"I'm not a Nazi" ("Ich bin kein Nazi"), Action Art (Aktion/Aktionskunst) by Sebastian Bieniek. Berlin, 1998

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)

"I'm not a Nazi" ("Ich bin kein Nazi"), Action Art (Aktion/Aktionskunst) by Sebastian Bieniek (B1EN1EK). Berlin, 1998. Großer Stern, Berlin. Bieniek had pasted election posters with a photo of Adolf Hitler to protest against the now so common election lies. Lies that show that in the election time anything can be said, nothing is true and nobody cares, because nobody's responsible for telling truth and nobody does. The politics and also the life is like instagram: "everybody just cares to be beautiful in the one-second-moment of a like or a vote".

Decription of the "Action Art Artwork":

From the point of view of Sebastian Bieniek, the 1998 election campaign was the dirtiest he had ever seen in an election campaign. Helmut Kohl and the CDU, which absolutely wanted to keep their power, decided on the so-called "red sock campaign", which was about denigrating the SPD and PDS (now renamed in "Die Linke", so the "left party") with everything that could be done.

Sebastian Bieniek asked himself in this context: how far can one actually stretch the truth in connection with politics? When will it get weird? This gave rise to the idea for this campaign, which took place in the summer of 1998 on eight election posters around the Großer Stern in the center of Berlin.

At five o'clock in the morning Sebastian Bieniek pasted over all election posters around the Großer Stern in Berlin with a poster of Adolf Hitler under which was written in large letters: "I am not a Nazi".

The first posters were very lovingly removed and taken away by young Nazis (incidentally, this is where Sebastian Bieniek first began to think about the fake, which he later formulated in his book REALFAKE. In this case, about how easy it is actually neo-Nazis in the middle You only need a poster from Adolf Hitler and they come out of their own accord).

Documentation:

"I'm not a Nazi" ("Ich bin kein Nazi"), Action Art (Aktion/Aktionskunst) by Sebastian Bieniek (B1EN1EK). Berlin, 1998. Großer Stern, Berlin. Bieniek had pasted election posters with a photo of Adolf Hitler to protest against