La Performance aux États-Unis [Vol. 2 : 1967-1982]

The three decades spanning the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s represent the key period for the study and practice of American performance art, which renewed itself constantly before settling into a more institutional form in the 1980s. This anthology is conceived chronologically: the first volume traces the origins of performance and Happenings in the 1950s–1960s after the early experiments at Black Mountain College and Rutgers University; the second focuses on the late 1960s, from Fluxus and the shift from theater to the visual arts, to the proliferation of performances, debates, and redefinitions of the Happening in the 1970s. For each period, the interweaving of “situated” texts allows the reader to follow the impact of new technologies and discourses on performance art, the importance of interdisciplinary thinking, and how a new art form was being created, theorized, and critiqued at the same time.

Bringing together 35 texts written between 1967 and 1982, this volume is edited and introduced by Swiss cinema historian François Bovier and Swiss philosopher Serge Margel. Both are specialists in performance art and experimental cinema. It is accompanied by a first volume spanning the years 1955 to 1966.

With texts and contributions by Vito Acconci, Marina Abramović, Robert Ashley, Chris Burden, Jan Butterfield, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Richard Foreman, Simone Forti, Dan Graham, Jon Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Lejaren Hiller, Ken Jacobs, Joan Jonas, Richard Kostelanetz, La Monte Young, Les Levine, Carl Loeffler, Jackson Mac Low, Meredith Monk, Gordon Mumma, Claes Oldenburg, Ralph Ortiz, Adrian Piper, Frederic Rzewski, Elaine Summers, Jean Toche, Wolf Vostell, Christian Wolff, Robert Whitman, Robert Wilson, and Marian Zazeela.

Published with ECAL / Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO).