When judged by traditional aesthetic standards, most contemporary performance art seems to fall short. For if it is assessed by such criteria as the truth or depth of its content, the coherence of its form, or the permanence and universality of its appeal, most performance art appears superficial, haphazard and ephemeral. These criticisms are often raised about such performance pieces as John Cage's 1952 "Untitled," in which he presented an array of unrelated sounds to his audience; Vito Acconci's 1969 "Following Piece," in which he followed a randomly selected person through New York City for a day, and his 1972 "Seedbed," in which he masturbated beneath a ramp while his "audience" walked over it; Terry Fox's 1978 "Food Cover," in which he "played" a food cover for 24 hours in a 100-foot long tunnel; Chris Burden's 1972 piece "220," in which he had his audience of three people climb onto ladders in a gallery flooded with four inches of water, and then dropped a 220 volt line into the water, leaving everyone stranded from midnight to dawn; and his 1973 "Shoot," in which he had a friend shoot him in the arm with a rifle; Laurie Anderson's 1978 performance "Ice," in which she played the violin on ice shoes until they melted, and Karen Finley's 1991 "Victims," in which she smeared chocolate and tinsel on her body. If these works are paradigmatic of the genre, it is not surprising that critics such as Arthur Danto dismiss performance art as "ephemeral, self-conscious, thin, foolish, scruffy and awful" (Mifflin 88).

But if these criteria invariably deem performance art a failure, it is possible that the criteria themselves are inappropriate, and that they distort and conceal the objectives and strategies of performance art. In this essay I argue that this is the case, suggesting that performance art is a form of contemporary sophistic rhetoric, a prototype of which is Gorgias's epideictic; and that its premises are antithetical to and potentially subversive of conventional or "foundationalist" aesthetics. I propose that much as Gorgias uses the epideictic as an instrument to challenge the foundationalist assumptions of his audiences, so contemporary performance artists often engage in an analogous project, participating in a postmodern or "new" sophistic and struggling against what Michael Leff calls "the decaying but still powerful empire of foundationalist thought"(Leff 19). To establish this thesis, I first examine how Gorgias uses the epideictic as a sophistic instrument, arguing that in each of his four extant works he challenges his audience's fundamental ways of perceiving and thinking in a specific situation by inducing a "crisis of reason"; and that to the extent that he succeeds he subverts and potentially liberates them from some of their cognitive presuppositions. I then show how contemporary performance artists present analogous challenges to their audiences, and why foundationalist standards of truth, coherence and permanence are inappropriate for assessing their works.

Dis/playing the audience

In order to understand Gorgias's use of the epideictic, it isuseful first to see why he rejects the premises of foundationalist aesthetics. The classical foundationalist, for whom art is in the broadest sense "mimetic," posits the existence of a determinate and knowable social, natural or supernaturalreality, and construes the artist as imitating or re-presenting some aspect of that reality through an established medium. In Aristotle's formulation of this view, art is mimetic of human life, and the artist uses such media as music, dance or voice to imitate or represent events, emotions and character (Poetics 1447a1-28). Gorgias rejects these foundationalist premises, holding that "reality" can never serve as a foundation for any logos because it is within logos that people fabricate their conception of reality. In Sextus's terms, Gorgias "abolish[es] the criterion" for logos, rejecting any external basis for assessing the validity of a given logos (On Not-Being). Gorgias thusargues that "nothing exists" independently of human perception and articulation; that even if such a putative reality did exist it could not be known; and even if it could somehow be known it could not be communicated through any discourse or logos (On Not Being). Human perception and communication are determined by the ultimately arbitrary protocols of logos itself; and every assertion that purports to replicate the nature of "things in themselves" is inherently deceptive. "All who have and do persuade people of things," he asserts, "do so by molding a false argument" (Helen 11). In G. B. Kerferd's terms, Gorgias introduces a "radical gulf between logos and the things to which it refers." For logos can never succeed in "reproducing as it were in itself that reality which is irretrievably outside itself. To the extent that it claims faithfully to reproduce reality it is no more than deception or apate" (Kerferd 81).

By rejecting the premise of an objectively knowable and articulatable reality, Gorgias abandons the foundationalist picture of the artist as "holding a mirror to nature," of observing and articulating truths about reality through a skilled use of a privileged medium. In its place, Gorgias offers a metaphor of every individual, whether he or she is labelled an artist, scientist, philosopher or orator (Helen13), as engaged in an ongoing and unpredictable battle, wherein his or her sole "reality" is a series of unique "contests" requiring "daring and skill" (DK 8B). In Gorgias's metaphor, each moment of confrontation is radically novel and discrete, a "moment of crisis" in which one must discern a kairos, an "opening" or opportunity if he is to succeed (White 14). Significantly, Gorgias derives the term kairos from the two arts of archery and weaving; for each individual, like an archer in battle, must discern a kairos or the momentary "opening" in the defenses of an adversary; and, like a weaver who finds the kairos in the opening of the fabric being woven, he or she must "weave" a persuasive text by using the devices of the available logos in order to deceptively persuade and conquer an adversary or audience (Onians 343-348). Those who use logos most effectively to deceive their adversaries become dominant, just as Paris deceives and manipulates Helen of Troy; and the established or "conventional" logos in a community in itself becomes a "powerful lord," a dunastis megas that constitutes and regulates the perceptions and modes of thinking of its users (Helen 8). By fabricating what is accepted as reality, the dominant or hegemonious logos in effect "creates" the members of a community as as potters create their pots (DK 19A).

