s t e v e n  c o h e n     a r t i s t  thoughts on performance I don't actually know what the fuck performance art is, yet I'm brilliant at it. Does this mean that I'm a fraud. No! It simply proves that performance art is not a practice informed by theory ... and that I'm honest and a little vain. The vanity (read self-respect) is what I harness to let myself get vulnerable, get naked in public, get shamed. My form of performance art comes from a place I've never been to before, each time. It's an attempt to understand something in the process of doing it. It's about letting you see the work as I am making it. That takes a lot of trust for me as an artist. When I am finished, it is finished. The execution, going through the doing, is the medium through which this art exists. Performance Art is not about the showing of skill or talent but about using honesty and risk through the body in an original way. When I live art and intervene in public, it is the performance of the place I'm in i.e. it's operation or functioning, that I am using as my medium. When I appear (visual art) as a beautifully constructed and living artwork, the performance of the place and the performances of the people there are what may be called performance art - I am living art. I am full of spirit. I breathe and radiate defiance and fear and dignity and sacrifice. It is the magic from my imagination literally given life. Temporarily, I am more powerful than any dead drawing or still-born genius oil painting. Performance art is really about vegetarians eating blood and men fingering their cunts; it is art eating itself and art fucking itself for the first time every time. Performance art should transgress entirely from its own label through to the intentions of the artist. I am always surprised at my own work. I only see it, together with you, there and then while we make it. If people encountering my work wonder about what they see, I am happier than if they conclude something - I would rather be the cause of wonder than of conclusion. The value of my work is more in it being a speculum than a suture. My performance art may use states of physical undressing but it is really about spiritual nakedness. It is not exhibitionism. It is more interesting for you to see me try what I can't do, than to show off what I'm good at. We are too unwilling to show each other our beautiful failures. Performance art is internal and intrusive - it is like surgery without anaesthetic. Static visual art is like an anaesthetic without surgery, but it is the power of the visual (given life in performance) that lets me kick you in the stomach and grab your heart without saying a word or touching you. I believe I have found a new form of expression in art beyond performance art. I call this Living Art. People don't come to an appointed place like a gallery or at times (and place) like theatre - these are not scheduled performances, but non-contractual public interventions. And in non-art defamed areas, which are in fact, art-unlikely. People of the outside step right into the work. They can change the choreography (deny access or "come this way") and they can change the plot (yell and shout, hit, call the police). It's amazing in that the work is constructed at the moment by whoever chooses to become part of it, in addition to me. It is a gift to the people outside of the work and they usually acknowledge it lovingly. I have been removed by the police several times, detained and removed by various authorities often, removed by extremists in swastikas once and I have been beaten up twice. These are the risks of unfrozen visual art. It is real art feeding off and eaten by time. Leaving the venue, undressing, washing - it is a sacrifice like burning the work. After the work I always feel altered; sort of injured and thoroughly cleansed.

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