This is not to suggest that performance does not figure at other public institutions around the country – many besides Tate have been running regular live programmes for years – but the plans for the new Tate Modern Tanks spaces symbolise the broader acceptance of something previously considered marginal. So the fact that one of Britain’s busiest galleries is dedicating time, space and money to these practices perhaps signals a new attitude across the board. While it was often the intent of artists of the 1970s to make themselves radically unmarketable, many of today’s practitioners have chosen the form of performance simply because gesture, spoken word, the presence of the body and exchange articulate their ideas more accurately than static objects and images. Although art objects enter the fluidity of the market to create a serious financial wake, the amorphousness of live and ephemeral event-based work has, to date, remained curiously immiscible.
It has been said, with a certain amount of ire, that performance, despite its myriad forms, is often treated simply as a novelty turn by commercial galleries, who hire it in to jolly up an opening, while excluding it from day-to-day business.
0 kommentar(er)
