Movies: Performance art

When the daughter of a controversial performance artist inherits her late mother's home archive, an unexpected visitor comes to claim the most notorious artwork...as they discover an artistic legacy can be more of a curse....

A documentary edited from ORLAN's seventh surgery in the The Reincarnation of Sainte-ORLAN series which aired live, vis satellite from New York in 1993....

A ritual of transformation and awakening within the walls of the only existing original ‘diorama’ building in London...

November 19, 1971, F Space, Santa Ana, California: “At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend”....

An adaptation of Magda's live performance of The Human Musician...

A groom becomes a bride in a gender bending fashion performance by Alexander McQueen....

In 2003, Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh became the first World Champion of Chessboxing. This brain-busting combination of alternating rounds of chess and boxing was in fact an art performance calling for more balance in a world of extremes, and the audien...

Daniel Cockburn’s exuberantly cerebral, filmically deconstructionist work defies easy categorization, and this program of new work is no exception, from a short that interrogates “things that mean other things before becoming a thing that means other...

Marina Abramović Freeing the Body was performed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, where Abramović began dancing frantically to the sounds of a bongo player. During the early part of the performance, she still has plenty of energy, and she r...

Pistolteatern in Stockholm, Sweden, was a leading experimental scene in the mid 1960s, comparable to the Living Theater in New York. In the years 1964-67. Pistolteatern produced theatre plays, exhibitions and happenings at a very high pace. The name,...

“In this legendary sculpture/performance Acconci lay beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, "You're pushing your cunt down on my mouth" or "You're r...

Life and art intersect on a spectacular Newfoundland farm where visual artist Colette Urban mounts thirteen art performances in the fields and barns of her property. Resilient, determined, self aware and funny, Colette embraces the transformative pow...

"As a contribution to Gerry Schum's 'Identifications', Beuys adapted for television the 'Felt TV' action previously staged for a live audience at a Happening festival in Copenhagen in 1966. It was the only Beuys action executed specifically for the c...

The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path...

In 1967, Knowles, a Fluxus artist, composed one of the first computerized poems, written in Fortran code, with randomly assembled verses. (An example: “A house of steel / Among high mountains / Using candles / Inhabited by people who sleep almost all...

Living in a fictional world all their own, the machines of Survival Research Laboratories act out scenarios of perpetual torment, exasperating consumption, and tragic recognition...

A lonely character braving a steep mountain attempting to reach its peak. As he journeys the mountain, he is forced to confront a plethora of internal demons....

The performance takes place in a small setting with an audience, but that's only a part of the artwork. After filming the performance he uses them again in installations where he is Miss Piggy or Heidi. And of course lots of ketchup, Mayonnaise and c...

Broad Sense is based on an three day long intervention in the European Parliament in Brussels. The video reveals the diversity of security responses to the artist’s visits....

"Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity" says the bible. The word flows from the tongue naming the pleasure of earthly life and judging it as beautiful, but shallow and useless; vanity is a deadly sin. A female sin. The man painted the woman, put a...