ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is mainly directed to students of performance art, artists who would like to delve into performance art, performance artists who are interested in enhancing their skills and knowledge base and, of course, teachers. It provides motivation for practice and inspire associations across history, theory and practice. The book discusses objects as one of the materials of performance art in relation to key concepts such as playfulness, agency, participation, duration, space, transformation, subjectivity etc. It discusses gender as a constitutive part of identity in the feminist movement and the emergence of queer theory. The book makes a brief reference to the augmented body in performance, from physical body extensions to technological modifications and to wearables that visualize data. It aims to highlight daily experience as an endless field of inspiration and an apparatus for performance.
