Andy Horwitz sez...

I am proposing that visual art performance, generally, is predicated on the objectification and abstraction of the human body, whereas contemporary performance – Time-Based Art with its origins in dance and theater – is more frequently predicated on the creation of a subjective field of experience – what I will call “experience design”. The aesthetic challenges of integrating light, sound, visual representation and embodied presence – sometimes even text – into a Gesamtkunstwerk are undertaken not to create a “living object” but to create a shared experience.

Okay: there's plenty more where this came from, but even I have limits. Andy Horwitz is discussing the problems of curating visual and performance art. In this paragraph, he gets to the point. There is a difference between performance that is created from a visual art tradition (I'd say that refers to Abramovich et al) and a theatre tradition. I am going to try to find out whether this division helps me.

Step one: visual art performance, generally, is predicated on the objectification and abstraction of the human body

Anyone want to help? 

Step two: Time-Based Art is more frequently predicated on the creation of a subjective field of experience – what I will call “experience design”

Again, any suggestions?

Let me take this very slowly. I think that Horwitz makes a distinction between the intentions of the two traditions. Frankly, I distrust any generalisation this large, but let's try a thought experiment.

Artist A - Mr Paint - and artist B - Mr Dramaturg - get commissions to present a performance for the latest exhibition at Gallery C (Big Corporate White Space). Mr Paint has recently done a series of sculptures and exhibited them at Gallery D (Underground Collective Venue), while Mr Dramaturg spent six months as the director of Play E (New Work by Postgraduate).

Mr Paint stands for our man in the visual art tradition. Mr Dramaturg has the theatre angle covered. 

Big Corporate White Space doesn't really give a shit what they get from the boys. It just wants some cool action when the usual suspects turn up for free wine.

Mr Paint decides on a burlesque routine. He dresses up as a monkey, and takes his clothes off to a recording of Artist F (Obscure Techno DJ).

Mr Dramaturg decides on a burlesque routine. He dresses up as a monkey, and takes his clothes off to a recording of Artist F (Obscure Techno DJ).

Mr Paint's version is intended to represent the body, and evoke a sense of how it is both erotic and animalistic, funny and serious, an object to be observed.

Mr Dramaturg's version is intended to highlight the emotional connection between the performer and his audience, to ask them to question how they feel.

Does this work?