The 5x5x5 Performance series is an eclectic and diverse performance art series hosted by John White.

The series takes place every first Friday of the month at the Sylvia White Gallery, located at 1783 E. Main in Ventura, CA. Five artists perform five pieces at five minutes each. Show starts at 8 p.m.; admission is free. For more information, contact h8email@yahoo.com.

Performance Art is a medium of expression in which the primary material is an "act." What is an act? An act is an event that occurs for the benefit of an audience. Other than this, there are no constraints on the boundaries of Performance Art.

The process of creating Performance Art synthsizes the individual process of the studio artist with the public process of the performing arts. The result is a very personal form of public arts. This accounts for the almost limitless boundaries of the form.

Historically, Performance Art draws upon elements from all the traditional art forms without privileging any particular one. In doing so it exceeds the conventions of those forms and the matrix of conventions which describe the perimeters of the traditional Art/Culture Industry. By extension, Performance Art ultimately defies all the boundaries of dominant culture.

When Performance Art is at its best, the result is a unique system of performance signs that defies the inscribed values of agreed upon language, i.e. the language of daily usage, of politicians, of advertising, etc… The audience is then required to decipher or learn the language of the artist and in the process examine their own values.

In a world where language and dissemination of information constitute the basis of power and attitudes are controlled through hidden values inscribed in language, Performance Art has the potential to reject and reconstitute the language of dominant culture and thus the very focus of its power.

Even to try to define Performance Art is antithetical to the idea of Performance Art which undergoes a constant process of rejecting its own conventions.

-Michael Mufson

Cir. 1975