The Concept of Body in Performance Art Based on Gilles Deleuze's Theories

Body is one of the essential components of works in performance art. Since the beginning of performance art history, artists have had a critical approach to social matters and even the artists' reaction to using art works as commercial products has been one of the causes that made them create a kind of live art. The main question of this research is: What is artists' approach to body in performance art for expressing social matters? Body in Deleuze's ideas is more than just a concept of physical body and contains different bodies such as urban body and social body. This paper explains the concept of performance art and investigates the role of body in making performance art's works. Then, by using Gilles Deleuze's ideas about body without organs, we analyze some of the most important works of performance art in order to clear artists' approach to body and it's relationship with social matters. Performance art is a branch of art that mixes other branches and uses body in relation with time and space in order to makes an art work. Most of the works in this branch of art engages audiences actively. Deleuze uses the concept of body without organ in relation of a special kind of thinking about life and world. He recognizes world as a plate of immanence in which life is becoming and not being. He denies all kinds of transcendentality. In his ideas, art should try to make us recognize life as an open whole through feelings. From this point of view, body without organs refers to all kinds of refusing transcendentality in physical or social bodies. Body without organs is not a body in lack of organs, but it is a body against organization. Deleuze warns that just making a body without organs is not enough because it could be an empty or a cancerous body without organs. An empty body without organs is a kind of body that lacks organization, but it is not successful and transverse of intensities being interrupted in it. So, it could not be a plate of immanence that forces flow in it. A cancerous body without organs not only is not a successful body without organs, but is a dangerous body that is dependent on organization and  confirms transcendentality. This qualitative research uses descriptive-analytical method and theoretical sampling. The method of data acquisition is desk study. By analyzing performance artists' approach to body, we found: 1. The goal of performance art is to invite audiences for rethinking about physical and social body and as a result of that rethinking themselves and social matters in order to make a body without organs. 2. Sometimes, artists put their body in maximum or minimum threshold, and sometimes they try to make a body without organs of urban or social body in order to reach their goal. 3. What makes a performance art's work successful is to make a full body without organs and not an empty or a cancerous body without organs.