Over the course of fifteen years, Nicholas Zurbrugg interviewed the avant-garde poets, filmmakers, dancers, writers, composers, and performance artists who were defying tradition, crossing genres, and forever changing how art would be created, performed, and interpreted. These conversations with thirty-one of the leading multimedia artists in the United States now form a comprehensive record, from the insiders' perspectives, of the most vital component of the postmodern American art world. Passionate about postmodernism and committed to innovative creativity, Zurbrugg asks these artists probing and insightful questions. How did their work evolve? Who most influenced them? How did they assess changes in contemporary art, and what did they think of each other's work? Which of their experiences had the most powerful effects on their creative development? What could lie ahead for American art? As these questions are answered by individual artists, the interviews also cumulatively address larger issues of artistic expression, including the idea of the avant-garde itself. The book features interviews with Kathy Acker, Charles Amirkhanian, Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Beth B, David Blair, William S. Burroughs, Warren Burt, John Cage, Richard Foreman, Kenneth Gaburo, Diamanda Galas, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Brion Gysin, Dick Higgins, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kuchar, Robert Lax, Jackson Mac Low, Meredith Monk, Nam June Paik, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Reich, Rachel Rosenthal, Bill Viola, Larry Wendt, Emmett Williams, Robert Wilson, Nick Zedd, and Ellen Zweig. Introductory notes to each interview provide context and connect the work and experiences of various artists, and photographs of theseartists contribute a significant visual element to the book. Nicholas Zurbrugg (1947-2001) was professor of English and cultural studies, as well as director of the Centre of Contemporary Arts, at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. He is the author of The Parameters of Postmodernism and Critical Vices: The Myths of Postmodern Theory.

The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts. The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance—including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new—and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place.

Literary Art in Digital Performance examines electronic works of literary art, a category integrating the visual+textual including interactive poetry, narrative computer games, filmic sculpture and projective art. Each case study/chapter is followed by a 'post-chapter' dialogue between editor and author - providing further entry points for theoretical analysis.

Nathaniel Stern's 'Interactive Art and Embodiment' defies the world of interactive art and new media from the perspective of the body and identity. It presents the ongoing and emergent processes of embodiment in art and includes immersive descriptions of interactive artworks.

Performance Art in China takes as its subject one of the most dynamic and controversial areas of experimental art practice in China. In his comprehensive study, Sydney-based theorist and art historian Thomas J. Berghuis introduces and investigates the idea of the "role of the mediated subject of the acting body in art," a notion grounded in the realization that the body is always present in art practice, as well as its subsequent, secondary representations. Through a series of in-depth case studies, Berghuis reveals how, during the past 25 years, Chinese performance artists have "acted out" their art, often in opposition to the principles governing correct behavior in the public domain. In addition to a 25-year chronology of events, a systematic index of places, names and key terms, as well as a bibliography and a glossary in English and Chinese, this study also offers the reader numerous previously unpublished photos and documents.

"The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed--with, around, and against the text of their lives." --

First published in 1979, the latest edition of this pioneering study in "the World of Art" series surveys a full century of performance, from the Futurist manifesto of 1909 to the second decade of the new millennium. Art historian and gallery curator Rose Lee Goldberg explains how a medium once used only in sporadic outbreaks of artistic dissent has become, over the course of a century, a vital and integral part of the contemporary mainstream and a global phenomenon.