Performance, it is worth referring to authoritative sources. According to the dictionary of pictorial terms, performance (from the English performance - “performance”, “performance”, “play”, “performance”) is a short performance performed by one or more participants in front of the public of an art gallery, museum or in the open air.
This form of modern art in the late 1960s, incorporating elements of theater, poetry. But for all its eclecticism, the performance has a number of features that make it a completely independent phenomenon of today's cultural life.
Distinctive features of performance as an art form
A performance is a planned action. It assumes the presence of a certain scenario in which everything can be thought out, including the slightest movements. The action becomes like a game, the rules of which are determined by the artist himself.
The artist is of particular importance in action. The author of the performance tries on the role of a certain character and chooses a certain behavioral model that helps to express the idea of the performance.
It assumes that the viewer is not involved in the process. An outsider does not become part of the artistic action, but remains an observer.
The performance protests against traditional artistic principles, does not require the viewer to perceive it from the standpoint of conventional art. The action often has an ironic, parodic beginning, aimed at shocking. This expresses the radical aesthetic position of the artist.
Notable performance artists and their work
One of the most famous performance artists of our time is the Yugoslav artist Marina Abramović. She began her career in the late 1960s. This period includes the first experiments with sound and space. However, her collaborations with the Dutch performance artist and photographer Uwe Leisipen, better known under the pseudonym Ulay, brought her real fame.
A striking example of the joint work of Abramovich and Ulay is the performance “Relationships in Time”. The artists, sitting with their backs to each other, braided their hair and were in this position for 16 hours. All this time there was no one in the gallery hall except for its employees. At the beginning of the 17th hour, when Marina and Ulay were already pretty tired, spectators were invited into the hall. The artists managed to hold out for another hour, after which the performance was completed.
We have released a new book, "Social Media Content Marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."
The basic principle of performance marketing can be explained with the following example. Imagine that you want to buy a house. To do this, you contact the realtor and agree that his commission will be paid only if you purchase the proposed option. The reward will be calculated as a fixed percentage of the value of the property - meaning you will be able to estimate the costs. And you pay only for the result - the purchase, regardless of the total number of views of the proposed options.
Performance marketing: what is it?
- image campaign;
- performance marketing.
The first task is to reach as many users as possible in order to increase brand awareness.
And the priorities of performance marketing are to increase sales and determine the specific and measurable effect of investments in promotion. This method of promotion is aimed at a quantitative result that can be measured.
- coupon codes;
- referral links;
- individual phone numbers.
The use of this method implies a fairly large amount of testing and tuning. In the end, this pays off with a much higher ROI (return on investment) and the ease of determining whether a launched campaign is successful. A large number of businessmen prefer this type of advertising, as its productivity is easy to measure.
What determines the cost of advertising
Performance marketing differs from other models in that the payment is made only if the target action was performed (following a link, calling, filling out a form, placing an order), and not for ad impressions. This is called the (-cost per action) approach.
The two main types of CPA used are:
- : cost per sale - the cost of the sale.
- CPL: cost per lead - cost per lead.
CPS implies the accrual of commission for advertising only when purchasing a product or service; and is one of the most popular methods among advertisers. There are two payment options - as a percentage of the purchase made by the user or a fixed amount in monetary terms. Ideally, sales affect advertising costs.
The CPL method is also often used. It is based on the number of attracted leads (potentially interested visitors) who filled out the registration form with their contact details on the company's website or landing page.
The least popular method of evaluation and payment is CPC (cost per click - cost per click) since the actual click may not lead to a change in sales figures and the quality of the click itself is very difficult to assess.
The main channels of performance marketing
The main channels used in performance marketing are:
- search engines (advertising in search networks, contextual);
- social networks (targeted promotion);
- partnership programs;
- mobile advertising;
- e-mail marketing;
- marketplaces.
The main tool of performance marketing is traffic analysis. The main factor influencing the success of the campaign is the precise definition and search for a specific target audience.
In most cases, the impression is determined by the price auction. Companies determine rates for displaying ads to users with certain characteristics (gender, age, marital status, and others) in the selected region. Moreover, the message is conveyed not to an abstract audience, but to a specific consumer. To analyze the effectiveness of channels, all steps from clicking on a banner to making a purchase should be taken into account. Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrika do a good job with this task.
