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111-605: Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play , such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams , jazz poetry , pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music , and can include comedy routines and prose monologues . Unlike written poetry,

222-657: A "painter who has left the canvas to activate the real space and the lived time." Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, who is one of the most important female artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments provided the foundation on which much video performance art would be based. Her influences also extended to conceptual art , theatre, performance art and other visual media. She lives and works in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada. Immersed in New York's downtown art scene of

333-439: A Dead Hare (1965) he covered his face with honey and gold leaf and explained his work to a dead hare that lay in his arms. In this work he linked spacial and sculptural, linguistic and sonorous factors to the artist's figure, to his bodily gesture, to the conscience of a communicator whose receptor is an animal. Beuys acted as a shaman with healing and saving powers toward the society that he considered dead. In 1974 he carried out

444-635: A Dream ", Sojourner Truth 's " Ain't I a Woman? ", and Booker T. Washington 's "Cast Down Your Buckets" incorporated elements of oration that influenced the spoken-word movement within the African-American community. The Last Poets was a poetry and political music group formed during the 1960s that was born out of the Civil Rights Movement and helped increase the popularity of spoken word within African-American culture. Spoken word poetry entered into wider American culture following

555-589: A commodity and declared themselves a sociological art movement. Fluxus was informally organized in 1962 by George Maciunas (1931–1978). This movement had representation in Europe, the United States and Japan. The Fluxus movement, mostly developed in North America and Europe under the stimulus of John Cage , did not see the avant-garde as a linguistic renovation, but it sought to make a different use of

666-531: A connection with performance art, as they are created as a live action, like his best-known artworks of paintings created with the bodies of women. The members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they took parts and incorporated them into their work; they sought to bring life and art closer together. One of the other movements that anticipated performance art was the Japanese movement Gutai , who made action art or happening . It emerged in 1955 in

777-434: A formal linear narrative, or which alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted interactions. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand. Some types of performance art nevertheless can be close to performing arts . Such performance may use

888-538: A locker (1971) he stayed for five days inside a school locker, in Shoot (1971) he was shot with a firearm, and inhabited for twenty two days a bed inside an art gallery in Bed Piece (1972). Another example of endurance artist is Tehching Hsieh. During a performance created in 1980–1981 ( Time Clock Piece ), where Hsieh took a photo of himself next to time clock installed in his studio every hour for an entire year. Hsieh

999-479: A meta-art which arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. As well as an aesthetic agenda, the work progressed from perceptions of the physical properties of the gallery to the social and political context, largely taking the form of permanent public sculpture in the last two decades of a highly prolific career, whose diversity could exasperate his critics. Yayoi Kusama

1110-783: A prize. Competitive singing is depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite . The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the Hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos and the Delian gathering. An early historical mention of rhapsodes occurs in the Histories of Herodotus (c. 440 BC). He tells

1221-606: A public action. Names to be highlighted are Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline , whose work include abstract and action painting. Nouveau réalisme is another one of the artistic movements cited in the beginnings of performance art. It was a painting movement founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany and painter Yves Klein , during the first collective exhibition in the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan. Nouveau réalisme was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of

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1332-427: A range of publications, including The New York Times , The Guardian , The Village Voice and The Nation . Carolee Schneemann was an American visual experimental artist , known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender . She created pieces such as Meat Joy (1964) and Interior Scroll (1975). Schneemann considered her body a surface for work. She described herself as

1443-428: A script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still constitute performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirize or to transcend the usual real-world dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays. Performance artists often challenge

1554-583: A spirit of transformation. The term "performance art" and "performance" became widely used in the 1970s, even though the history of performance in visual arts dates back to futurist productions and cabarets from the 1910s. Art critic and performance artist John Perreault credits Marjorie Strider with the invention of the term in 1969. The main pioneers of performance art include Carolee Schneemann , Marina Abramović , Ana Mendieta , Chris Burden , Hermann Nitsch , Joseph Beuys , Nam June Paik , Tehching Hsieh , Yves Klein and Vito Acconci . Some of

1665-432: A text, and occasionally they appear in assemblies or artistic installations. Apart from their sculptures, Gilbert and George have also made pictorial works, collages and photomontages, where they pictured themselves next to diverse objects from their immediate surroundings, with references to urban culture and a strong content; they addressed topics such as sex, race, death and HIV, religion or politics, critiquing many times

1776-695: A unique mix of Spoken Word and Music that continues to the present day. As a voting member of the Recording Academy, Ms. Loomis submitted a petition in 2021 to separate Spoken Word Poetry from Audiobooks in the Grammy® Awards. Between 1987-2020 only three times did the Award go to a poet: Maya Angelou in 1993, 1995 and 2002. The rest of the Awards were for audiobooks to people such as Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Michelle Obama. In response to

