ABSTRACT
The contemporary terms performance and postmodernism are products of the same cultural environment and both have been widely and variously employed to characterize a broad spectrum of activities, especially in the arts. The relationship between them is thus a highly complex one. Critics and reviewers have found "postmodern" a useful tag to apply to much modern and contemporary performance work. Nick Kaye, in his thoughtful and stimulating 1994 study of the relationship of these two terms, suggested that "the condition of 'performance' may be read, in itself, as tending to foster or look towards postmodern contingencies and instabilities," and that performance "may be thought of as a primary postmodern mode." When theorists speak of the performative quality of art as being its most postmodern aspect, they are frequently concerned precisely with the contingency the work must undergo when it becomes involved in the process of reception.
