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Marina Abramović's Seven Easy Pieces: Critical Documentation Strategies for Preserving Art's History
Abstract
This essay raises issues of authenticity, authorship and medium in a discussion of performance, documentation and re-performance. Its object of analysis is Marina Abramovićć's 2005 performance series, Seven Easy Pieces, including her re-performances of Bruce Nauman's Body Pressure and VALIE EXPORT's Action Pants: Genital Panic. Seven Easy Pieces strives to document the past through manipulation of repetition and temporality; Abramovićć's re-performances act as performative documents of the past performances she cites. Lessons learned from a close analysis of re-performance and performance documentation can provide useful insights for and promote critical thought about conservation strategies for time-based art.
... Magelssen 2010; McGill 2011; Garoian 2001). Aqui encontra lugar a musealização de práticas quotidianas (Edwards, Gosden e Phillips 2006) ou o acolhimento de objectos de criação performativa (Sauter 2000; Santone 2008), numa não exaustiva aproximação à crescente importância das estratégias performativas na nova instância museal, parte integrante do seu capital cultural. E o comprometimento do museu com a «economia do turismo» (analisado em detalhe por Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 139s) não deixa de constituir um alerta para questões como a da actual monetarização dos museus, obrigados a compromissos com empresas e a contratos de financiamento (sponsoring) tantas vezes alheios às políticas culturais que os determinam e cujos efeitos se abatem sobre uma oferta cada vez mais popularizada, lúdica e mercantilizada. ...
... Nada menos do que a possibilidade de, como afirmam Heddon (2002), Kobialka (2002) ou Stoian (2002) (todos em textos publicados no número especial que a revista Performance Research dedicou ao tema), reivindicar que a mediatização (e portanto o arquivo) da performance transforma a realidade das artes performativas, deslocando a condição ontológica e a sua fragilidade essencial para um investimento criador no próprio espaço de criação (passe a redundância). Santone caracterizou este processo assim: «Documentation is here understood as a mode of production of contemporary art and a mode of critical interpretation» (Santone 2008, 147). MIDAS, 4 | 2014 32 Os exemplos que se poderiam convocar são abundantes e qualitativamente relevantes. ...
... Reperformance proposes a dynamic, living document as a solution to the past's disappearance; it allows a reexperiencing of the work in a time-based, body-based, ephemeral medium and makes available new experiences of memory and the slipping of performance into loss. (Santone 2008, 151b) 33 A tendência é reconhecível: uma alargada possibilidade de arquivo, inscrita no trabalho artístico operando uma vertiginosa (re)valorização do que antes não podia ser formulado sem fazer ressoar alarmes e medos atávicos no campo do teatro (mais do que na dança ou na performance, por exemplo), e afrontam com meridiana clareza as dicotomias presença/ ausência, efémero/repetido, vivo/diferido. Ou, nos termos deste ensaio, os de uma poética da fragilidade já não evanescente, mas viva de muitas formas, entre a mediatização e a presença como documentação. ...
The Bonecos de Santo Aleixo constitutes a cultural and artistic heritage that originated as a performative practice of large regional significance in Alentejo (Portugal). To ensure its preservation, the continuity of its practice, as well as its dissemination, the Bonecos de Santo Aleixo were the subject of a transfer of ownership by its last owner, master Talhinhas. Hence, over the past 30 years, they have remained deposited as a tradition in the hands of a theatre company, the Centro Cultural de Évora, which preserved and presented the Bonecos de Santo Aleixo all over the world. Currently, the issue of the preservation of this heritage through its musealisation as been raised, given the regional, national and international recognition it has acquired, while the fragility of its material elements imposes a certain urgency to the process. Scrutinizing the relationship of the performing arts with the museum, one finds an increasing orientation of the museum practices towards live events, but also a strong resistance. My claim here is for a museum concerning tangible and intangible heritage, a museum including not only the puppets and all the objects they come with, but also the embodied knowledge that performing them involves as heritage. Therefore, I advocate for a school-museum, where the preservation and learning go together, in order to keep the spectacular repertoire of Bonecos de Santo Aleixo alive.