Given his view that most people, like Helen of Troy, tend to be deceived and indeed enslaved by the deceptive fabrications and permissible modes of thinking of the dominant logos, Gorgias characterizes his own project as sophist or educator to be the liberation (eleutheria) and empowerment of his audiences (Gorgias 452d). This "liberation," for Gorgias, can be achieved only if one becomes aware that acceding to the deception imposed by the dominant logos may prevent one from perceiving and behaving in each new moment most effectively. For only by abandoning the received truths and commonplaces fabricated in their logos will people be able to discern what John Poulakos calls the infinite "possibilities" that an alternative logos can create (Poulakos 1984, 221). Unlike conventional "artists" who purport to represent and communicate truths, Gorgias seeks to expose the deceptive nature of those truths, in effect unravelling the fabric of logos in which the "truths" were woven. It is to effect this "liberation" of his audiences and himself, I submit, that Gorgias uses the epideictic, a genre in which he challenges and potentially exposes the arbitrary foundations of his audience's perceptions and thoughts. Stated another way, he holds a mirror not to nature, but to the audience itself, "displaying" the arbitrariness of their own logos and the ways in which they are deceived by it. Gorgias's challenge often takes the form of "making a weaker position appear stronger," wherein he shows his audience that their conventional mode of speaking and reasoning leads logically to overtly preposterous or absurd conclusions (Pease 33). In each of his four extant epideictic works, Gorgias thus induces a "crisis of reason" for his audience, exposing the inherent limits and inadequacy of their privileged logos, and requiring them to confront the immediate crisis in a new way.

In his Epitaphios, or "Athenian Funeral Oration," first, Gorgias challenges the logos of a typical state funeral, showing that rather than providing a privileged access to truth, it may also present something that to a conventional audience would be patently absurd and "offensive" (Dodds 8, Lanham 15). For in his oration he argues that the slain Athenian warriors, the putative defenders of eternal values, in fact possessed the same relativistic values as himself (Loraux 224-229). The warriors, Gorgias explains, were able to succeed as warriors and citizens because they eschewed rigid principles and adapted to the requirements of the moment. In order to render this challenge effective, Gorgias presents himself as a somber official orator addressing a mourning crowd of Athenians, deploys an elaborate array of homoioteleuta, isokola, and other figures that simulates the "high" style of other works of the genre, and cleverly argues that the warriors were masters of the sophistic virtue of kairos itself, that "most godlike and universal law" (Epitaphios). In his Encomium for Helen, next, Gorgias challenges another received view, namely the "univocal and unanimous" view of the poets that Helen of Troy was responsible for initiating the Trojan War (Helen 2). In his oration, Gorgias challenges the presuppositions of a quite different audience, deploying a witty and allegorical style to argue that Helen is innocent because she was a slave to logos itself. In his Apology for Palamedes , Gorgias challenges the view that through legal reasoning one may determine the innocence or guilt of an individual. Specifically, Gorgias shows that Palamedes may be persuasively defended as innocent, though he was deemed guilty by his peers. To mount his challenge to legal reasoning, Gorgias takes on the role of Palamedes himself, addresses a typical Athenian jury, deploys an overtly formal legal style, and argues his case in a strictly factual and logical manner. And in his On Nature or Not-Being , finally, Gorgias challenges the ability of metaphysical discourse to arrive at the truth. To meet this challenge, he takes on the role of a metaphysician addressing members of the Eleatic school, employs their abstruse terminology and protocols of argument, and proceeds to prove something ostensibly preposterous, namely that "nothing exists."