- only what the user is interested in;
- exactly at the moment when he needs it;
- where it suits him.
The key advantages of performance marketing for the customer are payment for a specific target action, and not for the number and time of advertising display; the ability to control the budget and set the maximum allowable cost per conversion, as well as a visual display of funds spent and received.
Various protest actions of action artists now and then cause a wide public outcry, after which everyone forgets about them until the next such performance. A striking example of this is the recent trick at the Lubyanka. However, this and other incomprehensible to most ordinary people are not the only performances that took place in our country. There are other actionists in Russia, and this post will tell us about their most memorable performances.
E.T.I. Movement, “E.T.I. - Text"
1991, Red Square
The pioneers of what is commonly called Moscow actionism, created by Anatoly Osmolovsky "E.T.I. including a ban on obscene language in public places. It is this action that many art critics consider to be the starting point for Moscow actionism because of the public outcry it caused.
Oleg Kulik, Mad Dog
1994, Yakimanka,
gallery of Marat Gelman
In November 1994, the Kyiv artist Oleg Kulik showed Moscow for the first time his famous man-dog - one of the symbols of the national radical art of the 90s. A naked Kulik on a chain jumped out of the door of the gallery of Marat Gelman on Yakimanka, while the other end of the chain was held by Alexander Brenner, another prominent Moscow actionist. Then Kulik showed his "dog" performances everywhere: in Zurich, Stockholm, Rotterdam and New York. According to the artist, he realized that the “dog cycle” had exhausted itself when they began to invite him to perform in this image at private events for money.
Alexander Brener, "What David Didn't Finish"
1995, Lubyanskaya Square
On May 11, 1995, the artist Alexander Brener, who studied the relationship between man and legislation, crossed the flow of cars, stood in the center of Lubyanka Square, where the monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky used to stand, and shouted loudly: “Hello! I am your new commercial director!” Brener had carried out the second of his most famous actions a few months earlier: he went to Red Square in boxing gloves and shouted: “Yeltsin! Come out, you vile coward!" In 1997, the artist left Russia forever.
Anatoly Osmolovsky, Avdey Ter-Oganyan,
Konstantin Zvezdochetov and others, "Barricade"
1998, Bolshaya Nikitskaya street
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the French student revolution, a group of Moscow actionists blocked Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street with empty cardboard boxes, chanting slogans such as “It is forbidden to prohibit!”, “You are being deceived!” and "All power to the imagination!". This is the largest art event held in Moscow: about 300 people took part in it. The authors of "Barricade" - artists and friends of the magazine "Radek" - defined their act as a test of non-traditional technologies of political struggle in contemporary Russia.
Avdey Ter-Oganyan, "Young atheist"
1998, Manege
The famous performance by Avdey Ter-Oganyan at the Art-Manege-98 exhibition: cutting with an ax the icons of the Savior Not Made by Hands, the Mother of God of Vladimir and the Almighty Savior. According to the curator of the Art Manege, Elena Romanova, in this way the artist contrasted his vision of the world with orthodox Christianity. The performance was stopped at the request of outraged spectators, and a criminal case was opened against Ter-Oganyan under the article “Inciting national, racial or religious hatred”, which was closed in 2010, presumably after the statute of limitations had expired. Ter-Oganyan left Russia in 1999.
Oleg Mavromatti, "Do not believe your eyes"
2000, Bersenevskaya embankment
The most famous performance of the actionist Oleg Mavromatti: in the courtyard of the Institute of Cultural Studies of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, he was tied to a wooden cross, nailed to it, and the words “I am not the son of God” were carved on his back with a nail. This action was supposed to desacralize pain and physical suffering. A criminal case was also opened against Mavromatti on charges of inciting interethnic and interreligious hatred, in the 2000s he had to leave Russia.
Group "Bombillas", "Rally of Dissenters"
APRIL 2007, Pokrovsky Boulevard
The Bombily group was created by students and employees of Oleg Kulik's studio Anton "Madman" Nikolaev and Alexander "Superhero" Rossikhin. On the day of the “March of Dissent” on April 14, 2007, a “seven” drove through the streets of Moscow, on the roof of which a man and a woman made love. Thus, the artists wanted to say that the control of society is analogous to the control of sexual life. Many consider this action to have opened a wave of new Russian actionism.
