Giacomo Fronzi's Philosophical Exploration of Performance

Giacomo Fronzi, a musician and professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bari, has published a new book titled "Performance. Itinerario Filosofico Storico-Artistico" (Castelvecchi, 2025) that examines performance from a philosophical perspective, spanning art, dance, theater, and music. In an interview with Artribune, Fronzi discusses his aim to fill a gap in philosophical reflection on performance, proposing a tripartite categorization: ordinary non-artistic performance (everyday actions with transformative capacity), extra-ordinary non-artistic performance (actions with quantifiable results involving others), and artistic performance (divided into specific performance, i.e., execution-interpretation, and absolute performance, where creation, execution, and audience are simultaneous, as in Marina Abramović's work). He argues that performance can foster aesthetic education and critical awareness in a society driven by beauty and pleasure. The book's second part reconstructs the "performative turn" in 20th- and 21st-century theater, performance art, music, and dance, featuring about forty paradigmatic figures including Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Gina Pane, Rebecca Horn, Nam June Paik, Frederic Rzewski, Pina Bausch, and Xavier Le Roy. Fronzi also reflects on the potential impact of AI on performance, seeing both opportunities for novel performative solutions and risks of dulling imagination. The interview was conducted by Santa Nastro, deputy director of Artribune.