1887-554: Is Wall piece for orchestra (1962). Joseph Beuys was a German Fluxus, happening , performance artist, painter, sculptor, medallist and installation artist . In 1962 his actions alongside the Fluxus neodadaist movement started, group in which he ended up becoming the most important member. His most relevant achievement was his socialization of art, making it more accessible for every kind of public. In How to Explain Pictures to

1998-459: Is a Japanese artist who, throughout her career, has worked with a great variety of media including:sculpture, installation, painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts; the majority of them exhibited her interest in psychedelia, repetition and patterns. Kusama is a pioneer of the pop art, minimalism and feminist art movements and influenced her coetaneous, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg . She has been acknowledged as one of

2109-483: Is also abundant on college campuses, YouTube, and through forums such as Button Poetry. Some spoken-word poems go viral and can then appear in articles, on TED talks , and on social media sites such as Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram . Performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and

2220-610: Is also involved in social work and issues. In Ghana , the poetry group Ehalakasa, led by Kojo Yibor Kojo AKA Sir Black, holds monthly TalkParty events (collaborative endeavour with Nubuke Foundation and/ National Theatre of Ghana ) and special events such as Ehalakasa Slam Festival and end-of-year events. This group has produced spoken-word poets including Mutombo da Poet, Chief Moomen, Nana Asaase, RhymeSonny , Koo Kumi , Hondred Percent, Jewel King, Faiba Bernard, Akambo, Wordrite, Natty Ogli, and Philipa. The spoken-word movement in Ghana

2331-487: Is also known for his performances about deprivation of freedom; he spent an entire year confined. In The House With the Ocean View (2003), Marina Abramović lived silently for twelve days without food. The Nine Confinements or The Deprivation of Liberty is a conceptual endurance artwork of critical content carried out in the years 2013 and 2016. All of them have in common the illegitimate deprivation of freedom. In

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2442-421: Is an artist and United States activist. She is one of the main African-American exponents of feminism and LGBT activism in the United States. In the beginning of the 1970s she worked as a teacher, writer and defender of the black feminism current. She has taught at numerous colleges and universities in the last five years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in

2553-570: Is at least clear that by the fourth century the Homeric poems were a compulsory part of the Panathenaea, and were to be recited in order. They are too long for a single rhapsode or for a single day's performance. Therefore, they had to be divided into parts, and each rhapsode had to take his assigned part (otherwise they would have chosen favourite or prize passages). Complementary evidence on oral performance of poetry in classical Greece comes in

2664-505: Is considered to have influenced artists including Laurie Anderson , Karen Finley , Bruce Nauman , and Tracey Emin , among others. Acconci was initially interested in radical poetry, but by the late 1960s, he began creating Situationist -influenced performances in the street or for small audiences that explored the body and public space. Two of his most famous pieces were Following Piece (1969), in which he selected random passersby on New York City streets and followed them for as long as he

2775-667: Is credited with starting the poetry slam in November 1984. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place in Fort Mason, San Francisco . The poetry slam movement reached a wider audience following Russell Simmons ' Def Poetry , which was aired on HBO between 2002 and 2007. The poets associated with the Buffalo Readings were active early in the 21st century. In San Francisco in the late 1990s poet Royal Kent and composer Wendy Loomis formed COPUS (band) to create

2886-519: Is explicitly written to be performed aloud and consciously shuns the written form. "Form", as Donald Hall records "was never more than an extension of content." Performance poetry in Africa dates to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry, while elegiac and panegyric court poetry were developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys. One of

2997-399: Is one that is conveyed primarily by speech as opposed to writing, in predominantly oral cultures proverbs (also known as maxims ) are convenient vehicles for conveying simple beliefs and cultural attitudes. "The hearing knowledge we bring to a line of poetry is a knowledge of a pattern of speech we have known since we were infants". Performance poetry , which is kindred to performance art,

3108-527: Is primarily oral utterance, to be said aloud, to be heard." Poetry, like music , appeals to the ear, an effect known as euphony or onomatopoeia , a device to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates sound. "Speak again, Speak like rain" was how a poet of the Kikuyu people, an East African people, described her verse to author Isak Dinesen , confirming a comment by T. S. Eliot that "poetry remains one person talking to another". The oral tradition

3219-563: Is rapidly growing that individual spoken-word artists like MEGBORNA, are continuously carving a niche for themselves and stretching the borders of spoken word by combining spoken word with 3D animations and spoken-word video game, based on his yet to be released poem, Alkebulan. In Kumasi , the creative group CHASKELE holds an annual spoken-word event on the campus of KNUST giving platform to poets and other creatives. Poets like Elidior The Poet, Slimo, T-Maine are key members of this group. In Kenya , poetry performance grew significantly between