... Boal, 1992;cf. Auslander, 2006;Santone, 2008). As much as they are looking backwards and building a history, they are looking forward, hoping to offer insights and inspiration for future work. ...
... Many challenges of documenting larp are similar to the problems of documenting performance art. 3 For example the liveness cannot be transmitted when an event is remediated, the cultural context may be lost, the work done by the "audience" is often ignored, filming or photographing the work is important in addition to textual description to transmit a sense of "how it was", but can overdetermine the perception of the work (Jones, 1994(Jones, , 1997Apple, 1997;Dixon, 1999;Santone, 2008Santone, , 2010also Kaprow, 1961). The similarities are most striking when comparing larp to early performance art, especially Happenings (Harviainen, 2008), when documenting the piece for posterity was not always planned in advance 4 , whereas today it can even be argued that "when artists decide to document their performances, they assume responsibility to an audience other than the initial one, a gesture that ultimately obviates the need for an initial audience" (Auslander, 2006). ...
Research and documentation of live action role-playing games, or larps, must tackle problems of ephemerality, subjectivity, first person audience and co-creation, as well as the underlying question of what larps are. In this paper these challenges are outlined and solutions to handling them are proposed. This is done through the prism of producing a picture-heavy art book on Nordic larp. The paper also discussed the problems of writing about game cultures as an insider and makes a case for addressing normative choices in game descriptions head on.
... Boal, 1992;cf. Auslander, 2006;Santone, 2008). As much as they are looking backwards and building a history, they are looking forward, hoping to offer insights and inspiration for future work. ...
... Many challenges of documenting larp are similar to the problems of documenting performance art. 3 For example the liveness cannot be transmitted when an event is remediated, the cultural context may be lost, the work done by the "audience" is often ignored, filming or photographing the work is important in addition to textual description to transmit a sense of "how it was", but can overdetermine the perception of the work (Jones, 1994(Jones, , 1997Apple, 1997;Dixon, 1999;Santone, 2008Santone, , 2010also Kaprow, 1961). The similarities are most striking when comparing larp to early performance art, especially Happenings (Harviainen, 2008), when documenting the piece for posterity was not always planned in advance 4 , whereas today it can even be argued that "when artists decide to document their performances, they assume responsibility to an audience other than the initial one, a gesture that ultimately obviates the need for an initial audience" (Auslander, 2006). ...
Research and documentation of live action role-playing games, or larps, must tackle problems of ephemerality, subjectivity, first person audience and co-creation, as well as the underlying question of what larps are. In this paper these challenges are outlined and solutions to handling them are proposed. This is done through the prism of producing a picture-heavy art book on Nordic larp. The paper also discussed the problems of writing about game cultures as an insider and makes a case for addressing normative choices in game descriptions head on.
... Ces derniers y ont plutôt vu une oeuvre spectaculaire procédant de l'appropriation très libre de performances phares des années 60 et 70, à la fois un hommage aux artistes chers à Abramović, une revendication d'une place privilégiée dans la grande Histoire de la performance, une mythification de l'artiste désormais entérinée par les institutions muséales hégémoniques. À ma connaissance, seule Jessica Santone, à l'occasion d'un article paru en 2008 dans la revue Leonardo, a analysé les Seven Easy Pieces dans la perspective documentaire que l'artiste revendiquait 4 . Or, ce point de vue, bien qu'étonnant au premier abord, me semble des plus pertinents. ...
... This was the first-ever instance of institutional re-performance program, an idea first conceived by artist Allan Kaprow. Her manipulation of space, time and bodily presence functioned by activating the documentation on paper against the flattening of these works in art-historical memory (Santone, 2008). Today it is an established practice that, when museums acquire an actual performance, they buy the rights to re-perform the piece. ...
