ABSTRACT
The essence of art is form: it is to defeat opposition, to conquer opposing forces, to create coherence from every centrifugal force, from all things that have been deeply and eternally alien to one another before and outside the form. The artistic process often requires one to act in opposition to what feels natural. In order to be effective while holding the reins at Trinity, the author acted in opposition to her impulse to flee and instead she leaned in, joining the natural power of the oncoming force. The author examines performance from three fundamentally different perspectives: phenomenology, structuralism and semiotics. Phenomenology focuses on the structural subjective experience of consciousness. Structuralism is less interested in interpreting what a work means than in explaining how it can insinuate what it means by showing its implicit rules and conventions. Finally, semiotics concerns itself exclusively with the creation of meaning.
