Performance Art

There's a choice little piece of waterfront property along Fort Point Channel, snug to the Summer Street Bridge along the Harbor Walk. Early last week, the place was surrounded by a picket fence and had a "For Rent" sign up. So what if it's only 8 feet square, and floating in the channel. It looked darling in the late afternoon sun — at least until a redheaded woman in a business suit arrived in a kayak and started renovating. She tore down part of the fence, built a desk, and picked up a phone.

Nancy Fromson These 2011 volunteers helped make Performing Arts happen at Crocker Park. The following was submitted by the Marblehead Festival of Arts (MFoA): Before the musicians take the stage at The Marblehead Festival of Arts at Crocker Park, the stage has to be built. And before they utter a note, the sound and lights have to be up and running. These tasks, and many others, are the job of the volunteer Sound & Lights Crew & the Performing Arts Committee.

Zhang Huan is the type of artist whom many outside the rarefied world of performance art label a crackpot. He has covered his naked body in honey and fish oil and sat in a public toilet, attracting flies. For his piece "Zhang Huan: Seeds of Hamburg," documented in a series of photographs on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, he coated himself with honey and birdseed and closed himself in a cage with 28 doves. Under rainy skies Monday evening in "Zhang Huan: My Boston," a live performance, he had himself buried under a pile of books.

There's a choice little piece of waterfront property along Fort Point Channel, snug to the Summer Street Bridge along the Harbor Walk. Early last week, the place was surrounded by a picket fence and had a "For Rent" sign up. So what if it's only 8 feet square, and floating in the channel. It looked darling in the late afternoon sun — at least until a redheaded woman in a business suit arrived in a kayak and started renovating. She tore down part of the fence, built a desk, and picked up a phone.

Some artists got naked on Wall Street during a performance art piece — and then they got arrested. The two men and a woman were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct Monday morning outside the New York Stock Exchange. Manhattan artist Zefrey Throwell organized the 5-minute social critique of Wall Street with dozens of volunteers acting like people at work. He says he didn't intend to provoke police and his target was U.S. and world financial institutions. Among those arrested was Brooklyn personal trainer and performance artist Eric Clinton Anderson, who played a naked...

The bedroom is brightly decorated with ocean blue walls, family pictures and photo-imprinted pillows and blankets of the mother-to-be. An inflatable birthing pool and air mattress for the midwife and doula lie near the bed. A soundtrack of the ocean plays nonstop. Marni Kotak has created a cozy environment for the birth of her first child. But the bedroom is not in her home. It is in a Brooklyn art gallery. The 36-year-old Kotak is a performance artist who has created a home-birth center at the Microscope Gallery where she plans to deliver her baby as a work of art sometime...

It's as famous a sentence as there is: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. " Yet if Anna Karenina had been an artist, Tolstoy would have had to add another clause: "But let's talk about me. " Part of the fascination of "Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project," which runs at the Museum of Fine Arts as part of its "Art on Film" series, is that the documentary is so firmly planted at the intersection...

There are the gender explorations of Eddie Izzard, Barry Humphries, Martin Lawrence, and Tyler Perry. Then there's Neil Megson, whose ideas of gender go far beyond garden-variety drag. He's in his 60s now, and in the early 1970s, Megson began practicing performance art under the nom d'avant garde Genesis P-Orridge. His art collective, COUM Transmissions, took off and he founded the proto-industrial band Throbbing Gristle, then another outfit called Psychic TV. But I imagine he'd say his masterpiece was the project he started with his...

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum has announced its slate for The 2012 deCordova Biennial, and the list is full of conceptual and process-driven artists who juggle many media. "This year, we wanted another vision, another voice," said curator Dina Deitsch, who has partnered with guest curator Abigail Ross Goodman. For 10 years, Goodman ran the forward-thinking Judi Rotenberg Gallery. "Just as we were talking about it, Abi closed the gallery… . She's in tune with the edgy and contemporary art landscape in Boston.

When Cirque du Soleil performers swung into action at Sunday night's Academy Awards, they delivered a bolt of energy to an otherwise torpid broadcast - and a reminder that contemporary circus ensembles occupy a secure niche on the entertainment landscape. In the past couple of years, in performances by such troupes as Les 7 Doigts de la Main and Cirque Eloize (as well as a couple of appearances by the now-venerable Cirque du Soleil itself), Boston audiences have seen the creative magic that can be generated when the circus arts are married to...

