Reframing performance’s ontology: hybridity in contemporary performance art’s ontology

ABSTRACT

I argue performance studies’ modernist ontological assumptions of fleeting are antithetical to contemporary performance art which relies on digital technology for mediated viewing processes. In this essay, I argue for a hybrid postmodern performance studies that allow for varying modes of experiencing performance art. I situate Allan Kaprow and Fluxus as the genealogical beginning of performance and argue that Peggy Phelan’s ontological assumptions of performance are inherently modernist. I then pose a postmodern approach to performance studies that embrace an embodiment of hybrid viewing methodologies of performance. Lastly, I use three examples as embodiments and symptomatic representations of this embodiment of a hybrid postmodern performance ontology.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance art
• performance studies
• postmodernism
• Allan Kaprow
• Peggy Phelan

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Zane Austin Willard

Zane Austin Willard is a graduate student in Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. His research works at the intersection of media and performance and is rooted in a critical/cultural studies tradition with a focus on popular culture (reality television, social media, fine art, film). He is also a multimedia artist and his work has been exhibited in shows and film festivals in New York, Toronto, Tampa, Kansas City, and Colorado.