I guess surgery is performance art too
I refuse to think you really don't get it. You're better than this, and you're arguing for the sake of an argument. Let's try again.
Surgery has nothing to do with an artistic endeavour. 'Success' for a surgery is unequivocally defined: survival of the patient and improvement of whatever condition they had that led them to need and receive surgery. Mistakes in surgery? Also immediately and unequivocally defined.
To go back to my previous example: Designing, building and launching the James Webb Space Telescope? Success is unequivocally defined. Mistakes are clearly defined. Failure is unequivocally defined. All errors and failure paths are carefully analysed and simulated by the engineers and the scientists. If mistakes happen, everybody will agree they were mistakes, because success of this (non-artistic) endeavour was clear to anyone.
Now back to art. An example. Taking a picture of that iconic bit of flat rock in Yosemite. Success is not unequivocally defined. There is no clear sequence of steps that can be taken and that would make everybody agree that it was a success:
-Some people will find that the carefully exposed negatives of Ansel Adams, carefully printed, with the detailed shadows in zone 3 are a success.
-Some people may despise the result of such formalism and instead choose as a successful outcome a picture of the same subject taken with expired Cinestill 800T, loaded in a Canon AE1 with fraying light seals, and developed in beer and cat's piss.
-Some people may despise cat's piss and shadows in zone III and decide the best picture of the iconic bit of flat rock is taken with Delta 3200 pushed to 12000 and exposed in Rodinal 1+1000 stand with bromide drag and surge marks.
To summarise, in art, success means different things to different people and, quite clearly, to different generations. There is no one way to realise your vision, and (some) young film users are finding that film photography allows for more degrees of freedom than digital photography. They find this sense of freedom alluring.