Performance has always been a way of bringing to life the formal and conceptual ideas on which art is based, therefore it has the unique attribute of being able to be anything at all. This issue explores the continuing potential of performance art, its role as a catalyst in the history of 20th-century art from Futurism and Dada to the Happenings of Fluxus, body and conceptual art, its use as a weapon against the conventions of established art, its gradual institutionalization, as well as possible directions for the future. Aiming to highlight the many different facets of performance art activity, this issue shows how many artists use performance exclusively as part of their work and how it has infiltrated all areas of art practice in the 1990s.