ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on visual arts educators questioning how knowledge is constructed, positioning the audience or viewers of the work as part of a meaning-making performative activity. Performance literacies may draw out attention to processes concerning the interactive engagement with an audience, the contexts of the art event, and the iterative process of art making. While the visual arts have selected to focus on the verb presenting, it is important not to underemphasize performing processes within contemporary practice. The contemporary artists, even if object makers rather than socially engaged, conceptual, or performance artists, still are engaged in performing processes as an artistic literacy. Presenting processes are certainly important in the visual arts, but focusing literacy attention on presentation of an artifact over an ongoing dialogue that includes the artist as performer tends to highlight a type of artistic production that emphasizes learning about art in lieu of learning with or through art.
