1 Introduction
In Chapter 1, I began by distinguishing a performance from a mere action. In
the case of a performance, the agent is consciously guided in her actions by her
expectations as to how these actions would be judged by an intended audience
who would apply certain kinds of evaluative criteria. In this sense, a perform-
ance is “for an audience” and “directed towards an audience.” As we saw in the
previous chapter, however, there are no compelling reasons to think that there
can be a performance only when the agent’s actions are observed by an actual
audience of the sort intended. I then distinguished artistic performances from
other performances. Something counts as an artistic performance if it makes
perceptually manifest to receivers qualities that bear upon the appreciation of a
work of art in certain ways to be specified. I fleshed this out in two ways. First, I
explained what it is to appreciate something as a work of art in terms of the kind
of regard required to determine a work’s artistic content. This kind of regard, I
claimed, is necessary in virtue of the distinctive ways in which artworks articu-
late their contents. Second, I distinguished two ways in which a performance
can qualify as an artistic performance by manifesting qualities that bear in this
way upon the appreciation of a work of art. First, the performance may itself be
an artwork, the actions of the performer(s) being the artistic vehicle through
which the artistic content of the work is articulated. A performance that is itself
an artwork is a performance-work. In Chapter 7, we looked at Keith Jarrett’s
Köln Concert as an example of such a work. Second, the performance may be
of something else that is an artwork.^1 In this case, the performance is a work-
performance, and the thing it is of is a performable work. I argued in Chapter
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10 Performance Art and the Performing Arts
Performing Arts
Philosophy of the Performing Arts , First Edition. David Davies.
© 2011 David Davies. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.