Performance Takes Place

A challenge to the idea of a fixed meaning of the concept of art lies at the heart of the performance art movement. An element of provocative transgression therefore is vital to performance art. This make performance akin to the Kantian concept of free beauty, to surrealist views on art, to critical theory, and to the concept of symbolic form. All these themes are important elements in 20th century philosophy of art.

We don't understand words by definitions, we understand them as they are used in a specific context. The same can be stated about the understanding of art. In a the case of a performance artwork the stakeholders understand the meaning of the work from their different perspectives. The artist, the critic, the audience, the hosting institution, the sponsors, all have different views on the same work. Occasionally there are conflicting interests involved.

An art form that is self conscious, and reflective needs to take into account and interact with a host of dimensions as it takes place. That is why we may high light the way a performance is Taking Place, by using metaphors of war. The inauguration ceremony with seniors and their rollators climbing the hill of the Upsala Castle accompanied by Giuseppi Verdi's La Forza del Destino/The Power of Destiny, then, may be set in pair with the rock album by Brian Eno named Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy after the model play of Chinese opera during the cultural revolution.

Now, the work by SU-EN is eccentric in relation to the established definition of Performance Art, but it is still a work in the performing arts, and it performs the actual inauguration of the festival. Three different uses of the concept of performance are presented in the work and thereby the theme of the festival is well caught in this single work. The span of performance art interlacing with contradictory definitions creates a complex serpentine gestalt akin to the rune-stone ornaments characteristic of the Swedish Viking culture.