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Acting vs Performance Art


Serendipitous to see this article by Mimmo Di Caterino, L’arte? Non è contemplazione, non più, as I contemplate making later this week my first “pure” performance art in about a year and a half. The project has designed as opposed to plotted itself inside my head, and it has been forming for over a year. 

Durante la performance oggetto e processo si confondono, si creano e producono in simultanea, quando un artista è vero, vive a tempo pieno la sua performance di ricerca di senso e di vita con il suo pubblico, anche negli affetti e negli effetti privati. Mimmo Di Caterino(During the performance object and merge process, you will create and produce simultaneous, when an artist is true, lives full-time performance of his search for meaning and life with his audience, even in suffering and in fact private. – Google Translate)

After reading this, I wonder whether an actor can even do “pure” performance art. My best work seems to be created by my characters, not myself. I don’t know anymore whether I can even be myself on stage/ on camera. 


One does what one does, so my query is moot, really; and “overworking” or overthinking one’s work is rookie and also a sin.

But I am bookmarking this article and will be returning to it.

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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