ABSTRACT
Performance provides a unifying concept for postmodernism as a mode of activity that aects far more than theatre and dance, impacting the visual, aural, plastic, media, architectural arts, literature, and philosophy. e terms “postmodernism,” “postmodernity,” and “post-Modernist” correspond closely to the meaning of such terms as “modernism,” “modernity,” and “Modernist”—the laer being a specic artistic movement. Postmodernism relates to the epochal shi aer World War II that is characterized by the “logic of late capitalism,” which Fredric Jameson denes as the “political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism” aecting “every position [of] Postmodernism in culture” (1991, 3). Aesthetic production in late capitalism was considered as indiscernible from commodity production, and performative strategies in the visual arts would either critique or support this idea. For instance, Lucy Lippard in 1968 explained how performance aitudes toward painting and sculpture contributed to the dematerialization of the arts as a method of rejecting the commodication of the art object (Lippard and Chandler 1968). Allan Kaprow in 1961 stated that “Happenings cannot be sold and taken home; they can only be supported” (1961,
25). By 1984, Andreas Huyssen introduced his essay “Mapping the Postmodern” with the example of Joseph Beuys’s artwork, 7000 Planting Stones, enlisting the performance of citizens of Kassel, Germany to plant trees at the exhibition site of Documenta 7.
