Left: Transfection on human explant tissue: work in progress towards the making of Living Viral Tattoos. Right: Living Viral Tattoos. Materials: Human and pig skin, Lentivirus and HaCat cells. Image Credits: Maria Grade Godinho and Tagny Duff. When we humans walk in a city, run through the halls of a busy airport, roll through a…

Year of the Tiger. Video Still, 2011 Image Credit: Annette Arlander If we think of performative research as a specific research paradigm, as Brad Haseman (2006) and Barbara Bolt (2008) have argued, it will have implications for how we look at the impact of such work.{{1.}} If we accept that performative research does not describe…

Marilyn Arsem, Water Falling Pepper Rising. Image Credit: Kristina Lenzi/Bob Raymond Performed for In the Context of Art: The Difference International Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2006. INTRODUCTION I have been teaching performance art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a visual arts college, for more than 20 years.  The longer I teach…

Beatriz Preciado Beatriz Preciado’s Contra-sexual Manifesto has become a cult performative text for queer, transgender and cripple cultures in Europe. It was originally written in English and Spanish and first published in France in 2000.  This is the first publication of any portion of the manifesto in English. Contra-sexual Contract (Sample) I, the signatory herewith…

Marilyn Arsem THIS is Performance Art Performance art is nowPerformance art is live.Performance art reveals itself in the present.The artist engages in the act of creation as s/he performs.Performance art’s manifestation and outcome cannot be known in advance. Re-enactment of historical work is theater, not performance art. Performance art is real.Performance art operates on a…