3330-763: Is thought that the Dada movement was founded in the ten-meter-square locale. Moreover, Surrealists, whose movement descended directly from Dadaism, used to meet in the Cabaret. On its brief existence—barely six months, closing the summer of 1916—the Dadaist Manifesto was read and it held the first Dada actions, performances, and hybrid poetry, plastic art, music and repetitive action presentations. Founders such as Richard Huelsenbeck , Marcel Janco , Tristan Tzara , Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp participated in provocative and scandalous events that were fundamental and

3441-437: Is to be read aloud by someone's voice, whoever reads a poem aloud becomes the proper medium for the poem." "Every speaker intuitively courses through manipulation of sounds, it is almost as though 'we sing to one another all day'." "Sound once imagined through the eye gradually gave body to poems through performance, and late in the 1950s reading aloud erupted in the United States." Some American spoken-word poetry originated from

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3552-405: Is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action , it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art . It involves five basic elements: time, space, body, and presence of the artist, and the relation between

3663-592: The Home Journal wrote about concerts that combined spoken word recitations with music, as demonstrated by actresses Sophie Schroder and Fanny Kemble . Vachel Lindsay helped maintain the tradition of poetry as spoken art in the early twentieth century. Composers such as Marion Bauer , Ruth Crawford Seegar , and Lalla Ryckoff composed music to be combined with spoken words. Robert Frost also spoke well, his meter accommodating his natural sentences. Poet laureate Robert Pinsky said: "Poetry's proper culmination

3774-544: The Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists , prefer to use the terms "live art", "action art", "actions", "intervention" (see art intervention ) or "manoeuvre" to describe their performing activities. As genres of performance art appear body art , fluxus-performance, happening , action poetry , and intermedia . Performance art is a form of expression that was born as an alternative artistic manifestation. The discipline emerged in 1916 parallel to dadaism, under

3885-546: The 1940s and 1950s, the action painting technique or movement gave artists the possibility of interpreting the canvas as an area to act in, rendering the paintings as traces of the artist's performance in the studio According to art critic Harold Rosenberg , it was one of the initiating processes of performance art, along with abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollock is the action painter par excellence, who carried out many of his actions live. In Europe Yves Klein did his Anthropométries using (female) bodies to paint canvasses as

3996-467: The 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction." A happening allows the artist to experiment with the movement of the body, recorded sounds, written and talked texts, and even smells. One of Kaprow's first works was Happenings in the New York Scene , written in 1961. Allan Kaprow's happenings turned

4107-440: The 1960s, Jonas studied with the choreographer Trisha Brown for two years. Jonas also worked with choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton. Yoko Ono was part of the avant-garde movement of the 1960s. She was part of the Fluxus movement. She is known for her performance art pieces in the late 1960s, works such as Cut Piece , where visitors could intervene in her body until she was left naked. One of her best known pieces

4218-654: The 20th century, who worked with various mediums and techniques such as painting, sculpture, installation , decollage , video art , happening and fluxus . Vito Acconci was an influential American performance, video and installation artist , whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational performance and video art was characterized by "existential unease," exhibitionism, discomfort, transgression and provocation, as well as wit and audacity, and often involved crossing boundaries such as public–private, consensual–nonconsensual, and real world–art world. His work

4329-695: The 20th century. He studied music and art history in the University of Tokyo. Later, in 1956, he traveled to Germany, where he studied Music Theory in Munich, then continued in Cologne in the Freiburg conservatory. While studying in Germany, Paik met the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage and the conceptual artists Sharon Grace as well as George Maciunas , Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell and

4440-796: The British government and the established power. The group's most prolific and ambitious work was Jack Freak Pictures , where they had a constant presence of the colors red, white and blue in the Union Jack. Gilbert and George have exhibited their work in museums and galleries around the world, like the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum of Eindhoven (1980), the Hayward Gallery in London (1987), and the Tate Modern (2007). They have participated in

4551-760: The House of Hunger Poetry slam in Harare , Mlomo Wakho Poetry Slam in Bulawayo as well as the Charles Austin Theatre in Masvingo . Festivals such as Harare International Festival of the Arts , Intwa Arts Festival KoBulawayo and Shoko Festival have supported the genre for a number of years. In Trinidad and Tobago , this art form is widely used as a form of social commentary and is displayed all throughout

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4662-603: The Nazi Party, continued incorporating experimental performing arts in the scenic arts training twenty years before the events related to the history of performance in the 1960s. The name Bauhaus derives from the German words Bau, construction and Haus, house ; ironically, despite its name and the fact that his founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department the first years of its existence. In

4773-542: The Peloponnese in the early sixth century BC. At Athens , by 330 BC, there was a law that rhapsodes should perform the Homeric poems at every Panathenaic festival ; this law is appealed to as glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus . Perhaps therefore such a custom was exceptional, and we do not know when or by whom it was introduced, although the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus (not really by Plato, but probably of