Group "Bombily", "White Line"
MAY 2007, Krymsky Val
In the same year, the "Bombillas" organized another well-known action - referring to Gogol's "Viya", they drew a circle with chalk along the line of the Garden Ring. The circle closed on Krymsky Val, and the artists themselves said that they wanted to cleanse Moscow of the evil spirits that filled the center.
War group,
"***** for the heir of the teddy bear"
MARCH 2008,
Biological Museum named after Timiryazev
The action that for a long time determined the image of the main actionist group of the late 2000s among people far from contemporary art: simultaneous sex of several couples in a biological museum on the eve of the 2008 presidential elections. According to activists, at the moment when Vladimir Putin announced that his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, unknown to anyone at that time, "the country was really fucked", and they translated it into the language of contemporary art.
War group,
"Lenya ***** covers the feds"
2010, Kremlin embankment
On May 22, 2010, Voina activist Leonid Nikolaev, better known as Lenya *** (Crazy), jumped on an FSO service car with a flashing light near the Big Stone Bridge. For this action, Nikolaev was charged under the article “Hooliganism”, which provides for a maximum penalty of up to 15 days in jail.
Group "War", "Kiss of garbage"
2011, "Kitay-gorod" and other metro stations
The entry into force on March 1, 2011 of the law "On Police" was marked by an action in the Moscow metro: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samutsevich kissed police officers. Tolokonnikova later noted that women were more shocked not by the fact that they were being kissed, but by the fact that representatives of the same sex were doing it.
Pussy Riot, Mother of God, Drive Putin Out
2012, Cathedral of Christ the Savior
The “punk prayer” of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was heard, it seems, even in the most remote corners of Russia, and there is no need to say anything about it. After the performance, two of its performers - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina - were sentenced to two years in prison under the article "Hooliganism" and released in December 2013 under an amnesty, two months before the official end of their sentence. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova after more than once recognized the action in the HHS as a failure.
Pyotr Pavlensky, "Fixation"
2013, Red Square
The first Moscow and at the same time the most famous action of the St. Petersburg actionist Pyotr Pavlensky: a naked artist nailed his scrotum with a nail to the stone paving stones of Red Square. Pavlensky himself later explained that the action became a metaphor for the apathy and political indifference of Russian society. Many actionists of the 90s praised Pavlensky's act, but the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky recommended that all fans of Pavlensky's work visit the Museum of the History of Medicine and Psychiatry.
Pyotr Pavlensky. "Separation"
2014, Serbsky Institute
Simultaneously with the psychological and psychiatric examination of the Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who was not allowed to see the consul of Ukraine and the lawyer, Pavlensky carried out the following action “Separation”: he cut off his earlobe with a kitchen knife, sitting on the roof of the Serbsky Institute of Psychiatry. The task of the action, according to the artist's lawyer, was to condemn the psychiatric labels that are hung on people who do not fit into the framework of public opinion.
"The Blue Rider", "The Exorcists. Desecration of the Mausoleum»
January 2015, Red Square
On January 20, 2015, members of the Blue Rider group, Oleg Basov and Evgeny Avilov, poured holy water over the Lenin Mausoleum, shouting “Get up and leave.” After the action, the activists, who saw the meaning of their act in cleansing modern minds from the Soviet legacy, received ten days of arrest.
Catherine Nenasheva, "Don't be afraid"
June 2015, Red Square
A 30-day action by performance artist Katrin Nenasheva in support of imprisoned women, which also ended on Red Square. Nenasheva walked around Moscow for a month only in a prison uniform, and on the final day, her colleague Anna Bokler shaved Katrin's head baldly a stone's throw from the Kremlin. Not having time to finish the performance, the girls were detained and placed under arrest for three days.
Pyotr Pavlensky, "The Threat"
November 2015, Lubyanskaya Square
“The threat of imminent reprisal looms over anyone who is within reach of surveillance devices, wiretapping and passport control borders. Military courts eliminate any manifestation of free will. But terrorism can exist only at the expense of the animal instinct of fear. To go against this instinct of a person makes an unconditioned protective reflex. This is a reflex of the struggle for one's own life. And life is worth it to start fighting for it, ”Pyotr Pavlensky commented on the arson of the doors to the main building of the FSB. In the Tagansky Court of Moscow, where on November 10 a verdict was passed in the artist's case, Pavlensky demanded to try him for terrorism - as "Crimean terrorists", director Oleg Sentsov and anarchist Alexander Kolchenko. However, the court refused to reclassify the case and sentenced Pavlensky to a month in jail.
performance(English performance - performance, presentation, performance) - in simple words: a type of contemporary art, where the work is the actions of the artist himself or a group of artists. If in other forms of art the object is a painting, a sculpture, a moving object (kinetic art), then in performance the author himself is a work.
