Summary: Collaborations in Modern and Postmodern Visual Arts | Anne Marsh Performance art and video performance/installation had its genesis in the late 1950s and 1960s, respectively. The collaborative and participatory Happenings and the movement for artists’ access to TV broadcasting both had an activist edge as artists challenged modes of production and distribution and sought to break out of the conventions of the modernist white cube. In this paper I am interested in analysing collaborative modes of performance and video performance that have challenged conventional notions of the art work and its contexts. Whilst considering the historical context, this paper will focus on recent performance collaborations by women, including Sen Voodoo, Monika Tichecek and The King Pins. Anne Marsh is Professor of Theory and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University. Her most recent book is LOOK! Contemporary Australian Photography (2010). She is author of Pat Brassington: This is Not a Photograph (2006), The Darkroom: Photography and the Theatre of Desire (2003) and Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia, 1969-1992 (1993). She has received two ARC Discovery grants in the last four years, most recently for Remediation: Performance Art and Video performance. This research includes the building of an on-line video archive in collaboration with Matthew Perkins and Elena Galiberti – The Australian Video Art Archive http://www.videoartchive.org.au. Anne is also a contributing editor for Eyeline Contemporary Visual Arts.
