Performing Endurance: Art and Politics since 1960

by Lara Shalson

In Performing Endurance, Lara Shalson offers a new way of understanding acts of endurance in art and political contexts. Examining a range of performances from the 1960s to the present, including influential performance art works by Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, Tehching Hsieh, Linda Montano, Yoko Ono, and others, as well as protest actions from the lunch counter sit-ins of the US civil rights movement to protest camps in the twenty-first century, this book provides a formal account of endurance and illuminates its ethical and political significance. Endurance, Shalson argues, raises vital questions about what it means to exist as a body that both acts and is acted upon, from ethical questions about how we respond to the bodies of others to political questions about how we live in relation to institutions that shape life in fundamental ways. In addition, Performing Endurance rethinks how performance itself endures over time.

Genres: Art

216 pages, Hardcover

Published December 6, 2018

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty alright! The intro has a ton of insights as do the first two chapters. Here, Shalson takes from sources diverse as Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, and Michael Fried to discuss the role of objecthood in performance. It's extremely compelling, especially her application of such a discussion to the Woolworth's sit in in Greensboro. I loved them.

The third chapter fell pretty flat for me. She discusses some Tehching Hsieh works and how they point to greater relational power structures but I didn't feel like she added a ton. At a certain point it just felt like she'd describe the performance then regurgitate a passage about power structures and our inability to escape them. Meh.

Fourth chapter was slightly better. It has a lot of really cool ideas about documents and their inextricability from performance but her writing gets suuuuper weird here, sometimes coming far too close to abstracting into nothingness.

Overall, I'm glad I read this. I'd encourage prospective readers to come in without expectations, as doing this left me very satisfied.

[Bryce Galloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great in its decision to focus on some key debates rather than offer some generic survey of historic or contemporary performance art. Chapter 1 focuses on objecthood/subjecthood, arguing that objectification is not always a dirty word when dealing with performance art. Chapter 2 looks at the formal similarities between protest actions and performance art actions. Chapter 3 looks at endurance in the works of Tehching Hsieh. The final chapter is a slightly less convincing defence of the relationship between documentation and performance in Abramović's 'Seven Easy Pieces' (I suspect the writer's an immovable Abramovic fan).

[Tia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific, original close readings of familiar works, but most of all this is beautifully arranged around thematic arguments in a way that just WORKS to an exemplary degree. Also loved the epilogue about encampment protests that rings ever true today <3