THE PREFERRED ORDEAL: Theatre: Theory - Practice - Performance

Unlimited action concerns the limits imposed upon art and life, and the means by which they were exceeded or challenged by performance art in the 1970s. Its author argues that through a series of performance actions, performance art reshaped aesthetics and the practice of art by way of performances that seem gratuitous, odd, illegible or unwarranted; which concede too much pain or pleasure, require too little skill, or disclose a surfeit of sex, infamy, cruelty or crime.

Dominic Johnson examines the 'performance of extremity' as an errant sequence of practices at the limits of histories of performance and art, through game-changing performances by Kerry Trengove, Ulay, Genesis P-Orridge, Anne Bean, the Kipper Kids and Stephen Cripps. Through close encounters with these six artists and others, Johnson articulates a counterhistory of actions in a new narrative of performance art in the 1970s, to rethink and rediscover the history of contemporary art and performance.