This paper considers the relationship between performance art, recent museological models focused on the centrality of the public, and the visitors’ ontological status as embodied, cognitive and sentient beings. It discusses the shift from traditional curatorship towards a participatory model, curated for the visitor rather than about objects.
It frames the thinking about the public as embodied/sentient entity, whose perceptual mechanisms need to be
fully understood in order to design fully participatory, engaging and stimulating exhibitions. It surveys and addresses performance art as exemplary to understand the relationship between the space of the museum and the bodies of the artists and their public, and how these elements can generate new research questions. Through its analysis,
it proposes curating the public’s experience by adopting
an interdisciplinary framework centered around the notion of embodiment, shared space and multisensory interaction.
... Due to its popularity, Seven Easy Pieces instigated debates and research among art historians, curators and critics around fundamental concepts on performativity, liveness, authenticity, authorship, memory, documentation and definitions of the term re-enactment, questioning in fact if Seven Easy Pieces really is a re-enactment. Many authors, for example, refer to it as "re-performances" (Santone 2008). Abramović remarked on her project: Due to the dire conditions of performance art documentation, these substitute media never did justice to the actual performances. ...
This book results from the 2017 Re:Trace conference, the seventh edition of the conference series On the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology and a cooperation with DARIAH-ERIC. The third day of the conference focused on “Digital Arts, Archives and Museums.” As one main outcome, we discussed the need to bring together all of the involved stakeholders and, hence, it became the main theme of this book. The editors would like to thank all the conference participants and panel members who gave vital input for our research and, of course, the authors for sharing their insights and expertise.
... Since the camera visually documented life (e.g., places and people) and replicated what the eye could see, photographs substantiated what was "real" and "true. " Documentation was a material that served as evidence-an artifact that preserved, recorded, and transmitted information about a person, object, place, or time (i.e., an art product) (Santone, 2008). As artists began to work with photography as an artistic method of documentation, various approaches were explored. ...
... It is a trace of history-an artifact that records and transmits information about an event, person, object, place, or time (i.e., an art product). It can preserve personal memories and record a history of a culture and important events (Santone, 2008). ...
... Within this discussion, we must keep in mind art preservation is not only about the mere storing of artistic artefacts, but it is mainly a form of writing the history of art. Jessica Santone (2008) presents her idea about this matter as follow: "[the artists] seek to contribute to the narrativized and/or mediated understandings of the past that already come after an original moment. Their production of materials is not archival in the sense of creating an ordering or logic to a set or collection, but instead comprises work that repeats and multiplies a historical idea, inflecting its image through a nostalgic lens". ...
... With reference to my practice-as research experiments, I propose that the live denotes a medium of archival production (see pages 57-59). This is with an aim to distinguish my definition of the live from Auslander's analysis by framing spectators as participants within a performance; here, spectators do not participate as consumers Jones, 2010; ibid, 2011; Roach, 1996; Santone, 2008; Tate, 2012; Taylor, 1996; Thompson, 2012). ...
PhD Thesis. Examining the ways documentation engenders audience participation and how such a dramaturgy necessitates a re-validation of the 'live' in performance that counters notions of transience and disappearance.
This collection of essays raises a new critical reflection on a controversial and exciting topic that has brought historiographical, philological, and ethical reflections on the reenactment and the study of the history of exhibitions and performances since the 1990s. The issue of exhibition reenactment has led to a reflection in two areas: on the one hand, the reenactment not only of those auroral exhibitions of the 1970s in which performative acts were grafted onto a terrain of process art/‘arte povera’ or of those underground contexts or festivals that made a significant part of art history, but also with respect to early twentieth-century exhibitions. On the other hand, video art has to be addressed by considering its complex issues of preservation, as well as its possible transmutation into other media, when it should be defined as a document of a performance and when it should instead be considered a video-work to all intents and purposes even by the artist-creator. This book therefore covers topics ranging from the dialogue on the protagonists of the International Exhibitions of the Roman Secession between 1913 and 1916 to the establishment of the Milanese group Nuove Tendenze and their 1914 exhibition reenacted in 1980; from the reenactment of a section of the 1972 Venice Biennale in Comportamento. Venice Biennale 1972. Padiglione Italia 2017 set up at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea “Luigi Pecci di Prato” in 2017 to didactic experiences by Bruno Munari, to the performances by Tania Bruguera or Marina Abramović. The multiple lives of contemporary artistic practices are therefore analysed and enhanced through specific case studies and multiple voices.
