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Performance Art Quotes

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Performance Art Quotes

“Performance art is different. I meet things directly. I see death and lust in audience’s eyes. Depending on what I see in their eyes, my work changes immediately. If the purpose of art is to confront beauty, especially live beauty, aren’t all other artistic forms fake? They are compromises and the residue of the desire for useless immortality. All criticism of performance art starts with the fear of true beauty. People preserve beauty because of their obsession with immortality. They are slaves of dead art.”

ArtBeautyPerformance Art
Book:I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
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“Girl dancer! Oh you shifting Of all that passes into steps: how you manage that! And the eddy at the end, a tree made from a vortex, Does it not take full possession of the swirling year? And the tip of your tree, does it not blossom Quietly above you, from your spinning? Is it not Your limitless warmth, the sun, The summer, its heat? But your tree of ecstasy bears, Gives quiet fruit: the flagon streaked with ripeness, And the vase riper still.”

DancerHuman ExperiencePerformance Art
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
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“Oh arrive and leave. You were still half a child, Completing a dancing pose for but a moment, The pure form of a star constellation, which is One of the ways in which we overcome the mindless random order Of Nature, also just for a moment. For it was only when Orpheus sang That Nature awoke and heard, was quickened in alertness. Though far away in time, this stirred you. And you were somewhat Surprised that a tree considered so slowly and hesitated To join with you in hearing it. You sensed the very place where the lyre Raised itself aloft -; the mid-point which has never been heard. For you ventured your beautiful steps And you hoped, one day in holy celebration To alter the course and countenance of your friend. (Her friend is himself.)”

DeathDancerDivinityPerformance ArtThe Dancer S Second Death
Book:Sonnets to Orpheus
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“Ii do not walk with alienation everywhere I go in the world. I have been to small taverns in rural Ohio, big city bars, San Francisco bath houses, and in all these have felt welcome and happy. But walking through that sunglassed throng, I felt like a Martian. I didn't hate the feeling - indeed, being a black woman in the academy, it wasn't new to me - but it was interesting. I kept wondering: where is the performance? When will the performance start? Is this the performance - me walking through this space without sunglasses with all these Nordic quasi-hipster white people in multi-colored, motorcycle cop sunglasses?”

InsightBlack WomenPerformance Art
Book:Swallow the Fish
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“Aliens (intermediate programmers) are not creating computer games in the ordinary sense of the term. These games are more like works of art, improvisational theater, performance art, scientific and philosophic investigation and historical novels.”

AliensArtworkGnosticismPerformance ArtHistorical NovelSimulation HypothesisIntermediate Programmers
Book:Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!
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“The Coffeehouse Troubadour by Stewart Stafford I am The Coffeehouse Troubadour; Catchpenny conduit of all your pain, Nanosecond glance, a collective boil lanced, And my mirror refracts again. You mix my words in bitterest cups, Laced to an addictive latte brew, Read the room as we slowly dance And see, it's not about me, it's about you. Did you catch the trick I pulled there? Would you like me to show you once more? Or put on your coat in silent meditation? A rainy baptism as you walk through the door? © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryEmotionalSpoken WordFolk MusicReflectivePerformance ArtBob DylanCoffeehouseModern VerseCafe Culture
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Art doesn’t give rise to anything in us that isn’t already there. It simply stirs our curious consciousness and sparks a fire that illuminates who we have always wanted to be.”

ArtTruthPoetryArtistLiteratureActingConsciousnessMusicCreativityCreativeFireSingingInnovationDancingDanceCuriosityTheatreCuriousDancerCreateClassical MusicKamandKojouriKamand KojouriRiseSingVisual ArtArt QuotesArtist QuotesSparkSingerPerformance ArtIlluminateEnlightenPerformerWhat Is Art
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“I became an artist because I wanted to be an active participant in the conversation about art.”

ArtArtistQuotesLiteratureBeautyMusicCreativityPracticeCreativeStudyPaintingPoetDramaConversationCriticismDancePaintActiveTheatreTechniquePainterDancerWriterSculptureCreateAestheticsCritiqueKamandKojouriKamand KojouriPerformanceArtworkSkillArt HistoryArt QuotesActorPerforming ArtsCraftWorksNovelistSongwriterSingerPerformance ArtActressConversePracticingWhat Is ArtSculptorArt CriticismCreative WriterVisual ArtsParticipantSculptApplied Arts
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can’t be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author’s Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.”

WritingBelieveArtDoneArtistOrderI BelieveRoomsAudienceSolitudePerformancesBarsLocksWork DoneCorkPerformance Art
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“For me, so much of my life has been this attempt to find my way back into my body. I tried various forms, from promiscuity, to eating disorders, to performance art. And I think it wasn't until I got cancer, where I was suddenly being pricked and ported and chemoed and operated on, that I suddenly just became body. I was just a body. And it was in that, in that finally landing in myself that I really discovered the world in my body.”

ThinkingWorldWayHas BeensArtBodyFormEatingPerformancesCancerVariousMy WayDisorderLandingEating DisorderPromiscuityPerformance Art
Author:Eve Ensler
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“I made my performance debut in New York City downtown on the Lower East Side in college doing awkward performance art as a go-go dancer at Lady Starlight's Party. And I never thought that my love for mediocre performance art and bad mime would ever come to use in my career as an actor. But my fantasies came true and I got to play Maureen in Rent.”

ArtMadePlayUseActorsSidesPartyCitiesCareersFantasyNew YorkCollegePerformancesEastDancerNew York CityAwkwardMediocreDowntownDebutStarlightPerformance ArtMimeEast Side
Author:Annaleigh Ashford
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“I found so much fun in the light shows and the multimedia shows of the hippies. That was when I was a student in the 1960s, and I was in New York, so I learned how to deal with writing, recording sound of other people, performance art - because that was a new territory, and I liked everything that was new and provocative. That interested me more than becoming anything specific.”

PeopleWritingArtShowsLightFoundFunSoundDealsNew YorkStudentsBecomingPerformancesTerritory1960sHippieProvocativePerformance ArtNew TerritoryMultimedia
Author:Charlemagne Palestine
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“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.”

WorldGivingFirstsArtUseLastsNightDiesFallBlackWhiteSilenceFireTreeStreetsColorGoldPerformancesFilledWinterSmellNostalgiaCelebrateFlamesKitchenApplesAutumnWarmthSparksBlack And WhiteHarvestOrangeSauceAmberSquashCinnamonPerformance ArtCiderRoasting
Author:Shauna Niequist
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