Beyond truth, coherence and permanence

In each of his four epideictic performances, Gorgias induces a "crisis of reason" for his audience by displaying the arbitrariness and artificiality of their logos and the illusory "foundations" it fabricates; and in so doing he invites them to respond to the crisis by thinking and speaking in a new way. But whereas Gorgias uses the epideictic for this end, his various orations may not initially seem similar to the works of contemporary performance artists. It may seem that his Epitaphios, for example, is a far cry from Acconci's following someone through New York City, Burden's stranding three people on ladders in his gallery, or Cage's presentation of random sounds and silences. But I suggest that there is a fundamental analogy between Gorgias's epideictic and these postmodern performances, namely that the performance artist, like Gorgias, places his audience-- and himself-- in a situation that challenges conventional means of perceiving, thinking and behaving. This construal of performance art as constructing a novel and challenging situation is suggested by the remarks of Acconci, who states that the performance artist "present[s] a situation" in which he and his audience are required to respond. When he follows someone through the city, for example, he constructs a situation in which the individual being followed must use whatever resource he has available to deal with the challenge it poses. Terry Fox is equally emphatic about the project of constructing a critical situation to which he and his audience must respond. He remarks that rather than "performance," a more revealing term is "situation. I make a situation. The actual situation is what's going on in the space we're in. And the situation involves everybody there, and there is a blend when everybody starts participating" (White "Interview" 202). When Cage presents a series of arbitrary and random sounds, he constructs a situation in which he and his audience must use these sounds to compose a coherent pattern of meaning. In Laura Kuhn's terms, Cage encourages "through the arbitrariness of their very design, an opening of the mind to new modes of perception and idea" (Kuhn 20). And in a similar vein, Anderson remarks that in such works as her "United States" I really try to leave a lot of room and a lot of air so that people can draw their own conclusions. . . . it's the process I'm interested in. For example, a lot of rhythms are created visually, the music is going, and the pictures are going. . . and that creates a kind of counterpoint between what you're seeing and what you're hearing, a kid of polyrhythmic situation that you put together yourself (Amirkhanian 220).

Insofar as performance art is designed to undermine the premises of foundationalist thought, it is understandable that critics who rely on the foundationalist criteria of truth, coherence and permanence will, like Socrates in his critique of Lysias's sophistic epideictic, invariably deem them superficial and haphazard (Plato Phaedrus 234e-235b). The critic who wishes to benefit from performance art must abandon each of these criteria; for insofar as he uses them he will conceal and repress its efforts at exposure and liberation. First, the critic should not expect performance art to present "truths" about any putative "reality" outside of the moment of performance itself, whether that reality be construed as physical, psychological, social or spiritual. For to the performance artist, all such putative truths are deceptive fabrications of an arbitrary logos; and insofar as they are presented as valid they tend to obstruct one's ability to discern and deal creatively with a novel crisis. Anderson thus asserts that in her performances "[M]y greatest fear is to be didactic" (Amirkhanian 220); and Burden states that "I don't think my pieces provide answers" (Burden 223). The critic should thus examine the nature of the audience's "truth" or belief that the performance artist is challenging; the specific strategies she uses to induce a crisis in her audience's perception and mode of thinking; and the extent to which she succeeds in leading them to recognize the illusory presuppositions that have led them to adhere to such a "truth."

Next, the critic must abandon the notion that the performance art must possess a structural coherence or integrity that is achieved by conforming to the patterns of an established genre or canon. Unlike the conventional artist who relies on these "foundational" patterns to compose a coherent aesthetic object, the performance artist takes as part of her task the exposure of the artificiality and arbitrariness of the genres she uses. Just as Gorgias distorts and conflates the established genres of encomium with apology in Helen in order to "challenge and replace traditional beliefs" (Poulakos 1986, 302), so the postmodern performance artist draws attention to the ways conventional genres, as instruments of the hegemonious logoi, may impose their own arbitrary order and thereby reinforce conventional ways of seeing. As RoseLee Goldberg notes, the performance artist draws upon existing procedures and methods to break from them; and "whenever a certain school. . . seemed to have gained a stranglehold on art production and criticism, artists turned to performance as a way of breaking down categories and indicating new directions" (Goldberg 25-26). The performance artist, like the sophist, engages in what Roger Moss calls "violence" against the established logos, one that "wrests words out of their accustomed forms" and "violates the sacred relationship between words and thoughts" (Moss 216). Rather than looking for a structures of the work as a series of strategies designed to exploit and subvert existing structures rather than conform to expected patterns.

Finally, the critic should not judge performance art in respect to the permanence and universality of its appeal. Rather than expecting it to represent universal truths, he should recognize that performance art constructs a situation in which a received commonplace or mode of thinking is exposed as arbitrary andobstructive; and as such each performance, as an assault launched in a particular place and time, will be ephemeral and local.Because each performance constructs a novel and unique situation, it is inherently ephemeral, having an impact only on those immediately engaged in it. Thus Acconci's act of following his "audience" through New York city for a day, Burden's stranding three people on ladders, or Cage's presentation of random sounds and silences on a given occasion, has an impact only on the particular audience engaged in the situation. Further, rather than attempting to communicate to all perceptive observers, the performance artist is able to reach only those audience members who are willing to submit to the cognitive "risk" involved in the challenge. Gorgias remarks that his kind of rhetoric demands "risk" or tolmes (Deils B8); and whereas this risk need not involve the bodily risk of Burden's "220," it requires that the audience be willing to risk its fundamental beliefs and modes of thinking. Just as each of Gorgias's epideictic performances is an overtly "occasional" oration directed to a specific audience, so each contemporary performance, in presenting a specific challenge to an audience in a particular situation, is invariably local rather than universal, influencing only those immediately involved. The performance artist does not strive to create a well-wrought "Grecian Urn" that transcends time and place, but instead may be said to offer, in Wallace Stevens' words, an ephemeral performance on a "blue guitar," wherein for those in attendance "The blue guitar/Becomes the place of things as they are," and for whom "Things as they are/Are changed upon the blue guitar" (Stevens 168, 165).

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