4884-433: The U.S. in 1968. A work of this period, Paradise Now , was notorious for its audience participation and a scene in which actors recited a list of social taboos that included nudity, while disrobing. Fluxus , a Latin word that means flow , is a visual arts movement related to music, literature, and dance. Its most active moment was in the 1960s and 1970s. They proclaimed themselves against the traditional artistic object as

4995-965: The United States, were new forms of theatre, embodied by the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Living Theatre and showcased in Off-Off Broadway theaters in SoHO and at La MaMa in New York City. The Living Theatre is a theater company created in 1947 in New York. It is the oldest experimental theatre in the United States. Throughout its history it has been led by its founders: actress Judith Malina , who had studied theatre with Erwin Piscator , with whom she studied Bertolt Brecht 's and Meyerhold 's theory; and painter and poet Julian Beck . After Beck's death in 1985,

5106-605: The Venice Biennale. In 1986 they won the Turner Prize. Endurance performance art deepens the themes of trance, pain, solitude, deprivation of freedom, isolation or exhaustion. Some of the works, based on the passing of long periods of time are also known as long-durational performances. One of the pioneering artists was Chris Burden in California since the 1970s. In one of his best known works, Five days in

5217-414: The arm with a small-caliber rifle. A prolific artist, Burden created many well-known installations, public artworks and sculptures before his death in 2015. Burden began to work in performance art in the early 1970s. He made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central. His first significant performance work, Five Day Locker Piece (1971),

5328-491: The artist's body in the creative process, it acquires similarities with the beginnings of performance art. In the 1960s, with the purpose of evolving the generalized idea of art and with similar principles of those originary from Cabaret Voltaire or Futurism , a variety of new works, concepts and a growing number of artists led to new kinds of performance art. Movements clearly differentiated from Viennese Actionism , avant garde performance art in New York City, process art ,

5439-433: The artwork are deeply bound. It uses nature as a material (wood, soil, rocks, sand, wind, fire, water, etc.) to intervene on itself. The artwork is generated with the place itself as a starting point. The result is sometimes a junction between sculpture and architecture, and sometimes a junction between sculpture and landscaping that is increasingly taking a more determinant role in contemporary public spaces. When incorporating

5550-725: The audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is". As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements; use robots and machines as performers, as in pieces of the Survival Research Laboratories ; involve ritualised elements (e.g. Shaun Caton ); or borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and circus . Performance art can also involve intersection with architecture, and may intertwine with religious practice and with theology . Some artists, e.g.

5661-412: The basis of the foundation for the anarchist movement called Dada. Dadaism was born with the intention of destroying any system or established norm in the art world. It is an anti-art movement, anti-literary and anti-poetry, that questioned the existence of art, literature and poetry itself. Not only was it a way of creating, but of living; it created a whole new ideology. It was against eternal beauty,

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5772-682: The beginning of the 1970s in such albums as Amour Anarchie (1970), Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), and Il n'y a plus rien (1973), and contributed to the popularization of spoken word within French culture. In 2003, the movement reached its peak in France with Fabien Marsaud aka Grand Corps Malade being a forerunner of the genre. In the UK, musicians who have performed spoken-word lyrics include Blur , The Streets and Kae Tempest . In Zimbabwe , spoken word has been mostly active on stage through

5883-591: The best known griot epic poems was created for the founder of the Mali Empire , the Epic of Sundiata . In African culture, performance poetry is a part of theatrics, which was present in all aspects of pre-colonial African life and whose theatrical ceremonies had many different functions: political, educative, spiritual and entertainment. Poetics were an element of theatrical performances of local oral artists, linguists and historians, accompanied by local instruments of

5994-413: The body conceptually and critically emerged. Rhapsode The term rhapsode is derived from rhapsōidein (ῥαψῳδεῖν), meaning "to sew songs [together]". This word illustrates how the oral epic poet, or rhapsode , would build a repertoire of diverse myths , tales and jokes to include in the content of the epic poem. Thus it was possible, through experience and improvisatory skills, for him to shift

6105-432: The chaos protagonized their breaking actions with traditional artistic form. Cabaret Voltaire closed in 1916, but was revived in the 21st century. Futurism was an artistic avant garde movement that appeared in 1909. It first started as a literary movement, even though most of the participants were painters. In the beginning it also included sculpture, photography, music and cinema. The First World War put an end to

6216-500: The company member Hanon Reznikov became co-director along with Malina. Because it is one of the oldest random theatre or live theatre groups nowadays, it is looked upon by the rest. They understood theatre as a way of life, and the actors lived in a community under libertary principles. It was a theatre campaign dedicated to transformation of the power organization of an authoritarian society and hierarchical structure. The Living Theatre chiefly toured in Europe between 1963 and 1968, and in

