Lyotard and the 'figural' in Performance, Art and Writing

This original study offers a timely reconsideration

of the work of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in relation to art,

performance and writing.

How can we write about art, whilst

acknowledging the transformation that inevitably accompanies

translations of both media and temporality?

That is the question that persistently dogs Lyotard's own writings on art, and

to which this book responds through reference to artists from the

recently-formed canon of performance art history, including the myths of

seminal figures Marina Abramovic

and Vito Acconci, and the controlled documentation of Gina Pane's actions.

Through the unstable, untranslatable element that Lyotard calls the figural, his thought is brought to bear

on attempts to write a history of performance art and to question the paradoxically

prescriptive demand for rules to govern 're-performance'.

Kiff Bamford contextualises Lyotard's writings and

approach with reference to both his contemporaries, including Deleuze and

Kristeva, and the contemporary art about which they wrote, whilst arguing for

the pertinence of Lyotard's provocations today.