Performance is avant-garde and conceptual art. Occasionally, even dance, theater, ballet are called performance. In a sense, this is true, but the very term “performance” means something else - something that is related specifically to a highly specialized genre, or when a performance is created precisely as a performance and nothing else.
For the first time the word "performance" was used by the composer J. Cage in 1952, when he performed the work "4'33" (4 minutes 33 seconds of silence) on the stage. As a current trend in art, it appeared only in the 1960s. The most prominent representatives of this trend in those years were: Yves Klein, Vito Acconci, Hermann Nitsch, Chris Bourden, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Oleg Kulik, Oleg Mavromatti, Elena Kovylina and others.
Performance at its core is not only a flamboyant avant-garde style that tries to oppose classical art forms and do something revolutionary, but also a philosophy of a special kind. Through special conceptual actions, the author tries to convey the understanding of one or another side of life. He tries to convey his feelings not through a painting, sculpture or something else, but through live interaction with the viewer. Often such performances are very unusual and unexpected. An unprepared viewer may not understand what is happening at all. Here, both the opinion and response of an experienced viewer who understands a lot about performances, as well as a casual passer-by who met with a manifestation of such art by chance, are valued. For this reason, performances are held not only in special places, but also on the streets, in public places, etc.
Living paintings, which involve the active participation of not only the author-artist, but also the viewer, are an action to destroy stereotypes and look at the world from an unusual angle. The creative component here undergoes cardinal changes. If people are accustomed to seeing the usual creativity in its usual manifestation, then even abstractionism or cubism for a person who is not versed in art can become more understandable than the same performance. However, some of the types of performance have become familiar and understandable to us for a long time. Such stylistic decisions as Flashmob, the same planking, Harlem Shake and even the infamous Pussy Riot punk prayer are also forms of performance.
Video: John Cage: 4'33" for piano (1952). The world's first performance:
Performance by Russian artist Oleg Kulik - Reservoir Dog:
The exhibition "Performance Now. An Anthology of the 2000s" opens today at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, exploring the evolution of this genre over the past decade.
In recent years, attention to performance has reached an unprecedented scale. Marina Abramovich is collaborating with Lady Gaga, Pyotr Pavlensky is nailing his genitals to the cobblestones on Red Square, Pussy Riot is serving a "double" for their punk prayer. Today, the works of the main artists of the genre belong to galleries, the documentation is replicated, and the artists earn millions, although initially the performance was not intended for sale and was conceived solely as "art for art's sake." According to the chief curator of the Jewish Museum Maria Nasimova, all these are signs of stagnation, so changes are expected in the near future.
“When preparing the exhibition, it was very important for us to fix what is happening now so that in the future we can track what changes have occurred,” she says. museums and to be recognizable.This desire arose with the rise of YBA (Young British Artists, "Young British Artists", a group of artists from the UK who declared themselves after the Freeze exhibition, organized in 1988 by the most commercial artist of our time, Damien Hirst - approx. ed.), when the artists said they wanted to make money from their art. In my opinion, the problem with performance is its popularity, because that's what led to commercialization."
By the opening of the exhibition, the Weekend project asked Maria Nasimova to choose the five most significant works that influenced the formation and development of the performing arts of the 21st century.
1. Allora & Calzadilla, "Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano" (2008)
Artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla represented America at the 2011 Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art. This duet cannot be called radical, they rather show us ourselves. In their works, Allora and Calzadilla analyze such concepts as power, militarism, war, nationality, proving the importance of their metaphors with the help of video, sound and plasticity of the human body.
The exhibition at the Jewish Museum presents the performance "Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano", during which the participant, while inside the piano, performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Thus, the keyboard is placed upside down in front of the performer, while the instrument, equipped with wheels, also moves around the room, and the music sounds just as beautiful as if the performer played in the pianist's usual position. The choice of work is also important here, because “Ode to Joy”, which is part of the 9th Symphony, is the official anthem of the European Union.
