The origins of Performance art started with Dada and Russian constructivism groups, focusing on avant-garde poetry readings and live paintings meant to be viewed by an audience.
[9] Situationists in France, led by Guy Debord, married avant-garde art with revolutionary politics to incite everyday acts of anarchy.
[10] At the New School for Social Research in New York, John Cage and Allan Kaprow became involved in developing happening performance art.
[11] In Japan, the 1954 Gutai group led by Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, Kazuo Shiraga, and Shimamoto Shozo made the materials of art-making come to life with body movement and blurring the line between art and theater.
Valie Export, an Austrian artist born Waltraud Lehner, performed "Tap and Touch Cinema" in 1968.
She was interested in the invisible social and racial dynamics in America and was determined to encourage civic-mindedness and interruption of the system.
[13][14] Carolee Schneemann, American artist, performed Interior Scroll in 1975, where she unrolls Super-8 film "Kitsch's Last Meal" from her genitals.
[17] According to Andranik Tangian, the best results are achieved when spontaneity and even improvisation are backed up by rational elements that arrange means of expression in a certain structure, supporting the communication (not just verbal) with the audience.
[22] Other physiological responses to public performance include perspiration, secretion of the adrenal glands, and increased blood pressure.