Anti-Body
The Body and the Evolution of Dadaism as Performance Art
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36399/GroundingsUG.8.211Keywords:
Dadaism, Phenomenological Experience, Radical Art, Performance ArtAbstract
This article was originally written for a course entitled ‘Body, Flesh, Subject’, taught by Dr. Kelli Fuery for Chapman University’s Honors Program. The course focused on considerations of the body as the grounds of phenomenological experience and examined both the physical and the socially-constructed borders between bodies. This article brings together those discussions through a history of Dadaism, a radical art movement beginning in World War I, and influencing performance art of the 1970s and of today. By focusing on one key figure in each of these periods, I will seek to demonstrate how Dadaists use their bodies to mediate non-meaning, causing spectators to critically examine the socially-constructed borders of the body.
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