Este ensaio investiga as maneiras pelas quais um evento passado, ou um momento performativo, nos termos da autora, podem ser reenquadrados ou reimaginados a partir de uma abordagem documental e arquivística. Tendo como ponto de partida um laboratório de performance site-specific, desenvolvido durante uma residência artística na pequena Ilha de Paquetá, no Rio de Janeiro, esse ensaio oferece, por um lado, uma perspectiva que surge através do encontro performativo e somático com um território e comunidade específicos. Por outro, oferece uma metodologia de como utilizar documentação como ferramenta de pesquisa artística, tanto na produção de um material documental, quanto na composição de um trabalho artístico. Neste processo, tal metodologia não serve apenas como base para a produção de uma série de imagens que suscitam algumas das lendas esquecidas ou paisagens idílicas de Paquetá (p. ex, o cemitério dos pássaros), mas também para a emergência de uma postura corporal singular ou em outros termos, um momento performativo em torno do qual tanto uma narrativa documental quanto fictícia foi tecida.
Territórios Sensíveis é uma plataforma de pesquisa e criação em artes e ciências, que reúne artistas-pesquisadores, cientistas e comunidades locais para que, juntos, possam atuar de forma performativa e colaborativa na investigação e construção de diálogos entre o campo das artes e o das questões ambientais.
L’enjeu de cette thèse qui allie recherche et création est d’étudier la partition par les formes scripturaires ou typographiques qu’elle emprunte. Nous analysons également ses modalités de diffusion dans le cadre de notre propre pratique d’artiste-éditeur avec la revue Véhicule et grâce à des entretiens avec différents protagonistes de l’édition théâtrale. Nous prenons comme cadre de cette étude sur la partition son statut de projet destiné à un tiers, document-actif qui, même lorsqu’il provient des archives, inclut une potentielle activation. De la sorte, nous posons l’hypothèse que la partition est à la fois œuvre et outil, trace et devenir. La partition est alors déléguée à un lecteur/spectateur concurremment déchiffreur, co-créateur de l’œuvre et responsable de son activation ou de son interprétation. Après avoir posé quelques repères généraux sur la notion de partition, nous interrogeons celle-ci dans sa plasticité. Nous observons d’abord des œuvres grammatextuelles pour comprendre comment la page, en tant que forme graphique, peut être agissante et transmettre des instructions visuelles ou textuelles au lecteur-interprète. Puis, nous analysons des partitions qui produisent des images, par une effectuation concrète ou mentale.
