The Ecology of the Performance Art Process

This book offers a new, dynamic and ecological perspective to analyse the process of performance art, namely, what occurs during the unfolding of a piece, exploring the essence of its happening through the forces at play. The author’s aim is to provide a deeper understanding of performance art, which the existing scholarship acknowledges as an art form that actively engages with the world.

Much work has been done on the transformative effects of performance art on the artists and the audiences, and its impact on society over time. The author takes this perspective further by asking, how does this transformation happen? Little work exists on exploring the forces and dynamics occurring while a performance is developing: neither before nor after, but during it. This is the first and main gap that this book fills, given the importance of process and processuality as the characterising features of this art form. By filling this gap, this book offers a new way to understand performances and their impact in the world and over time, as well as providing practitioners with tools for performing and designing their works starting from the process rather than focusing on the outcomes. This book studies the matrix of the performance art process by conceiving it as an ecosystem, in which all the elements at play, animate and inanimate, are agentic and intertwine in relationships of mutual influence and exchange.

This book will be useful for scholars and practitioners of performance art and performance studies, practice‑as‑research (PaR), visual culture, art history and philosophy, especially phenomenology.

The author thanks Monash University (Arts) and the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS) for the financial support in making this publication possible.

This book has been awarded the 2025 Jo-Anne Duggan Prize for the best publication by a postgraduate student or an early career researcher in the field of Italian Studies by ACIS - Australasian Centre for Italian Studies.

Angela Viora is an Italian artist, educator and scholar living in Naarm, on the unceded land of the Kulin Nations (Melbourne, AUS), where she lectures in European Languages‑Italian Studies at Monash University. Through a practice‑as‑research approach, Angela works at the nexus between performance studies and Italian and migration studies focusing on socially engaged art and education innovation. Angela has presented her work internationally, including at CO.AS.IT Museo Italiano (AUS), Daegu Art Factory (SK), Performance Studies International Conference, the 12th Istanbul Biennial (TK) and the MAXXI Museum in Rome (IT). She publishes on performance art, artivism, documentation and audience reception and education.