Tag: materiality

In this newly published article, art historian Jules Pelta Feldman challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in the history and theory of performance art: that performance is inherently ephemeral and therefore resistant to conservation. Focusing on artists who understood their actions as rituals rather than performances—notably Charles Simonds—Pelta Feldman argues that ritual offers an alternative genealogy for performance, one that situates it within much longer histories of embodied practice, repetition, and cultural continuity.