This dissertation moves from the analysis of the ways contemporary dance is politicized in the Brazilian cultural field to the massive protests that shook many cities of that country since June 2013, read as choreography. The dissertation analyzes the dance pieces Wagner Ribot Pina Miranda Xavier Le Schwartz Transobjeto (Wagner Schwartz), Eu sou uma fruta gogoia em 3 tendências (Thelma Bonavita), Matadouro (Marcelo Evelin), The Hot 100 Choreographers (Cristian Duarte), Lote (Duarte), Como_CLUBE (Bonavita) y Proyecto Multitud (Tamara Cubas), to observe how, in dialogue with their contexts, they problematize identity, history, nationhood and the body as archive, in order to analyze the ways these dimensions organize contemporary social life. In dialogue with the approaches of Jacques Rancière about the politics of aesthetics (The politics of aesthetics...) and André Lepecki´s about coreo-politics (“Coreopolítica...”), this work aims to discuss the ways in which choreographic tools are able or not to interrupt hegemonic distributions of the sensible and to create new spaces of experience and relation. These conceptualizations of politics are contrasted with the “impolitic” approach developed by authors such as Roberto Esposito (Terms of the political...) and Alberto Moreiras (Línea de sombra...). Chapters One and Two concentrate on dance pieces that performatively discuss Brazilian identity and the historical and semiotic processes that take part in the disputes over its construction, focusing on the tensions between the global and the local, and on brazilian history. Chapter Three discusses the history and conventions of the Uruguayan and Brazilian dance fields; emphasizing on the tensions between the spectacular and the phenomenological, that throughout dance history led to poetics and politics that coexist in a disputed way. This chapter focuses on different ways of understanding representation and communication in dance languages which precede contemporary dance and those inhabiting her. With that in mind, the dissertation pays attention to the aesthetic, political and cultural frames that intervene on the creative and performative processes of contemporary theatrical dance. Looking at the theatrical forms of dance and how its communication and symbolization processes are based on the body, this dissertation tries to recover the political potential of the experiential dimension of dance practices and also the organizing and counter-hegemonic tools of choreography. This tension between the experiential and the spectacular exposes analogies between dance and politics, opening questions and challenges that this dissertation tries to deploy by analyzing the emergence of massive public demonstrations in the Brazilian political scene, interrupting, as an event, the institutionalized political processes of liberal democracy. Thus, chapter four goes back to Brazil, but not to study artistic works, but the ways in which the choreographical, as frame for social mobilization, intervenes in the political, creating encounters between bodies and collective experiences that trigger processes of communal subjective transformation. Final reflections point out some possible ways to radicalize and intervene over the representation crisis affecting dance and politics in contemporaneity.
Die künstlerische Kopie bietet nicht erst in der zeitgenössischen Kunst ein Verfahren der Aneignung und Umdeutung. In der Fokussierung auf aktuelle künstlerische Strategien verfolgt der Aufsatz die These, dass die Kopie nicht nur Produktionsmodi verhandelt, sondern auch spezifische Paradigmen einer emanzipierten Rezeption. An den Schnittstellen von Reproduktion und Kopie, Zitat und Aneignung, Reenactment und Preenactment finden sich neue Wahrnehmungshaltungen und -handlungen ausdifferenziert. Das Potenzial dieser Ästhetik der Mittelbarkeit führt zu Fragen der Emanzipation und Differenz.
Academic libraries are increasingly adopting virtual reality (VR) technologies for a variety of research and teaching purposes, yet there is a lack of clear guidance in the community on how to manage these technologies in effective and sustainable ways. In June 2018, the University of Oklahoma hosted the second of three forums on the topic of using 3D and VR for visualization and analysis in academic libraries, as part of the IMLS-funded project, Developing Library Strategy for 3D and Virtual Reality Collection Development and Reuse (LIB3DVR). This project uses nominal group technique to collect data from the invited experts (from diverse academic disciplines and institutional contexts) at the Forum to identify common preservation and curation challenges in the visualization and analysis of 3D data and the management of VR programs. This paper describes the findings of this project and outlines strategies and techniques for curating and preserving 3D/VR.
In Proceedings (pp. 114-125): https://ipres2019.org/program/proceedings/
Hengel, Louis van den (2017). Archives of Affect: Performance, Reenactment, and the Becoming of Memory. In Laszlo Muntean, Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (Eds.), Materializing Memory in Art and Popular Culture. (pp. 125-142). (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies). London/New York: Routledge.
