What is the difference between "Performance", "Action Art", "Installation Art" and Video Art?

When the artist or the body of the artist is in focus, so the acting is part of the artwork, it's a performance. When the artist isn't visible but it's still about people and when it's that fast changing in time that you can see the "Beginning" and then "End", than it's "Action Art" (Happaning is kind of outsourced - not directed by a single artist but by many). Installation is when you can't see it "changing" in time, so it looks always the same, or can be at least restored, and when it's about objects.

However even still some installations like "My Breath rests here" ("Hier ruht mein Atem") have some performance character (at least in the creation phase), but than again not really, because than "the painting of a painting" could be also a performance, so it's more about the focus.

A recorded and shown as a video performance, without real life viewer and the interaction with the viewer like "The 30 € truth" or "Crying for this Video" for example is a video. (Definition by Bieniek)

"About Painting" ("Über Malen"), video art

by Sebastian Bieniek, 2012,

During a visit in 2012, Sebastian Bieniek discovers that his mother has recently started painting. She paints flowers. The son first praises her. Praises that she paints at all and tries something new, then he takes a closer look at the painted flowers, asks about the color, the base, touches the base, turns it over and realizes that the base is nothing more than his own photos. His mother had cut the large-format one-offs of his photos, which he had stored at her place, into small pieces and painted flowers on them. At first there are discussions and accusations, but then the son decides to turn the game around again and to make his work of art, which has become his mother's work, his own work again. He calls it "Overpainted Sebastian Bieniek".

The decumentation of this process became an own "Video Artwork", it's name is "About Painting" ("Über Malen").

Sebastian Bieniek's mother showing him proudly the plowers that she pained over his photographs in 2012 and that became
"Overpainted Sebastian Bieniek". The decumentation of this process became an own "Video Artwork", it's name is "About Painting" ("Über Malen").

 "Oberpainted Sebastian Bieniek No. 1", 69 x 60,50 cm. Acrylic on photo. 2001-2012

 "Oberpainted Sebastian Bieniek No. 2", 70,5 x 60 cm. Acrylic on photo. 2001-2012

 "Oberpainted Sebastian Bieniek No. 3", 68,5 x 60 cm. Acrylic on photo. 2001-2012

Sebastian Bieniek's Meisterschülerausstellung (Doploma-Exhibition), University of Arts, Berlin, 2002. This photographs were cutted by his mother in pieces and overpainted with flowers in 2012.

Sebastian Bieniek's Meisterschülerausstellung (Doploma-Exhibition), University of Arts, Berlin, 2002. This photographs were cutted by his mother in pieces and overpainted with flowers in 2012.

Sebastian Bieniek's Meisterschülerausstellung (Doploma-Exhibition), University of Arts, Berlin, 2002. This photographs were cutted by his mother in pieces and overpainted with flowers in 2012.

Sebastian Bieniek's Meisterschülerausstellung (Doploma-Exhibition), University of Arts, Berlin, 2002. This photographs were cutted by his mother in pieces and overpainted with flowers in 2012.

The entire "other conceptual art" oeuvre (which "Overpainted Sebastian Bieniek" is part of) is, in a very specific way, a kind of resurrection oeuvre.

Every artwork from this oeuvre, from the very first one which is "The Turning around Drawing" (a circle of again and again) to "The Phoenix Paintings", to "Recycled Sol LeWitt", to "The Stolen 100 DM", to "Overpainted Sebastian Bieniek", even "Bird Shit on Gold", is telling the story of to fall and get up again and again.