Movies: Performance art

One of a series of ‘falls’ by Bas Jan Ader that he recorded on film, this work was filmed in West Kapelle, Holland in 1970....

Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Struct...

My Body Is Not My Home is a 3D animated short film following the journey of an uncanny simulacrum who undergoes the process of becoming the ‘Other’....

A young man in a tram is asking a bit too much from a stranger....

"As a contribution to Gerry Schum's 'Identifications', Beuys adapted for television the 'Felt TV' action previously staged for a live audience at a Happening festival in Copenhagen in 1966. It was the only Beuys action executed specifically for the c...

This work re-examines the relationship between the elements that make up the quality of space, namely: "subject" and "object", "organic" and "mechanical", "reality" and "representation", "wholeness" and "partiality", " determinacy” and “indeterminacy...

"The once teeming Riverview Park was shut down in 1967 (with Tom Palazzolo on hand to document the bitter end). The Tattooed Lady of Riverview is a portrait of its final occupant, Jean Furella, the titular tattooed lady of Riverview's sideshow. Furel...

A lonely character braving a steep mountain attempting to reach its peak. As he journeys the mountain, he is forced to confront a plethora of internal demons....

One Meter of Democracy (2010) challenged the endurance of viewers, as well as the courage of the artist. In a quasi-democratic process, He Yunchang invited approximately 20 friends to vote in a secret ballot on whether he should have a surgeon cut a ...

Bas Jan Ader's first fall film shows him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-storey house in the Inland Empire....

Through the voice of its founder Marinella Senatore, the video focuses on a few key themes of The School of Narrative Dance project. The artist describes how the nomadic school, founded in 2013, centers on the concept of "assembly" and collective cre...

Ulysses Jenkins composed "Dream City" from documentation of a twenty-four-hour performance he organized in collaboration with David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, and Senga Nengudi. A discordant, absurdist, and poetic montage, the video weaves together ja...

In the first 58 minute Performance, Relation in Space, which took place in July 1976 at the Biennale in Venice, Abramovic/Ulay, both naked, walk towards each other from opposite ends of a room, touching as they pass each other, and then they repeat t...

During the 1980 exhibition of Burden's monumental kinetic sculpture The Big Wheel at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Burden and Feldman were interviewed by art critic Willoughby Sharp. Burden articulates the process of creating The Big Wheel, a 6...

Mock -documentary about a Finnish contemporary artist who took the world by a storm....

A collaboration between filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira and performance artist Thomas Pinnock, who performs his "immigrant folktales" using traditional lore of his native Jamaica to dramatize his migration to New York in the 60's....

Out O' Actions documents Kelley and McCarthy's preliminary activities in organizing a project for the Visitor's Gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles during the inaugural exhibition of "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Obje...

An investigation into the extraordinary life and work of B. Catling, an eye-popping insight into the late-flourishing career of a maverick artist, teacher and performer....

The absurd logic of the ‘real character’ and the extreme rules of Disneyland become apparent when a real fan of Snow White is banned from entering the theme park dressed as Snow White....

When the daughter of a controversial performance artist inherits her late mother's home archive, an unexpected visitor comes to claim the most notorious artwork...as they discover an artistic legacy can be more of a curse....