Defining Performance Art

You will read Kristine Stiles' introduction to performance art this week, where she catalogs a history and impetus for artists' performances. She offers the following, which outlines the genre in some respects:

The artists who began to use their bodies as the material of visual art repeatedly expressed their goal to bring art practice closer to life in order to increase the experiential immediacy of their work. Their powerful declaration of the body as form and content insisted on the primacy of human subjects over objects.

[Stiles, Kristine. "Performance Art." Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Eds. Stiles and Selz. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1996. 679-694.]

Consider the works we have seen so far, the readings for this week, and post your personal working definition of "performance art." Some questions you may have in mind:
-What designates performance art from live theater?
-What role, if any, does mediation play in a definition of performance? Is performance predicated on "liveness"?
-What is the relationship between "originality" and performance? Is each performance unique?
-Does a distinction between public and private have its place in a definition of performance?