Performance art must be documented. And the photos that document it are no substitute for the performance itself. Having seen many such images, I went into a retrospective of the late Bob Raymond with some hesitation. Raymond photographed performances at, and sponsored by, the artist-run organization Mobius for close to three decades. Mobius is the granddaddy of performance art venues in Boston, and Raymond, who died in February at 59 after a brief illness, had been around since nearly the beginning.

There are the gender explorations of Eddie Izzard, Barry Humphries, Martin Lawrence, and Tyler Perry. Then there's Neil Megson, whose ideas of gender go far beyond garden-variety drag. He's in his 60s now, and in the early 1970s, Megson began practicing performance art under the nom d'avant garde Genesis P-Orridge. His art collective, COUM Transmissions, took off and he founded the proto-industrial band Throbbing Gristle, then another outfit called Psychic TV. But I imagine he'd say his masterpiece was the project he started with his younger,...

When Cirque du Soleil performers swung into action at Sunday night's Academy Awards, they delivered a bolt of energy to an otherwise torpid broadcast - and a reminder that contemporary circus ensembles occupy a secure niche on the entertainment landscape. In the past couple of years, in performances by such troupes as Les 7 Doigts de la Main and Cirque Eloize (as well as a couple of appearances by the now-venerable Cirque du Soleil itself), Boston audiences have seen the creative magic that can be generated when the circus arts are married to dance, music,...

PICK OF THE DAY One in 10 We've had almost 10 years of ‘‘American Idol," a life-changing show for Kelly Clarkson. The season one winner has never looked back and gets stronger and ‘‘Stronger" with her latest release. The Grammy winner has said about the record that she was influenced by Tina Turner, Prince, Sheryl Crow, and Radiohead. Matt Nathanson opens. 7:30 p.m. $35.50-$55.50. Verizon Wireless Arena, 555 Elm St., Manchester, N.H. 800-745-3000. www.livenation.com TODAY A century If performance art hasn't made it onto your screen, mosey over to the Boston University Art...

The bedroom is brightly decorated with ocean blue walls, family pictures and photo-imprinted pillows and blankets of the mother-to-be. An inflatable birthing pool and air mattress for the midwife and doula lie near the bed. A soundtrack of the ocean plays nonstop. Marni Kotak has created a cozy environment for the birth of her first child. But the bedroom is not in her home. It is in a Brooklyn art gallery. The 36-year-old Kotak is a performance artist who has created a home-birth center at the Microscope Gallery where she plans to deliver her baby as a work of art...

The last of my show-and-tells from the "Dance Your PhD" 2011 contest is Michael Smith's " Guarding and Robbing Behavior in Social Insects . " From the author:  When social insects build up food stores, they also have to defend them. In most cases, identifying a foreign individual is simple, such as a bear attacking a beehive. But for many social insects, robbing can also occur from ... individuals of the same species, but from another colony. --- Honeybee robbing behavior can be very destructive, where one hive clears the entire food stores of another...

CLEVELAND -- Daniel Thompson, a poet who gave readings at venues ranging from jazz clubs to jails, died Thursday of leukemia. He was 69. Major D. Ragain, who has taught poetry at Kent State University since 1981, called Mr. Thompson a poet of uncommon tenderness and predicted that his work will become more important over time. "The power of his poems was overshadowed by his personality and his marvelous presence. He was subtle, intricate, and wonderfully lyrical," Ragin said.

General Hospital 3 p.m., Channel 5 I love it that James Franco has a recurring role on “General Hospital,’’ to which he returns this afternoon. He’s kind of dazzling, even in the cheesy soap atmosphere, playing a charismatic, sociopath performance artist named Franco. James Franco says he’s doing “General Hospital’’ as a performance art venture of his own — which gives it a meta twist. We have James Franco doing a performance art piece playing Franco, a performance artist.

Last week, Mr. Improbable and I got to be judges for the 2011 " Dance Your PhD " contest. Here is one of my favorite finalists , Cedric Tan's " Smell-Mediated Response to Relatedness of Potential Mates . "   How charming is this? On the performing arts/audience response/etiquette front, I admire how tastefully they handled the, er, act. As one of the other judges commented, respectfully, "That could have been weird. It wasn't.