The author writes that artists, like most advanced thinkers, have reached a level of historical awareness wherein they are no longer passive receivers, but are in constant interaction with their environment. Nemser sees this awareness manifested in the body art of Nauman, Oppenheim, Acconci, et al. Tracing the origins of this work to Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, and Allan Kaprow, she sees body art as the realization of the full incorporation of the body as both "phenomenon" and "activator" in the work. She divides the work of body artists into two overriding categories: that which views the artist's body as a closed system, and that which shows the body interacting with its environment. The author discusses the relation between the physical and the psychological, making reference to a number of specific artworks. She mentions the strain of "bizarre, sado-masochistic exhibitionism" that permeates the work she describes, but argues that this is not generally the intention of the artists, who largely see their work as a kind of research. These artists, she concludes, balance extreme visceral sensation and complete cerebral detachment in order to communicate the dangerous aspects of contemporary culture.