2017

Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The New Performance Turn, Its Histories and Its Institutions

The book, co-published with Sternberg Press and designed by Wkshps, New York, is expanded from the 2014 eponymous conference organised by Para Site, and is dedicated to the renewed encounter between dance and performance and the institutions of global contemporary art. Taking Hong Kong as a vantage point, this publication highlights recent efforts of art historians in different parts of the globe to retrace performance genealogies, exploring how non-Western histories of performance have been recuperated, translated, integrated, or excluded from the new institutional realities of contemporary art. The book includes eighteen commissioned essays and conversations which are case studies that examine the different facets of performance in both art galleries and public spaces; eleven artists/groups contribute inserts which create narratives that point out and extend the boundaries of what is possible in the paradigm of art and performance today. Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? proposes that a “new performance turn” has emerged and looks at its correlations with other shifts in practices, discourses, and broader society. The book is edited by Cosmin Costinaș and Ana Janevski.

This publication would not have been possible without the generous support from the Robert H. N. Ho. Foundation.

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Edited by Cosmin Costinas and Ana Janevski
Designed by Wkshps
Published by Para Site, Sternberg Press
2017

224 pages
Hardcover, 22 x 28 cm
ISBN 978-3-956791-18-5
HK$390.00 (postage not incl.)