Could it be that one of the major dilemmas of performance art, in its conventional definition, is precisely what laid its foundation and standardized it from the very beginning: body language, the body as medium? Or the stringent demands for the physical presence of a specific individual (the performer) within a specific space, alongside the existence of time. Yet, even if some of these conditions are left unfulfilled, no one can definitively claim that it cannot, or is not, a work of performance art. Such rare exceptions do, indeed, occur.

Is it true that the East tends to employ the flesh because it is somewhat more complex and open-ended? More multi-layered and polysemantic? The physical body, in the Buddhist conception, is akin to a foul skin-bag encapsulating a synchronized physical composite: blood, flesh, bones, tendons, heart, brains… That skin-bag operates as a form of archive, a vessel. A volume both defined and elusive, perpetually shifting and in motion. It possesses a certain affinity to partially record and manifest the soul, the spiritual essence, through the physical flesh (the skin-bag). Thus, nothing is ever entirely severed into two separate poles, but rather exists as a duality within one another. An intimation of archiving is inherently embedded within the loop or cycle we often speak of: Formation – Stasis – Decay – Void, or Birth – Old Age – Sickness – Death. It evokes a vague, lingering image of the overripe, bruised persimmon that strangely recurs across all three books by the writer Yukio Mishima (it remains uncertain whether this persimmon appears in his other works as well):
The Decay of the Angel (or The Temple of Dawn / Runaway Horses / Spring Snow), The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
The Sea of Fertility

In this edition of IN:ACT, what are we preparing for such rare exceptions should they present? Let us reserve a sense of eager anticipation for things that have seldom occurred in previous seasons of IN:ACT.