A couple of weeks ago I had to give a presentation (a 3000 word paper) outlining my PhD research. I described as best I could the connections I've been making between feminist performance art and self-help, explaining how self-disclosure, prevalent in live art and therapeutic contexts, is the focus of my analysis as a tactic of belonging and possibly empowerment. Simon O'Sullivan pointed out that the activities of the artists I am looking at (as well as my own work) are representations, so it's one step removed from life and therefore to look to these activities as 'technologies of the self' or potential ethical models is a bit odd (not necessarily impossible, but strange and intriguing). I'm not quoting him verbatim, but the gist of what he was saying, or rather asking, was how am I to deal with these different registers of life and representation? It's an interesting point and one I haven't considered in detail yet. That said, his words reminded me of a comment made by the artist Lynn Hersmann Leeson at the screening of her film Women Art Revolution at Whitechapel gallery in December. Someone asked her why performance art was a medium taken up by so many women artists during second-wave feminism's heyday, to which she responded that it's a medium that did not require institutional support; you could do it in your daily life - no gallery necessary. So as a woman who was struggling to find a space to make art (or get recognition as an artist), it was a solution. From 1973-9 Leeson lived as her alter-ego Roberta Breitmore, who got a driver's license and even went to see a psychotherapist. Breitmore is Leeson's lived representation of selfhood, and the activity of being someone else is a way of acting in the world (as an artist and a person) that deserves consideration. Today women's representation in the art world has not reached total parity with men, but we're a lot better off now (as Leeson's more recent institutional successes make evident). The idea that a woman can be an artist (or any other profession, for that matter) is not an issue. So the question is, what remains worthwhile about performance art as a feminist or ethical practice?