6327-411: The content of the epos according to the preferred taste of a specific location's audience. However, the outer framework of the epic would remain virtually the same in every "singing", thus securing the projection of underlying themes such as of morality or honour. The performance of epic poetry was called in classical Greek rhapsōidia (ῥαψῳδία), and its performer rhapsōidos . The word does not occur in

6438-470: The course of performance. There are indications in Pindar and other authors that oral epic was still a living and popular tradition in the early fifth century BC; all the later evidence, however, is that rhapsodes worked from written texts, and in some cases were compelled by law to do so. It is certain that rhapsodes performed competitively, contending for prizes at religious festivals, and that this practice

6549-420: The creation process. His priority is the idea and the creative process over the result. His art uses an incredible array of materials and especially his own body. Gilbert and George are Italian artist Gilbert Proesch and English artist George Passmore, who have developed their work inside conceptual art, performance and body art. They were best known for their live-sculpture acts. One of their first makings

6660-417: The creator and the public. The actions, generally developed in art galleries and museums, can take place in the street, any kind of setting or space and during any time period. Its goal is to generate a reaction, sometimes with the support of improvisation and a sense of aesthetics. The themes are commonly linked to life experiences of the artist themselves, the need for denunciation or social criticism and with

6771-412: The daily, many times with small actions or performances. John Cage was an American composer, music theorist , artist, and philosopher. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music , electroacoustic music , and non-standard use of musical instruments , Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde . Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He

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6882-540: The early 1960s, New York City harbored many movements, events and interests regarding performance art. Amongst others, Andy Warhol began creating films and videos, and mid decade he sponsored The Velvet Underground and staged events and performative actions in New York, such as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966), that included live rock music, explosive lights and films. Indirectly influential for art-world performance, particularly in

6993-402: The early 1970s the use of video format by performance artists was consolidated. Some exhibitions by Joan Jonas and Vito Acconci were made entirely of video, activated by previous performative processes. In this decade, various books that talked about the use of the means of communication, video and cinema by performance artists, like Expanded Cinema , by Gene Youngblood, were published. One of

7104-413: The early epics, which use the word aoidos (ἀοιδός "singer") for performers in all genres, including this one. It has been argued by Walter Burkert that rhapsōidos was by definition a performer of a fixed, written text. The word rhapsōidos was in use as early as Pindar (522–443 BC), who implies two different explanations of it, "singer of stitched verse", and "singer with the staff". Of these

7215-405: The early seventies. Joan Jonas started to include video in her experimental performances in 1972, while Bruce Nauman scenified his acts to be directly recorded on video. Nauman is an American multimedia artist, whose sculptures, videos, graphic work and performances have helped diversify and develop culture from the 1960s on. His unsettling artworks emphasized the conceptual nature of art and

7326-455: The eternity of principles, the laws of logic, the immobility of thought and clearly against anything universal. It promoted change, spontaneity, immediacy, contradiction, randomness and the defense of chaos against the order and imperfection against perfection, ideas similar to those of performance art. They stood for provocation, anti-art protest and scandal, through ways of expression many times satirical and ironic. The absurd or lack of value and

7437-478: The evolution of The Living Theatre or happening , but most of all the consolidation of the pioneers of performance art. The term Viennese Actionism ( Wiener Aktionismus ) comprehends a brief and controversial art movement of the 20th century, which is remembered for the violence, grotesque and visual of their artworks. It is located in the Austrian vanguard of the 1960s, and it had the goal of bringing art to

7548-512: The first is etymologically correct; the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the singer was accustomed to hold a staff (ῥάβδος rhabdos ) in his hand, perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing or to "emphasize the rhythm or to give grandeur to their gestures". The etymological meaning is interesting because it is an exact metaphor for what oral narrative poets do: they stitch together formulas, lines and type-scenes in

7659-441: The fourth century BC) attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Peisistratos (Athens) . The Hipparchus adds that the law required the rhapsodists to follow on from one another in order, "as they still do". This recurs in a different form in the much later statement of Diogenes Laërtius (1.2.57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited "with prompting". Many Athenian laws were falsely attributed to early lawgivers, but it

7770-576: The griots. The poet and ethnographer Jerzy Ficowski has studied and written extensively about the Polska Roma tradition of spoken word. Though the vast majority of Polish-Romani people of that generation did not read or write, oral folk traditions were very strong. The most famous example is Papusza , who Ficowski discovered when he was following gypsy caravans on the road. Ficowski had her work translated and published, and she went on to become one of Poland's most iconic poets. In ancient Greece ,

7881-439: The ground of performance art, and is linked to Fluxus and Body Art. Amongst their main exponents are Günter Brus , Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch , who developed most of their actionist activities between 1960 and 1971. Hermann, pioneer of performance art, presented in 1962 his Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries (Orgien und Mysterien Theater). Marina Abramović participated as a performer in one of his performances in 1975. In

