Influencers as Performance Artists: From Abramović to IShowSpeed

When we think of performance art, most people imagine serious figures in galleries or museums, challenging audiences with difficult or provocative acts. We rarely think of YouTubers filming challenges, TikTokers dancing, or streamers broadcasting their daily lives. Yet the similarities between influencers and performance artists may be closer than we realize. Are influencers, in their own way, the modern-day heirs of performance art?

Take, for example, Chris Burden’s 1971 work Five Day Locker Piece. At the University of California, Burden locked himself inside a student locker for five full days. He prepared carefully: a water bottle above him, a container for urine below. The work was shocking in its endurance, its risk, and its simplicity. Burden later explained to The New Yorker that he wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, and locking himself inside a tiny metal box was his chosen method. Audiences and critics immediately understood it as art.

Chris Burden’s Locker from *Five Day Locker Piece*, 1971.

Now fast forward fifty years. In 2021, YouTuber Piper Rockelle uploaded a video called “LAST TO LEAVE THE LOCKER WINS $20,000 **Girls Challenge*.” In it, six girls competed to see who could stay in a locker the longest. At first glance, this looks like a silly YouTube challenge with a cash prize. But look closer: the girls decorated their lockers, creating personalized micro-environments. They filmed their discomfort and endurance for an audience. They transformed an ordinary object into a stage. The format, the context, and the cultural capital are different, but is the core idea really so far from Burden’s?

Thumbnail to Piper Rockelle’s LAST TO LEAVE THE LOCKER WINS $20,000 **Girls Challenge*, 2021.

Of course, there are differences. Burden’s locker was smaller, his confinement lasted longer, and his goal was not money but artistic legitimacy. Still, both performances -Burden’s in 1971 and Rockelle’s in 2021- involve endurance, spectacle, and the gaze of an audience. Why, then, is one considered “high art” and the other dismissed as “content”?

This is not an isolated comparison. Marina Abramović’s 2002 performance The House with the Ocean View also offers an interesting parallel. For twelve days, Abramović lived in a transparent structure inside a New York gallery. She did not speak, eat, or leave the space, and audiences observed her every movement. The work dealt with vulnerability, surveillance, and presence.

photo of performance — Marina Abramović, *The House with the Ocean View*, 2002.

Two decades later, livestreamers perform something strikingly similar, but instead of an art gallery, the stage is Twitch or YouTube. A well-known example is IShowSpeed, one of the most-watched streamers of today. Almost daily, he performs live for millions, with streams that blend gaming, chaotic antics, and raw emotional outbursts. In many ways, his channel is less like traditional entertainment and more like a continuous performance, unpredictable and consumed in real time by an audience that watches his every move.

Livestreamer IShowSpeed during a livestream.

While Speed’s streams do not last for weeks at a time like Marina Abramović’s House with the Ocean View, other livestreamers have pushed those endurance limits. According to Guinness World Records, the longest continuous livestream lasted over twenty-four days. Whether in a gallery or online, the setup is the same: the performer offers their presence, and the audience consumes it as spectacle. The contexts differ, but the underlying dynamics (endurance, vulnerability, and constant observation) are uncannily alike.

So what makes something “performance art” rather than “influencer content”? Is it the intention of the performer? The space in which it happens? The way it is framed? Burden and Abramović called themselves artists, placed their work within art institutions, and were written about by critics. Their performances were canonized. By contrast, influencers often frame their work as entertainment, even if their actions are just as extreme, creative, or endurance-based.

One could argue that influencer challenges are the “kitsch” of performance art: imitations without depth, chasing clicks rather than meaning. Yet this dismissal overlooks the cultural power influencers hold. Millions watch their content, repeat their challenges, and shape their lives around online performances. In other words, influencers are not pretending to be performance artists; they have simply relocated performance art into a new cultural economy, one measured by views, likes, and followers instead of critical essays or gallery exhibitions.

Perhaps the question is not whether influencers can be considered performance artists, but whether performance art has escaped the museum and found a new life on digital platforms. The aesthetics may be brighter, the intentions less intellectual, the audiences younger, but the logic of the performance is strikingly similar. Both demand endurance, vulnerability, creativity, and a willingness to live under the gaze of others.

Maybe Burden locking himself in a student locker and a YouTuber doing the same fifty years later are not so different after all. Both acts challenge the body, transform ordinary spaces, and invite an audience to witness. The difference is in how we frame it: one is “art,” the other is “content.” But in a digital culture where the lines between entertainment, art, and life are constantly blurring, perhaps it’s time to admit that influencers are not merely entertainers: they are, in their own way, the performance artists of our age.