The Explicit Body in Performance

Is it performance art or pornography? Since the early 1960s, women in performance art have worked to “liberate” the female body from the confines of patriarchal delimitation. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the clash of the rubrics “porn” and “art” manipulated by female artists worked to complicate the already embattled debates about the terms of that liberation. This is a study of the controversial and often shocking issues which surround the use of the female body in performance art. Schneider tackles topics which include the “post porn modernist movement”, censorship by the New Right, primitivism, commodity fetishism, and the link between the modern prostitute and the postmodern performance artist. Artists and groups whose work she examines include Karen Finley, Carolee Scheemann, Annie Sprinkle and Spiderwoman Theatre.

Author Biography

Rebecca Schneider lectures at Yale University is Visiting Assistant Professor of Drama at Dartmouth College. She is a contributing editor to The Drama Review and has published essays in a range of performance anthologies.