Performance Art is a multimedia theatrical production in which the performance itself is more important than any narrative or specific message being conveyed, and in which the artist not only creates in most or all of the different media—poetry, dance, music, theater, film, graphic art, mime, etc.— included in the work but also is the performer. The style of presentation is usually fragmentary and allusive rather than narrative (no “story” as such is told), in effect, a series of images. Performance art was developed from about 1970 on. In part it represented a protest against the commercialization of art and against the separation of artist and work: a live performance is necessarily impermanent and everchanging, and creator and performer are one. It also has its roots in the “happenings” of the 1960s, chaotic events originally invented by visual artists using words, music, sound, lighting, and action, practice which usually were performed only once for an audience of observer-participants. Unlike these, performance art clearly separates audience and artist. The first notable performance artists worked as solo performers. One of the most successful, Laurie Anderson (1947– ), an accomplished sculptor and photographer as well as a classical violinist by training, created a work called United States (1978–83) in four hour-long sections that include songs, accompanying instruments, taped sound, lighting, and slide and film projections. Another notable performance artist, Meredith Monk (1943– ), originally primarily a dancer and choreographer, also composed, directed, designed, and made films to present in mixed media performances. By the early 1980s the predominantly solo works of performance art were giving way to more complex collaborative efforts bordering on music theater or opera and involving numerous creators and performers. As with much avant-garde music of this period, the distinctions between performance art, theater, opera, and other genres became more and more blurred.