Digital performance and avant-garde artistic distinctions

Abstract

_{Digital performance is an artistic phenomenon isolated at the beginning of the 21st century. In the subsequent years, the scope of interest of the researchers analyzing this phenomenon has extended not only to new projects, but also to the works constituting its “prehistory,” dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, and to selected avant-garde projects from the first half of the 20th century. This interest has resulted in a number of theoretical studies on digital performance, which is associated on the one hand with the latest achievements in information technology, and on the other with human bodily performance, frequently contrasted with technology-based approaches in art. Digital performance seems to be a concept integrating both of those areas. Basing on this example, one can examine the various manifestations of apparent interdependence between its components, as well as the evolution of the issues that were of interest to the historical avant-garde. The present author argues that digital performance is a unique artistic phenomenon that does not fit within the usually employed theoretical categories. There are three possible perspectives from which it can be approached. Firstly, it might be considered in the context of postmodernism, as a kind of postmodern hybrid, a cross between the tendencies previously regarded as opposed (e.g. in avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art). However, as suggested by such authors as Steve Dixon, it is also possible to separate it from the postmodern strategies and see it as a manifestation of the hidden aspirations of artists from both the first and the second half of the 20th century. In the new artistic phenomenon, they have taken on an explicit form thanks to the use of the latest technological developments. The second interpretation of digital performance is to regard it as a characteristic manifestation of cyberculture, combining the biological and the technological (cf. Roy Ascott, R.W. Kluszczyński). According to this interpretation, it functions “in-between” (in interspaces and “intertimes,” revealing the multidimensional fluidity of the contemporary world. The third of the theoretical perspectives discussed here reflects the views of W.J.T. Mitchell and Mindy Fenske. Contrary to the cybercultural interpretation, which presupposes the convergence of the performative and the digital, the existence of a dialectic opposition between them is emphasized here. Overcoming it through transition from thesis to anti-thesis in order to achieve synthesis (or, using different terminology, dialogue negotiation) involves searching for a connection between biology and technology, even if the result of this search is still incomplete and not definitive. The concept of dialogue assumes that even if performativity and digitalism are converged, the original nature of the starting elements is sensed, and it is possible to consider different ways in which these elements are involved in the dialogic interaction.}