From the Dada cabarets of First World War–era Zurich to the New York City “happenings” of the 1960s, performance art has always flourished in troubled times, and today is no different. Except that this most amorphous of live art forms has now established itself in an ever-more-diverse array of locales, some of which might seem surprising.

“It’s really hot in Southeast Asia and South America, and beginning to be hot in Africa—in politicized places, because, of course, it allows people to express their opinion through their body,” says performance-art veteran Randy Gledhill. “The art infrastructure kind of creates a bit of diplomatic immunity for protest.”

Gledhill can attest to this fact. In 2008, he toured performance-art festivals in Thailand and Burma, with his shows including an unsanctioned appearance at a Yangon restaurant. In Chiang Mai, he built honey-baited “ant amusements” in a university courtyard, then read Noam Chomsky and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the busy insects—and to the students drawn by this unlikely spectacle.

“At the end of the performance I gave the books away to the audience, so I infected Thailand with Chomsky and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he says slyly. “And of course the notion is that the ants have collective intelligence, so they’re spreading these ideas amongst themselves.”

The notion of performance art as a medium for personal and political liberation is at the heart of LIVE 2009, which Gledhill is curating and which takes place at a number of Vancouver venues through next Saturday (October 31). (For a full schedule, see www.livebiennale.ca/.)

It’s never really fair to ask a curator to pick favourites, but when pressed Gledhill cites Gwendoline Robin and Norico Sunayama as two must-see performers.

“Gwendoline is a pyrotechnician,” he says of the Belgian artist, who’ll perform on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Robson Street steps on Friday (October 23). “I saw her in Bangkok, and it was really great. She has a very long wick that burns very slowly, and she wears fire gear—a helmet and all that stuff—and then the wick slowly works its way to her and climbs her body until it gets to her head—and then her head blows up!

“And I saw Norico’s piece in Toronto, and it’s surprisingly emotional,” he adds of Sunayama, whose A Sultry World 1995-2009 runs from noon to 6 p.m. at Centre A next Friday and Saturday (October 30 and 31). “She sits on top of a 10-foot-tall chair and has this giant red-velvet dress that extends 40 feet onto the floor. People crawl under the dress, and underneath her it’s kind of like a house made from the dress, and there’s notebooks which you can write in. People were really moved by it; something you might expect would be sexy was much more connective. It’s a beautiful piece, and there are several different ways to interpret it.”

Two more different approaches to performance—one static, the other literally explosive—would be hard to imagine, and it’s this diversity that attracts Gledhill to his chosen medium. “One thing I like about performance,” he says, “is that I never know what’s going to happen.”