Performance and Protest: Questions on Art and Life

Authors

  • Jasmina Čubrilo Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.633

Keywords:

body; performance art; political protest; performativity; live art; Serbia.

Abstract

The paper addresses the critical potential of the body in performance art and in political protest, examining the relationship between an art form that aims to be indistinguishable from life and a socio-political practice that uses (appropriates) the performance art tactics, methods, and themes to articulate itself. The central problem our research addresses is related to the question of how various performance features, procedures, or techniques (for example, endurance, exposure, objectification, limits of individual agency) contribute to the articulation of protest practices, and whether these articulations turn political protest into a new kind of 'live art' that is more like life than art ever was.

Author Biography

Jasmina Čubrilo, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

Jasmina Čubrilo (PhD) is an art historian based in Belgrade, Serbia. She works as a Professor of Modern Art History in the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Belgrade). Her main research topics are concepts and phenomena in modern, postmodern, and contemporary art, with a focus on avant-gardes, neo-avant-gardes, post-avant-gardes, and new media art. In addition to articles, essays, scholarly chapters, and research papers published in national and international publications (Handbook of International Futurism, ed. Gunter Berghaus, DeGryter, 2018; Making Art History in Europe After 1945, eds. de Haro García, Mayayo & Carrillo, Routledge, 2020; Hot Art, Cold War – Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, eds. Hopkins & Boyd Whyte, Routledge, 2021; Centropa, Ethno-anthropological Problems, Art&Media Journal, Journal of Modern Art History Department), she is also the author of several books, including the following titles: Belgrade Art Scene - the Nineties, Belgrade 1998; Zora Petrović, Belgrade 2011; Jelica Radovanović i Dejan Anđelković: symptom.dj, Belgrade 2011; Bojan Bem: Media Repositioning of the Image, Belgrade 2016; On Scale: Monumentalizing the Miniature, Belgrade 2019; Jovan Kratohvil: A Study of a Model of Yugoslav Modernism, Belgrade 2021.

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Published

15.09.2025

How to Cite

Čubrilo, J. (2025). Performance and Protest: Questions on Art and Life. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (37), 21–39. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i28.633

Issue

Section

MAIN TOPIC: The Marginalization of Art: A Permanent, Complex, and Ongoing Process