7992-409: The handicaps comes from the term itself, which is polysemic, and one of its meanings relates to the scenic arts. This meaning of "performance" in the scenic-arts context differs radically from the concept of "performance art", since performance art emerged with a critical and antagonistic position towards scenic arts. Performance art only adjoins the scenic arts in certain aspects such as the audience and

8103-603: The honey or the grease used by the tartars who saved in World War Two. In 1970 he made his Felt Suit . Also in 1970, Beuys taught sculpture in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1979, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York City exhibited a retrospective of his work from the 1940s to 1970. Nam June Paik was a South Korean performance artist, composer and video artist from the second half of

8214-525: The idea of a political concentration, with poetry and music-halls, which anticipated performance art. The Bauhaus , an art school founded in Weimar in 1919, included an experimental performing arts workshops with the goal of exploring the relationship between the body, space, sound and light. The Black Mountain College , founded in the United States by instructors of the original Bauhaus who were exiled by

8325-555: The initiation of actions and proceedings. Process artists saw art as pure human expression. Process art defends the idea that the process of creating the work of art can be an art piece itself. Artist Robert Morris predicated "anti-form", process and time over an objectual finished product. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader , "The term 'Happening' has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during

8436-414: The late 1960s, diverse land art artists such as Robert Smithson or Dennis Oppenheim created environmental pieces that preceded performance art in the 1970s. Works by conceptual artists from the early 1980s, such as Sol LeWitt , who made mural drawing into a performance act, were influenced by Yves Klein and other land art artists. Land art is a contemporary art movement in which the landscape and

8547-540: The late 1990s and early 2000s. This was through organisers and creative hubs such as Kwani Open Mic, Slam Africa, Waamathai's, Poetry at Discovery, Hisia Zangu Poetry, Poetry Slam Africa, Paza Sauti, Anika, Fatuma's Voice, ESPA, Sauti dada, Wenyewe poetry among others. Soon the movement moved to other counties and to universities throughout the country. Spoken word in Kenya has been a means of communication where poets can speak about issues affecting young people in Africa. Some of

8658-454: The lines between life, Zen, performative art-making techniques and "events," in both pre-meditated and spontaneous ways. Process art is an artistic movement where the end product of art and craft , the objet d’art ( work of art / found object ), is not the principal focus; the process of its making is one of the most relevant aspects if not the most important one: the gathering, sorting, collating, associating, patterning, and moreover

8769-411: The main art channels that separate themselves from specific language; it tries to be interdisciplinary and to adopt mediums and materials from different fields. Language is not the goal, but the mean for a renovation of art, seen as a global art. As well as Dada , Fluxus escaped any attempt for a definition or categorization. As one of the movement's founders, Dick Higgins , stated: Fluxus started with

8880-569: The main artists who used video and performance, with notorious audiovisual installations, is the South Korean artist Nam June Paik , who in the early 1960s had already been in the Fluxus movement until becoming a media artist and evolving into the audiovisual installations he is known for. Carolee Schneemann 's and Robert Whitman's 1960s work regarding their video-performances must be taken into consideration as well. Both were pioneers of performance art, turning it into an independent art form in

8991-459: The main exponents more recently are Tania Bruguera , Abel Azcona , Regina José Galindo , Marta Minujín , Melati Suryodarmo and Petr Pavlensky . The discipline is linked to the happenings and "events" of the Fluxus movement, Viennese Actionism , body art and conceptual art . The definition and historical and pedagogical contextualization of performance art is controversial. One of

9102-429: The many avant garde tendencies of the 1960s. Pierre Restany created various performance art assemblies in the Tate Modern , amongst other spaces. Yves Klein is one of the main exponents of the movement. He was a clear pioneer of performance art, with his conceptual pieces like Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (1959–62), Anthropométries (1960), and the photomontage Saut dans le vide . All his works have

9213-498: The many petitions, the Recording Academy sponsored several open forum webcasts to discuss the possibility. Many Spoken Word artists including COPUS participated. In 2022 Spoken Word Poetry successfully became an official Grammy Award genre with the first award being presented to J.Ivy in 2023. https://copusmusic.com Outside of the United States, artists such as French singer-songwriters Léo Ferré and Serge Gainsbourg made personal use of spoken word over rock or symphonic music from

9324-404: The meanings of a performance-art presentation. "Performance art" is a term usually reserved to refer to a conceptual art that conveys a content-based meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own sake for entertainment purposes. It largely refers to a performance presented to an audience, but which does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or

9435-558: The mid-1970s, behind the Iron Curtain, in major Eastern Europe cities such as Budapest , Kraków , Belgrade, Zagreb , Novi Sad and others, scenic arts of a more experimental content flourished. Against political and social control, different artists who made performance of political content arose. Orshi Drozdik 's performance series, titled Individual Mythology 1975–77 and the NudeModel 1976–77. All her actions were critical of

