Performing Political Acts: Performance Art in Northern Ireland: Ritual, Catharsis and Transformation

Abstract

Since the early nineteen seventies artists have been creating performances, art actions, interventions, and other time-based art in Northern Ireland during a period of traumatic civil conflict. I explore how and why radical art was made in an environment of political conflict taking place in a developed western society, such as Northern Ireland, and if this art, produced through performance, contributes to personal and/or societal conflict transformation.