No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture) - Softcover

Oxford Art Journal" "Ward has pulled off the impressive feat of navigating the complex theoretical positions of performance art and its histories, in a way that is both engaging and instructive, while widening established debates."-- "Oxford Art Journal" Ward has pulled off the impressive feat of navigating thecomplex theoretical positions of performance art and itshistories, in a way that is both engaging and instructive, whilewidening established debates. Oxford Art Journal"

At a moment when performance art and performance generally are at the center of the international art world, Frazer Ward offers us insightful readings of major performance pieces by the likes of Acconci, Burden, Abramovi , and Hsieh, and confronts the twisting and troubled relationship that performance art has had with the spectator and the public sphere. Ward contends that the ethical challenges with which performance art confronts its viewers speak to the reimagining of the audience, in terms that suggest the collapse of notions like "public" and "community." A thoughtful, even urgent discussion of the relationship between art and the audience that will appeal to a broad range of art historians, artists, and others interested in constructions of the public sphere.