9546-440: The most important living artists to come out of Japan and a very relevant voice in avant garde art. In the 1970s, artists that had derived to works related to performance art evolved and consolidated themselves as artists with performance art as their main discipline, deriving into installations created through performance, video performance, or collective actions, or in the context of a socio-historical and political context. In

9657-715: The movement, even though in Italy it went on until the 1930s. One of the countries where it had the most impact was Russia. In 1912 manifestos such as the Futurist Sculpture Manifesto and the Futurist Architecture arose, and in 1913 the Manifesto of Futurist Lust by Valentine de Saint-Point , dancer, writer and French artist. The futurists spread their theories through encounters, meetings and conferences in public spaces, that got close to

9768-533: The nation at all times of the year. The main poetry events in Trinidad and Tobago are overseen by an organization called the 2 Cent Movement. They host an annual event in partnership with the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and First Citizens Bank called "The First Citizens national Poetry Slam", formerly called "Verses". This organization also hosts poetry slams and workshops for primary and secondary schools. It

9879-630: The patriarchal discourse in art and the forced emancipation programme and constructed by the equally patriarchal state. Drozdik showed a pioneer and feminist point of view on both, becoming one of the precursors of this type of critical art in Eastern Europe. In the 1970s, performance art, due to its fugacity, had a solid presence in the Eastern European avant-garde, specially in Poland and Yugoslavia, where dozens of artists who explored

9990-411: The people such as the kora , the xalam , the mbira and the djembe drum. Drumming for accompaniment is not to be confused with performances of the "talking drum", which is a literature of its own, since it is a distinct method of communication that depends on conveying meaning through non-musical grammatical, tonal and rhythmic rules imitating speech. Although, they could be included in performances of

10101-656: The performance I Like America and America Likes Me where Beuys, a coyote and materials such as paper, felt and thatch constituted the vehicle for its creation. He lived with the coyote for three days. He piled United States newspapers, a symbol of capitalism. With time, the tolerance between Beuys and the coyote grew and he ended up hugging the animal. Beuys repeats many elements used in other works. Objects that differ form Duchamp's ready-mades, not for their poor and ephemerality, but because they are part of Beuys's own life, who placed them after living with them and leaving his mark on them. Many have an autobiographical meaning, like

10212-497: The poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics , or the aesthetics of sound. Spoken word has existed for many years; long before writing, through a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing, each language drew on its resources of sound structure for aural patterns that made spoken poetry very different from ordinary discourse and easier to commit to memory. "There were poets long before there were printing presses, poetry

10323-775: The poetry of the Harlem Renaissance , blues , and the Beat Generation of the 1960s. Spoken word in African-American culture drew on a rich literary and musical heritage. Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by the feelings of the blues and spirituals , hip-hop , and slam poetry artists were inspired by poets such as Hughes in their word stylings. The Civil Rights Movement also influenced spoken word. Notable speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr. 's " I Have

10434-965: The present body, and still not every performance-art piece contains these elements. The meaning of the term "performance art" in the narrower sense is related to postmodernist traditions in Western culture. From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud , Dada , the Situationists , Fluxus , installation art , and conceptual art , performance art tended to be defined as an antithesis to theatre, challenging orthodox art-forms and cultural norms. The ideal had been an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased. The widely discussed difference, how concepts of visual arts and concepts of performing arts are used, can determine

10545-499: The public into interpreters. Often the spectators became an active part of the act without realizing it. Other actors who created happenings were Jim Dine , Al Hansen , Claes Oldenburg , Robert Whitman and Wolf Vostell : Theater is in the Street (Paris, 1958). The works by performance artists after 1968 showed many times influences from the political and cultural situation that year. Barbara T. Smith with Ritual Meal (1969)

10656-484: The region of Kansai ( Kyōto , Ōsaka , Kōbe ). The main participants were Jirō Yoshihara , Sadamasa Motonaga, Shozo Shimamoto, Saburō Murakami, Katsuō Shiraga, Seichi Sato, Akira Ganayama and Atsuko Tanaka. The Gutai group arose after World War II. They rejected capitalist consumerism, carrying out ironic actions with latent aggressiveness (object breaking, actions with smoke). They influenced groups such as Fluxus and artists like Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell . In

10767-453: The release of Gil Scott-Heron 's spoken-word poem " The Revolution Will Not Be Televised " on the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970. The Nuyorican Poets Café on New York's Lower Eastside was founded in 1973, and is one of the oldest American venues for presenting spoken-word poetry. In the 1980s, spoken-word poetry competitions, often with elimination rounds, emerged and were labelled " poetry slams ". American poet Marc Smith

10878-401: The spoken word was the most trusted repository for the best of their thought, and inducements would be offered to men (such as the rhapsodes ) who set themselves the task of developing minds capable of retaining and voices capable of communicating the treasures of their culture. The ancient Greeks included Greek lyric , which is similar to spoken-word poetry, in their Olympic Games . In 1849,

