Live Art Quotes

What we do in theatre is unlike film or any other medium. We can never really truly see the work that we made because we're in in.

I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.

First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

Better a live doggerel than a dead sonnet.

Theatre is alive and it is now, and then it's gone.

So the audience, at times, lets us know actually what is so special about the show that we can't even necessarily design or predict. Which is great. That's what you want art to be. You want it to be alive and to actually have a life in the way it's viewed.

I have to paint fast on television because of the limited time, but I don't want people to see what I'm showing them as work, something to worry and fret over. This is supposed to be fun.

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater.

The kind of improv that I'm particularly addicted to is the kind that... aims at creating a momentary, fragmentary experience that has a totality to it. It's kind of like fireworks. It's the more ephemeral of art forms - once it's gone, it's gone, baby.

Everything is pre-taped these days, but I'm a believer in, 'If you can't do it live, don't do it.'

The best thing about the term 'performance artist' is that it includes just about everything you might want to do.

Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone.

You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment.

I see the audience as the final collaborator. I think it's kind of bullshit when people say, "I'm not interested in the audience reaction." I'm like, "Then why do you do theater? You can write a book, then you don't have to see how the audience reacts." It's a living, breathing thing.

Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.

We were doing performance art as far back as 1965, just not calling it that.

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.

I've always done live art history lectures and small documentaries in the past in Australia, on Australian art and art galleries, so I've already done a lot of that.

The idea of a 'happening' is that there is little distance between the viewer and it, whatever 'it' is. It's an experience that's on-going and evolving.

I think there's an interest right now in the performance aspect of artworks, instead of just hanging things on walls. We're in a moment when a lot of younger artists are looking at work from the '60s and '70s - they are looking at the pieces by Marina Abramovic or Vito Acconci. These pieces have a time element. They were performed live. To perform them again now isn't simply an homage, because it's a different audience, a different moment.

Comedy is a live art, and the only way to record a comedy rock album is to do it live. The audience and their laughter is just as much a part of the album sound as our music. No retakes, no room for error.

To me, dance is so ethereal and elusive, so much of an illusion. After a performance, that's it. With vocals and music, you have good recordings.