Cambridge Core - English Literature after 1945 - Performing Endurance - by Lara Shalson
Traditional craft practice has long emphasized features of function and materiality, with the useful and skillfully produced object at the center of the way craft is read and understood. However, a number of recent exhibitions and artworks have included not just objects, but also craft set in motion through participatory projects or performances. Correspondingly, the crafted object has undergone a shift in its once-central role, serving instead as a record of an event or process, a prop or tool, and in some cases disappearing altogether. Through a consideration of select projects and curatorial strategies from Common Threads at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary, AB (2008), and Gestures of Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR (2010), this article argues that it is necessary to consider how the histories and theories of performance art are intersecting with contemporary craft practices, with a particular focus on the role of documentation and ephemeral traces.
This article explores current debates on re-enactment and appropriation through Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's Fresh Acconci (1995) and Kelley's Day Is Done (Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2-32) (2005-2006). Re-staging Acconci's black-and-white video performances of the 1970s in the style of softcore pornography, the first work is often read as an ironic rebuttal to the body-art spectacles of the 1990s.However, a focus on re-enactment allows it to be rethought in terms of a greater fidelity to the material it appropriates, which is to say as a complicated investigation of institutional, interpretive, and participatory failure. Much as Acconci once stressed his own positional value' at the expense of individual characteristics' in the context of a scheme work', so the diverse young actors in Fresh Acconci swap positions haphazardly, deliberately failing to engage with identity or gender politics in any way but the most superficial. As a development of his earlier engagement with the failed and pathetic, Kelley's Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions were derived from photographs in old high school yearbooks where costumed teenagers represent various mythological figures and cultural stereotypes. Kelley populated his Educational Complex (1995) with these characters, envisioning a dysfunctional community where familiar hostilities are barely concealed. Taken together, these works deconstruct such binary terms as parody vs. fidelity, action vs. image, fantasy vs. reality, passive consumption vs. active engagement, lived trauma vs. cultural trauma, and historicist reproduction vs. productive repetition as difference.
In 2014, the indie house band Vulfpeck released the album Sleepify on the digital music-streaming service Spotify. The album consists of ten tracks, the first titled "z," the second "zz," the third "zzz," and so on. Each track is just over thirty seconds long, and each is composed of absolute digital silence. Not to be confused with John Cage's only allegedly "silent" composition 4′33″ (1952), as Vulfpeck's Jack Stratton is quick to clarify, Sleepify is actually, definitively silent: "It's not a recording of a still environment; it's an actual digital file full of zeroes." The catch: via each listen the album accrued on Spotify, the band was that much closer to funding its 2014 tour - which, should all go according to plan, Vulfpeck's fans would be able to attend for free. Putting Sleepify in conversation with producer Mike Batt's alleged plagiarism of 4′33″ and performance artist Marina Abramović's 512 Hours of doing nothing, I interrogate the aesthetic and economic dynamics of the performer-audience relationship in work in which it is only through the audience's willingness to do something that the artist's goal toward doing nothing might be realized.
Documentation makes us suffer. This is, perhaps, an overstatement. Yet, the writing on performance art gives testimony to a range of discomforts that arise in relation to documentation. From anxieties about its insufficiency as record, to despair that documents are easily commodified, to unease with the very desire that documents seem to solicit, concerns about documentation have long been at the heart of discussions about performance art. In recent years, artistic re-enactment has seemed to some to promise a solution to the shortcomings of mediatized forms of documentation. Yet, many of these events have remained tangled up with documentation nevertheless, and an uneasy relationship to documents persists. This article focuses on this persistence of discomfort. Drawing upon my own experience attending Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces (2005), I ask what it might mean to endure documents. Responding to criticisms that Abramović recreated documentation rather than performances, and focusing in on the durational form of the work, I argue that Abramović’s sustained embodied engagement with performance documentation offers new insights into how performance and its documents endure.
