Critical Writing Index

Gestures in the Looking Glass: Performance Art and the Body (1987)

by Dot Tuer

Caught In the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women, 2004, p. 54

Toronto: YYZ, 2004

The subject of the performative body in the 1980s is discussed in terms of a way to subvert the limitations that society and bring back the body's relevance as rhetoric on the body pushed for its disappearance. Performances by Paulette Phillips' Cadence of Insanity and Tanya Mars' Pure Sin, both originally performed in 1986, are used as examples of performance countering a period in the 1970s where the body in performance was a male arena.

ITEM 2004.070 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

The Schizophrenic OperaRon Gillespie (director)

Cadence of InsanityPaulette Phillips

Pure SinTanya Mars