© Photo: Allora & Calzadilla Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
© Photo: Allora & Calzadilla Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
“It seems to me that this is a vivid example of what art does to a person. Either you think about what is happening in your life and radically change something, or you are so impressed that you just look with bated breath,” comments on this work Maria Nasimova. — This metaphor is extremely important for any viewer, since music is one of the most expressive means of conveying the idea of a work. Music can make you shudder a lot more than visual art."
2. William Kentridge, "Drawing Lesson 47" (2010)
Known for his political rhetoric, animated work and video art, and also as a theater director, this performance by Kentridge is a witty discussion between the artist and himself. William Kentridge is interviewed for the New York Studio School, talking about his life, work and inspiration, interrupting and gesticulating.
"It is worth noting that William Kentridge always draws his own characters in his videos. This is extremely important today, when most of the work is created using computer technology. In this context, Kentridge's work has great artistic value."
3. Santiago Sierra, "The Trap" (2007)
The Spaniard Sierra is one of the main provocateurs of our time. He does not participate in his actions, but hires people who are ready for any torment for the sake of money. The participants of his actions are the poor, emigrants and refugees, prostitutes and drug addicts. In one of his works, Sierra arranged 30 naked workers of various nationalities in a row in order of the gradation of their skin color, in another he shaved the strip on the back of the head of two drug addicts in exchange for a "dose", in the third he organized a gas chamber in the synagogue in Pulheim, forcing shudder the Jewish community.
The performance "The Trap" was chosen for the exhibition "Performance Now. Anthology of the 2000s". It involves 13 well-known Chileans: the president of the congress, the minister of defense, well-known journalists and other persons, to whom the prefix VIP is usually added. Sierra sends her unsuspecting guests straight down the corridor, at the end of which they are met by a crowd of angry lumpen. By bringing together representatives of different social classes in one hall, the artist makes it clear how the powers that be feel when they come face to face with those whose interests they should represent.
“Santiago Sierra is a landmark artist not only of the 2000s, but of the entire second half of the 20th century,” says Nasimova. “Unlike another celebrity, Marina Abramovic, who embodied her ideas with her own body, Sierra does nothing by herself. For the main thing for him is the idea that needs to be correctly revealed.
By the way, the work of Marina Abramovic is also presented at the exhibition - this is the action "Seven Simple Pieces", in which the "grandmother of performance" in 2005 at the New York Guggenheim repeated seven textbook performances - by her own and other authors. Ironically, it was this work that was the only one on which the creators of the exhibition did not agree - the chief curator of the Jewish Museum Maria Nasimova and performance theorist, curator, founder of the PERFORMA Biennale Roslie Goldberg. According to Maria Nasimova, "Seven Simple Pieces" least of all reflects the work of Marina Abramovich in the period of the 2000s, with which Goldberg categorically disagreed.
4. Claire Fontaine, "Situations" (2011)
Claire Fontaine is a duet of two French neo-conceptualists - Fulvia and James Thornhill. They call themselves ready-made artists, hinting at Duchamp's theory that contemporary art today is reduced to the subjective opinion of the artist himself, in whose hands any object is suddenly declared a work of art.
At the exhibition, they show a silent work - a kind of boxing training, in which four people with different skin colors take part. As various situations are staged on set (bar fight, knife attack, self-defense), viewers are encouraged to observe how each person reacts to them and to their opponents.
5. Lori Simmons, "The Music of Regret" (2006)
American artist Laurie Simmons originally worked with photography and the plastic arts and is known for using puppets in many of her works. In the 2000s, Laurie turned her attention to performance art. The exhibition at the Jewish Museum included her work "Music of regret" (The Music of Regret) - a film-musical in three acts. The first is a puppet show about the fragile friendship of two families, in the second act a mannequin doll comes to life (the doll is played by Meryl Streep), and in the third act the objects become the main characters - the House, the Cake, the Gun, the Book and the Pocket watch on human legs.
“At first, the viewer does not understand what all these objects are doing here, walking by themselves in a surrealistic space,” says Maria Nasimova. “But then they line up in a certain order, and we understand that these objects are nothing but our weaknesses. The artist shows them to us in such an exaggerated form that we laugh at ourselves, and this, you see, is worth a lot. It is very valuable when an artist manages to achieve such an effect."
Prepared by Elena Kostomarova