In Live Art in LA, Peggy Phelan explores the histories and legacies of performance art in Southern California in the 1970s and early 80s. This book documents and critically examines one of the most productive periods in the history of live art, representing a major re-evaluation of the history of performance studies, by one of the original pioneers of the field.

Peggy Phelan is the author of Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (Routledge, 1993); Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (Routledge, 1997); the survey essay for Art and Feminism, ed. Helena Reckitt (Phaidon, 2001); the survey essay for Pipilotti Rist (Phaidon, 2001); and the catalog essay for Intus: Helena Almeida (Lisbon, 2004). She is co-editor, with the late Lynda Hart, of Acting Out: Feminist Performances (University of Michigan Press, 1993); and co-editor with Jill Lane of The Ends of Performance (New York University Press, 1997). She has published more than 60 articles and essays in scholarly, artistic, and commercial magazines ranging from Artforum to Signs; these essays have been cited in the fields of architecture, art history, psychoanalytic criticism, visual culture, performance studies, theatre studies, and film and video studies.

Table of Contents

Violence and Rupture: Misfires of the Ephemeral

Peggy Phelan

Happening Again: Reinventing Allan Kaprow

Michael Ned Holte

Voices, Variations and Deviations: From the LACE Archive of Southern California Performance Art

Suzanne Lacy and Jennifer Flores Sternad

Lost Bodies: Early 1970s Los Angeles Performance Art in Art History

Amelia Jones