Abstract
The aim of this doctoral thesis is the inaugural systematisation and analysis of the first wave of performance art in Greece during the long 1970s, in the context of the country's complex sociopolitical state of affairs, as well as the analysis of factors that contributed to the production and presentation of performance art that coincided with the practice, but also its historicisation in contemporary perspectives. Within this context, Greek performance art is studied both as a means of representation and as a discursive formation. Initially, original elements of western performance art are traced back to the history of the visual arts, theatre, music and dance, while issues arising in connection to the theory, historiography and the terminology of the medium are discussed. A thematic history of performance art in different geographies is attempted, in constant dialogue with theoretical issues. Attention is then turned to the Greek context, through the reconstruction of the conditions ...
The aim of this doctoral thesis is the inaugural systematisation and analysis of the first wave of performance art in Greece during the long 1970s, in the context of the country's complex sociopolitical state of affairs, as well as the analysis of factors that contributed to the production and presentation of performance art that coincided with the practice, but also its historicisation in contemporary perspectives. Within this context, Greek performance art is studied both as a means of representation and as a discursive formation. Initially, original elements of western performance art are traced back to the history of the visual arts, theatre, music and dance, while issues arising in connection to the theory, historiography and the terminology of the medium are discussed. A thematic history of performance art in different geographies is attempted, in constant dialogue with theoretical issues. Attention is then turned to the Greek context, through the reconstruction of the conditions in which performance art debuted in Greece, mainly as far as its institutional framework is concerned, both in terms of institutions and of discourse. At first, artistic institutional framework in Greece during the period under investigation is documented, in connection with the discourse of modernism, the avant-garde and postmodernism. Then, we focus on the institutions that affected the presentation and display of the first wave performance in Greece. Issues concerning the terminology of performance art in the Greek language are also investigated, followed by the juxtaposition of contemporary institutional discourse through a comparative study of recent exhibitions. Then, performance art is placed within the Greek sociopolitical context of the long 1970s. As follows the above, the breaking down of boundaries between the arts is investigated, along with the shifting of performance art in Greece in other artistic areas, such as theatre and music, while collaboration is analysed as an important characteristic of the medium. Also, alterations in rhetoric about the political nature of the medium during and after the dictatorship era are investigated, along with performative practices that took place in the public space by Greek artists, as well as those practices that were articulated as expressions of the body politic and identity politics, as part of a feminist discourse or a critique of ethnic identities. Practices which articulated institutional critique are also recorded and analysed. As is evident throughout the length of the thesis, the historical narrative and the theorisation of the first wave of performance art in Greece is formulated here around the axis of a desired modulation of the perception of the political, within a theoretical framework “critical postmodernism.” This theoretical approach is located opposite those interpretative contexts that were repeatedly deployed and set the scene for the first wave of performance art in the country, and resulted in either the full depoliticisation of performance art in Greece, or its politicisation within strictly limited conditions. These explanatory schemas are recognized as the identification of the medium with the avant-garde and its placement within the linear history of Greek modernism; the reading of those first performances as “pre-modernist” and their tracing to ancient rituals; and the “overidentification” of the medium with the anti-dictatorial struggle and the limited correlation of these practices to other political positions.
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