challenge: how do you collect or exhibit something inherently temporary? Tino Sehgal's "constructed situations" push this problem to its logical extreme, refusing to allow any documentation of his work whatsoever.
Exam Application
Exams test whether you can distinguish performance art (Kaprow's Happenings, Fluxus, body art, Abramović) from video art (Paik, Viola) as related but distinct practices, and whether you understand the persistent documentation problem facing ephemeral performance work.
⚠ Common Trap
The most common trap is confusing performance art and video art as the same category — while related in their shared departure from traditional painting and sculpture, performance art uses the live body/event as medium (Kaprow, Abramović), while video art specifically uses the recorded/broadcast image as medium (Paik, Viola) — genuinely distinct practices with different documentation challenges.
✓ Quick Self-Check
1. What are Allan Kaprow's "Happenings"?
Participatory, unrepeatable events, beginning in 1959.
Tap to reveal / hide
2. What did Marina Abramović do in The Artist Is Present (2010)?
Sat silently and motionlessly for 736 hours.
Tap to reveal / hide
3. Who pioneered video art, and what materials did he use?
Nam June Paik; television sets as sculpture and satellite broadcasts.
Tap to reveal / hide
4. What does Bill Viola's video installation work explore?
Consciousness and death.
Tap to reveal / hide
5. What is the "documentation problem" in performance art, and how does Tino Sehgal address it?
How to collect/exhibit ephemeral work; Sehgal refuses all documentation of his work entirely.
Tap to reveal / hide