Living sculptures: performance art in the classroom

Abstract

What does an introduction to and engagement in performance art offer K-12 students? In this article, we respond to this question by proposing a lesson inspired by the artmaking practices of the contemporary artist Erwin Wurm. Performance art can be defined as any form of work that combines the artist’s body and a live-action event with or without additional media, props, or tools. Having re-emerged as a credible subject matter and medium over the past 2 decades (O’Reilly, 2009), performance art is now serving as a fundamental meaning-making practice for artists across the world. With this rising popularity, we have become interested (and anxious) about the possibilities of teaching performance art in K-12 schools. The remainder of this article introduces performance art by examining the role of the body in art education and art history (e.g., the body as a subject in art and as an artmaking medium) and attempts to under-stand performance art as a living bodied curriculum through an investigation of Wurm’s artistic process and related art lesson ideas for the art classroom.