Abstract
Actors, extras and models, engaged in scripted or staged performances, have featured prominently in artists’ film and video since the 1990s. But some artists have also used more specifically sculptural means to materialise acting bodies within the physical space of the gallery. Focusing on works by Cécile B. Evans, Nathaniel Mellors and Clemens von Wedemeyer, this chapter explores how artists have articulated changes in the imagination of the human body, within the realm of acting and the performance of emotional labour. Their works suggest an emerging tension between the body conceived as an organic store of experience, following the logic of Method acting, and the body conceived as a surface for the display of signals, to be scanned and recognised by non-human things.