Short answers, pulled from the story.
Performance art is artwork created through the actions of an artist or other participants using the artist's own body as the primary medium. This form emerged in the 20th century to challenge the commodification of art by existing only in the moment of execution rather than as a physical object for sale.
The roots of performance art stretch back to the chaos of World War I and the founding of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich on the 1st of February 1916. Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings established this venue as a sanctuary for the Dada movement to protest the logic and order that led to the devastation of the war.
The Fluxus movement emerged as a global network of artists in 1962 and was founded informally by George Maciunas. Key figures in this interdisciplinary wave included Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Joseph Beuys who sought to dissolve the boundaries between art and life.
Chris Burden created Five Day Locker Piece where he was locked in a school locker for five days and Shoot where a friend shot him in the arm with a small-caliber rifle. Tehching Hsieh created Time Clock Piece by taking a photo next to a time clock every hour for an entire year and spent a year confined in a small space.
Feminist performance art rose in the 1970s with artists like Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta, and Judy Chicago creating works that explored the female experience and sexuality. The Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985 to use anonymous masks to critique the discrimination against women in the art world.
The late 1990s and 2000s brought a new dimension to performance art with the integration of digital technologies by artists like Coco Fusco, Shu Lea Cheang, and the Yes Men. This era saw the use of the World Wide Web, digital video, and streaming media to create performances that addressed issues of identity, race, and power.