This article introduces an original documentation and archiving tool, CloudPad, that integrates ‘cloud computing’ into the annotation and synchronisation of mixed media resources. Through CloudPad users are able to view a documentation, edit a version of it, and record their own comments in response to it. Whether users may have created and/or experienced a particular work, or whether they may simply wish to consult a work's documentation, their journey through these records and annotations are subsumed into the work's documentation, thus augmenting the ‘original’ artwork's field of social engagement. Before discussing CloudPad in detail, we proceed to explain how recent debates in performance documentation influenced our methodology and development, and the general challenges of mixed reality documentation that CloudPad aims to address.
:Springing off from the recent obsession over performance histories in the performance and art domains, "The Artist is Present" takes on claims for authenticity and "presence" by examining the series of recent re-enactments and events featuring Marina Abramović.
Laurence Louppe once advanced the intriguing notion that the dancer is “the veritable avatar of Orpheus: he has no right to turn back on his course, lest he be denied the object of his quest” (Louppe 1994, 32). However, looking across the contemporary dance scene in Europe and the United States, one cannot escape the fact that dancers—contrary to Orpheus, contrary to Louppe's assertion—are increasingly turning back on their and dance history's tracks in order to find the “object of their quest.” Indeed, contemporary dancers and choreographers in the United States and Europe have in recent years been actively engaged in creating re-enactments of sometimes well-known, sometimes obscure, dance works of the twentieth century. Examples abound: we can think of Fabian Barba's Schwingende Landschaft (2008), an evening-length piece where the Ecuadorian choreographer returns to Mary Wigman's seven solo pieces created in 1929 and performed during Wigman's first U.S. tour in 1930; of Elliot Mercer returning in 2009 and 2010 to several of Simone Forti's Construction Pieces (1961/62), performing them at Washington Square Park in New York City; or Anne Collod's 2008 return to Anna Halprin's Parades and Changes (1965), among many other examples.
This article re-stages on the page a dialogue between Arnolfini's archivist and the research fellow on ‘Performing the Archive: The Future of the Past’, which took place at the interdisciplinary conference Archive Fever/Archive Fervour (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, July 2008). This conference promoted opportunities for archivists and academics ‘to discuss the ways in which both fields intersect and to explore the ways in which mutual co-operation can benefit their future development’. Their dialogue started from two provocations put to one another:‘How do performances remain? How do they produce traces, or document themselves?’ ‘How do documents perform and are archives performative; what do they do?’Their responses interrogate the discreteness of the archive, the documents contained within, and the performance events that are its objects; questioning the distinction between acts of performance, documenting, archiving and using archives. In the context of this dialogue, ‘ephemera’ refers both to passing moments—the temporality of event-based art—and its residues. In the case of performance, the artwork cannot be collected as an original object, only traces, such as memory and ephemera, remain. The article presents a conversation between theoretical positions and practical propositions, made with materials selected from the holdings of both the Live Art and Arnolfini archives.
Cet article expose le but, les objectifs, la structure et la methodologie d’InterPARES 2, la seconde phase d’un projet de recherche international pluridisciplinaire sur la conservation permanente de l’authenticite des documents d’archives electroniques, et presente l’etat d’avancement de la recherche.
I was not yet three years old, living in central North Carolina, when Carolee Schneemann performed Meat Joy at the Festival of Free Expression in Paris in 1964; three when Yoko Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto; eight when Vito Acconci did his Push Ups in the sand at Jones Beach and Barbara T. Smith began her exploration of bodily experiences with her Ritual Meal performance in Los Angeles; nine when Adrian Piper paraded through the streets of New York making herself repulsive in the Catalysis series; ten when Valie Export rolled over glass in Eros/Ion in Frankfurt; twelve in 1973 when, in Milan, Gina Pane cut her arm to make blood roses flow (Sentimental Action); fifteen (still in North Carolina, completely unaware of any art world doings) when Marina Abramovic and Ulay collided against each other in Relation in Space at the Venice Biennale in 1976 (fig. 1). I was thirty years old—then 1991—when I began to study performance or body art ¹ from this explosive and important period, entirely through its documentation.
History of Art and Architecture Visual and Environmental Studies