Performing Endurance
Art and Politics since 1960

In Performing Endurance, Lara Shalson offers a new way of understanding acts of endurance in art and political contexts. Examining a range of performances from the 1960s to the present, including influential performance art works by Marina Abramović, Chris Burden, Tehching Hsieh, Linda Montano, Yoko Ono, and others, as well as protest actions from the lunch counter sit-ins of the US civil rights movement to protest camps in the twenty-first century, this book provides a formal account of endurance and illuminates its ethical and political significance. Endurance, Shalson argues, raises vital questions about what it means to exist as a body that both acts and is acted upon, from ethical questions about how we respond to the bodies of others to political questions about how we live in relation to institutions that shape life in fundamental ways. In addition, Performing Endurance rethinks how performance itself endures over time.

Reviews & endorsements

'Lara Shalson's Performing Endurance is an original, bold, and impeccably lucid encounter with endurance art. Shalson's writing carries a deep and abiding sympathy for what it means to endure, to survive the situation in which one finds oneself: say, in art, in life, in conflict, or in love. This book will make an urgent and compelling contribution to theatre and performance studies now, and to broader political considerations of how and with what means one may endure, together and apart, in difficult or uncertain times.' Dominic Johnson, Queen Mary, University of London

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Product details

• Date Published: November 2020
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9781108445160
• length: 220 pages

• dimensions: 229 x 151 x 12 mm
• weight: 0.334kg
• contains: 10 b/w illus.
• availability: Available