A R T E .:. V I V A

Como acercamiento al fundamento general de nuestra materia, los invito a revisar un texto de Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, profesora del Departamento de Estudios de Performance de la Univesidad de Nueva York y una de las investigadoras en el tema con mayor reconocimiento mundial. A continuacion incluyo unos renglones introductorios con los links al texto completo en NYU (el primer link va al texto arriba mencionado y el segundo, al final de esta entrada los lleva ala pagina de inicio de la profesora donde hay otros materiales en linea para los que quieran profundizar en el trabajo neoyorkino y otros temas de performance)

Performance Studies

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

The field of Performance Studies takes performance as an organizing concept for the study of a wide range of behavior. A postdiscipline of inclusions, Performance Studies sets no limit on what can be studied in terms of medium and culture. Nor does it limit the range of approaches that can be taken. A provisional coalescence on the move, Performance Studies is more than the sum of its inclusions. While it might be argued that "as an artform, performance lacks a distinctive medium" (Carroll 1986:78), embodied practice and event is a recurring point of reference within Performance Studies.

Performance Studies starts from the premise that its objects of study are not to be divided up and parceled out, medium by medium, to various other disciplines--music, dance, dramatic literature, art history. The prevailing division of the arts by medium is arbitrary, as is the creation of fields and departments devoted to each. Most of the world's artistic expression has always synthesized or otherwise integrated movement, sound, speech, narrative, and objects. Moveover, the historical avant-garde and contemporary art have long questioned these boundaries and gone about blurring them. Such confounding of categories has not only widened the range of what can count as an artmaking practice, but also given rise to performance art that is expressly not theatre and art performance that dematerializes the art object and approaches the condition of performance. (Carroll 1986; see also Sayre 1989; Schimmel 1998) Performance Studies takes its lead from such developments. This field is not only intercultural in scope and spirit, but also challenges aesthetic hierarchies and analyzes how they are formed. Performance Studies encompasses not only the most valorized, but also least valued, cultural forms within these hierarchies.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/issues/rock2.htm
b a r b a r a k i r s h e n b l a t t - g i m b l e t t
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/web/