The most complex and productive works from the 1960s and ‘70s crossed over conceptual and embodied concerns in ways that began to transform the basic question of art’s value, meaning, significance, and role in society. Attending to the tensions among concept, body, event, and “art” that surface around 1960 in the Western world is thus the most effective way to understand how art becomes “event” in the sense of potentially shifting larger ways of thinking and being.

A new genre of hybrid artworks involving elements of performance, conceptualism, sculpture, and installation practices evokes complex art experiences that are performative yet exist in various material forms—including, implicitly or explicitly, that of the artist’s laboring body. These works call for new ways of engaging that do not dwell on final objects or celebrate “authentic” presence but understand the relational tensions and seductions between human and nonhuman.

Springing off from the recent obsession over performance histories in the performance and art domains, “The Artist is Present” takes on claims for authenticity and “presence” by examining the series of recent re-enactments and events featuring Marina Abramović.

Expanding on Ron Athey's legacy of exposing the holiness of his body in body art performances, and on Julianna Snapper's training as an opera singer, Judas Cradle evokes relations of desire, connection, and repulsion. Holy Body takes off from the queer ethics proffered by Judas Cradle through a rapturous and sometimes pained interpretive hysteria directed toward affirming the erotic ethics implicit in the piece.