Reddit reviews Body and the East: From the 1960s to the Present

Although it is usually ignored in these kind of conversations, performance art is very interesting to think about within the context of soviet rule. There is an interesting book, Body and the East: From the 1960s to the Present by Zdenka Badovinac. I might be able to send you a free copy on Google Drive or something. There is also Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956-1989 and Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe.

Of course, there is a problem with speaking about performance art within a marxist context. Performance Art is postmodern, while traditional Marxist ideology is modern. Still, I hope this is still a valid post. Here is a small fragment I'll just copy paste from an essay I wrote on Performance Art which might help you understand how it influenced a change in post-communist societies.

>‘Performance’ or ‘body’ art has reframed the notion of art in fundamental ways, and has played an essential role in the shift from modernism to postmodernism. The shift, according to Amelia Jones, is caused by the dislocation of the modernist Cartesian subject through the implementation of the body and its performance into the artwork (Body Art, 1998). In other words, unlike traditional art, there is no dualism concerning the artist and the artwork, but rather the artist’s biological existence becomes part of the artwork. Much like other postmodern elements, it is counter-formalist. The performative body of the artist breaks down the hierarchies between actor, spectacle and spectator that are inherent in traditional forms of art. The meaning of body art cannot be defined as a certain or fixed object, it is open-ended and indefinite, and thus destabilises structures and assumptions of formalist art history and criticism. This destabilisation also happens through the use of the body, as racial, ethnic and sexual identity of non-normative artists naturally challenge not only conventional art itself, but how the spectator looks at, studies and evaluates art too (Jones, 1998). The prime of performative art was in the East, as the inherently anti-authoritarian art was used to battle an authoritarian government. Performative art in the East rose to challenge western values and notions. The second wave feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and 70s introduced the term ‘Body Politics’ and the phrase ‘the body is political’, a theory that many body artists adopted and expressed with their performance, notably Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll.