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.

What is the differance between video art and film? Video art comes from the tradition of art and film from the tradition of entertainment (or educaton - in anyway film has a "service traditon", art not ) .

(Definition by Bieniek)

"Crying for this Video", video art by Sebastian Bieniek (B1EN1EK), 1999

12 min. Video with Martin Hagenguth and Miriam Kurth. Original S-VHS.

"Crying for this video", video art by Sebastian Bieniek, 1999. As with many of his other works, Sebastian Bieniek depicts the truth as untruth. The wanderer between realities that he seems to be plays with what is and is not like with two twin siblings who alternately swap roles.

From this the artist seems to generate a movement and dynamic that seems to drive not only his work but also much more beyond that.

"Crying for this video", video art by Sebastian Bieniek, 1999. As with many of his other works, Sebastian Bieniek depicts the truth as untruth. The wanderer between realities that he seems to be plays with what is and is not like with two twin siblings who alternately swap roles