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<p>The medium of performance art locates both the art-making subject and the art object
in the body of the artist. Performance art thus serves as an appropriate medium for
integrating the complex, repetitive, and often unconscious somatic knowledges developed
by two distinct experiences: the practice of religious ritual and the overwhelming
conditions of trauma. In this dissertation, I explore the foundational idea that
the artist's body can become a site of both theological significance and traumatic
memory. I examine the connections among the forms of performance art, bodily worship
practices, and traumatic experience in the work of three contemporary U.S. performance
artists with devout religious backgrounds. Born between the1940s and the 1960s, Linda
Montano, John Duncan, and Ron Athey have all consistently positioned their work in
religious contexts. This trans-generational set of artists represents a spectrum
of Christian traditions in the United States: Athey's improvisational Pentecostalism,
the liturgical tradition of Montano's Catholicism, and mainstream Protestantism in
the form of Duncan's Calvinist Presbyterianism. At the same time, all three artists
struggle with the persistent affect of traumatic experience, from domestic violence
to sexual assault. These artists' works represent their traumatic experiences as
mediated through the bodily, visual, intellectual, and aural forms of their respective
Christian traditions. My dissertation identifies religion as a neglected foundation
of performance art and as a fundamental motivating factor and force in shaping its
forms, content, and significance.</p>
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