Performing History (original) (raw)
Related papers
Something Else: Teaching Performance Art History Without the Performance
In most classrooms outside of major metropolitan centers where performance art is discussed both historically and as a contemporary practice, performances of note are not directly experienced live. Documentation of past performances is introduced in the form of didactic texts, photographs, or even more rarely, video. If live performance is witnessed, it is typically the work of students or local/regional artists where the importance or quality of the performance is typically derivative or not emblematic of the genre. If primary sources of performance are photographic and video documents (both documentary and theatrical), educational texts, or minor live work, then what is the actual subject of discussions of performance art? It is not the actual art, but the signifiers of the art act. Identifying these signifiers and their contexts inform discussions around performance, defining the negative space rather than the positive. Looking specifically at Marina Abramović and Ulay's Imponderabilia (1977), Pippin Barr's The Artist is Present (2011), and William Pope.L's Pull! (2013), this paper addresses the synchronic and diachronic nature of performance art that exists both as an action that unfolds over time, and the concept of the action that lives outside of time. It addresses the articulations of performances and how various mediums and language shape discussions of performances to impart knowledge and experience and form art history's canon.
Marina Abramović's Seven Easy Pieces: Critical Documentation Strategies for Preserving Art's History
Leonardo, 2008
This essay raises issues of authenticity, authorship and medium in a discussion of performance, documentation and re-performance. Its object of analysis is Marina Abramović'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; Abramović'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.
2020
This research explores the conflicts that emerge when applying recording and registration practices to performance art. Although the ephemerality of the actions is perceived as essential for this art genre, museum professionals and artists are often not in favor of the disappearance of all aspects of these artworks. The case studies in this article demonstrate that the ephemerality of the original performance artwork becomes even more considered when the performativity of the action is preserved through specific forms of fragmented documentation. This enables the survival and continuation of a performance artwork’s activating character, the embodied experience evoked, the work’s contingent meanings, and its continuous reinterpretations, such as through re-enactments. Keywords: Performance art. Documentation. Ephemerality. Performativity. Re-enactment.
The Challenges of the Ephemeral: Conserving Performance Art
It is clear that art institutions are constantly changing, and in the past few years quite radically. Museums are now becoming places of direct engagement with artworks and artists and not just for contemplation. Some institutions have shifted their frameworks to be able to accommodate video, large-scale installations, new media art and performance art. Early in the 20th century, artists started to get involved in performances to defy the object centred art of the time. Since then, performance art has been present in the art world as a valid medium of expression. However, many museums and galleries were overlooking the significance of this type of art mainly because of the difficulty of integrating it in the traditional museum structure. One of the issues of performance is the absence of a solid material/de-objectification and its transitory and ephemeral characteristics. Nevertheless, performance art is reaching a much more prominent position within the contemporary art museum in the last few years. Therefore, we must question what changes ought to be done to engage performance art within the foundations of the art museum. Being the art institution the ideal place to conserve, collect and present art, how can an ephemeral art form such as performance be conserved? This paper will be aiming at the performative arts field, more specifically to performance art, and will demonstrate the challenges that this brings to the art museum. Conservation and collection methods are the main focus, although other points will be referred.
Marina Abramovic's Time: The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art
e-misferica, 2013
More than 750,000 viewers visited the MoMA exhibition and many more followed Abramović’s performance via a real-time webfeed. The show garnered a storm of critical and popular media coverage, including process pieces about inappropriate touching of the human art, and the New York Post’s coyly titled “Squeezy Does It.” This show played on a huge scale, and its organizers were obviously invested in “telling the story” of Abramović’s career clearly and dramatically. This required a simple narrative of her career that, in some ways, undermined the radical experience of Abramović's performed time...She has set forward “reperformance” as a model for preserving her work, one which she extends problematically to the entire field of performance art. As one of the 39 reperformers who took part in the exhibition, I confronted the issues brought up by the retrospective and reperformance from a perspective deeply embedded in the experience of Abramovic's performance works. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-72/levine