Performance art has established itself as one of the most risk-taking, radical, and critical contemporary disciplines in the visual arts. However, its historical trajectory can be diffuse and difficult to define. In this online course, we will examine its origins, its possible precursors, and the contexts that have shaped what we understand today as performance art.

In the first section we will address the etymology of the word performance and its various uses, reviewing shamanism and the performative dimension of certain rituals, as well as the role of interpretation in political activism and in different forms of popular entertainment.

In the second section, we will analyze the influence of Futurism on the creation of a new space within the visual arts, which gradually allowed for the emergence of contemporary performance art. We will also discuss Dadaism and Surrealism, the experiments of the Bauhaus, and the state of the arts up to the Second World War, tracing a clear line that helps to understand how this artistic language was forged.