10989-453: The starting process of performance art. The Cabaret Voltaire was founded in Zürich , Switzerland by the couple Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings for artistic and political purposes, and was a place where new tendencies were explored. Located on the upper floor of a theater, whose exhibitions they mocked in their shows, the works interpreted in the cabaret were avant garde and experimental. It

11100-716: The story that at Sicyon the ruler Cleisthenes (600–560 BC) expelled the rhapsodes on account of the poems of Homer, because they promoted Argos and the Argives . This description applies very well to the Iliad , in which "Argives" is one of the alternate names for the Greek warriors; it may have suited the Thebaid still better, since Argos was named in the first line of that poem. The incident seems to show that poems performed by rhapsodes had political and propagandistic importance in

11211-475: The umbrella of conceptual art. The movement was led by Tristan Tzara , one of the pioneers of Dada . Western culture theorists have set the origins of performance art in the beginnings of the 20th century, along with constructivism , Futurism and Dadaism. Dada was an important inspiration because of their poetry actions, which drifted apart from conventionalisms, and futurist artists, specially some members of Russian futurism , could also be identified as part of

11322-470: The well known poets in Kenya are Dorphan, Kenner B, Namatsi Lukoye, Raya Wambui, Wanjiku Mwaura, Teardrops, Mufasa, Mumbi Macharia, Qui Qarre, Sitawa Namwalie, Sitawa Wafula, Anne Moraa, Ngwatilo Mawiyo, Stephen Derwent. Spoken-word poetry is often performed in a competitive setting. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam was held in San Francisco. It is the largest poetry slam competition event in

11433-435: The work, and then came together, applying the name Fluxus to work which already existed. It was as if it started in the middle of the situation, rather than at the beginning. Robert Filliou places Fluxus opposite to conceptual art for its direct, immediate and urgent reference to everyday life, and turns around Duchamp's proposal, who starting from Ready-made , introduced the daily into art, whereas Fluxus dissolved art into

11544-709: The world, now held each year in different cities across the United States. The popularity of slam poetry has resulted in slam poetry competitions being held across the world, at venues ranging from coffeehouses to large stages. Spoken-word poetry is typically more than a hobby or expression of talent. This art form is often used to convey important or controversial messages to society. Such messages often include raising awareness of topics such as: racial inequality, sexual assault and/or rape culture , anti-bullying messages, body-positive campaigns, and LGBT topics. Slam poetry competitions often feature loud and radical poems that display both intense content and sound. Spoken-word poetry

11655-476: Was The Singing Sculpture , where the artists sang and danced "Underneath the Arches", a song from the 1930s. Since then they have forged a solid reputation as live-sculptures, making themselves works of art, exhibited in front of spectators through diverse time intervals. They usually appear dressed in suits and ties, adopting diverse postures that they maintain without moving, though sometimes they also move and read

11766-490: Was able, and Seedbed (1972), in which he claimed that he masturbated while under a temporary floor at the Sonnabend Gallery , as visitors walked above and heard him speaking. Chris Burden was an American artist working in performance , sculpture and installation art . Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including Shoot (1971), in which he arranged for a friend to shoot him in

11877-648: Was already well-established by the fifth century BC. The Iliad alludes to the myth of Thamyris , the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could defeat even the Muses in song. He competed with them, was defeated, and was punished for his presumption with the loss of his ability to sing. Historically, the practice is first evident in Hesiod's claim that he performed a song at the funeral games for Amphidamas in Euboea and won

11988-489: Was also instrumental in the development of modern dance , mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham , who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage's friend Sari Dienes can be seen as an important link between the Abstract Expressionists , Neo- Dada artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson , and Fluxus. Dienes inspired all these artists to blur

12099-560: Was at the vanguard of body and scenic feminist art in the seventies, which included, amongst others, Carolee Schneemann and Joan Jonas . These, along with Yoko Ono , Joseph Beuys , Nam June Paik , Wolf Vostell , Allan Kaprow , Vito Acconci , Chris Burden and Dennis Oppenheim were pioneers in the relationship between body art and performance art, as well as the Zaj collective in Spain with Esther Ferrer and Juan Hidalgo . Barbara Smith

12210-403: Was created for his master's thesis at the University of California, Irvine, and involved his being locked in a locker for five days. Dennis Oppenheim was an American conceptual artist , performance artist, earth artist , sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art:

12321-466: Was from 1962 on, a member of the experimental art movement Fluxus . Nam June Paik then began participating in the Neo-Dada art movement, known as Fluxus , which was inspired by the composer John Cage and his use of everyday sounds and noises in his music. He was mates with Yoko Ono as a member of Fluxus . Wolf Vostell was a German artist, one of the most representative of the second half of

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