Performance Conceptualism: From Semantics to Body Language

Abstract

The research focuses on the philosophy of performative actionism. It refers to the contemporary practices of installations, happenings, monstrations and flash mobs on different topics as to the concept of pure action. Performance is regarded as the relevant understanding technique to manifest the currently popular dynamism principle of arts and philosophical anthropology. The research aims to analyse the art experience of the subject’s bodily actions to demonstrate their anthropological authenticity, social significance, legal value, epistemological activity, and political will. As a result, authors conclude that non-semantic silent performances reveal limited possibilities of modern human self-realisation despite having several rights, freedoms and technologies to improve their lives. Performance is viewed as a conceptual model of individual functioning in the polyontic reality. As an alternative to the linguistic one, self-representation through performance is a rather flawed but relevant means of showing the nature of the subject’s existence in the contemporary social, legal, political and cultural environment.