ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 addresses the issues of temporal and spatial evolution of performance art in Portugal until its so-called “end”, according to some Portuguese critics, in the second half of the 1980s. In contrast, this book proposes a reading of the continuity of performance art in Portuguese history, in different historical cycles, highlighting its procedural, reactive and protoform character, bringing it new characteristics over time. Here, the relations between artistic genres’ performance and hybridism (and transdisciplinarity) are articulated, as well as the relationships between art and life. Some of the reasons that led to the “non-inscription” (to use the philosopher José Gil’s expression) of this artistic genre in Portuguese history are identified, together with the issues underlying the (non)encounters of artists, after the 1990s, with the archives of history and the history of the art of performance.
