CharaCteristiCs of visuaL and Performing artson acting. Working in a dialogue of sorts with a pine tree could perhaps be examined as
a more or less successful attempt at focusing on ecological issues (Kershaw 2007). as
a dance made for camera, the work could be presented as a documentation of a still-
act (lepecki 2006) or be used as an argument for the independence of screen dance,
since it is a work that could not be made live on stage, although it would perhaps not
be accepted as dance by the wider dance community because the body displayed is not
a dancing body.
Within performance art the ‘theatrical’ illusion of the passing of a year created by
editing (instead of real-time documentation of a prolonged endurance session) could
be contrasted to classical one- year works created by linda montano or Tehching
hsieh (heathfield and hsieh 2009). Within the context of live art the work could
be hard to defend, since there was no exchange with the public, neither during the
working process nor in the presentation, but could be discussed through a specific
relationship to place (hill and paris 2006). The task of travelling to a childhood site
once a month and walking the 5 kilometres there and back could be discussed as a
performance practice in terms of autobiographical performance (heddon 2007). how
to contextualize the work within music is harder to imagine – perhaps by looking at
the recordings of the changing sound environment (schafer 1994 [1977]). as this
example hopefully shows, there is no shared tradition or context of performing arts in
the same way as we can speak of some kind of common legacy within visual art, or at
least modern and contemporary art in the West.
traditional dichotomiesVisual arts and performing arts are a strange pair to start with. Together they cover
most art forms, leaving mainly architecture and literature aside. Visual arts could
be juxtaposed with audio arts and music. performing arts have traditionally been
juxtaposed with creative arts, and still sometimes are, in fields demanding extreme
virtuosity. however, a dichotomy based on creation and performing is rarely used today
(with the exception of classical music perhaps). Visual art can be understood as an
extension of fine art, whereas the term ‘performing arts’ is an umbrella concept used
to cover various fields. There can sometimes be greater differences between forms of
performing arts, like say music and film, than between performance and visual art.
after all performance art is a genre of visual art. The relationship between a film and
its script is usually different from a musical score and its performance (the script is a
plan for a particular film, a composition is supposed to be interpreted and played again
and again). There is a difference between a painterly and a musical sensibility beyond
vision and sound; the idea that a composition can be played by somebody else differs
from the idea that the work is singular and signed like a painting.
Contrasting rather than combining creative and performing arts has had its strongest
impact within classical music. The composer is thought to be engaged in creative arts,
whereas the musician is engaged in performing arts or ‘executing’ arts.^2 The same
distinction is sometimes made in classical theatre; the playwright is the author, the
creative artist, whereas the director and the actors are interpreting and performing the
work. Today this distinction is rarely emphasized. in contemporary theatre the director
is usually the author, using texts or material produced by the performers in much the