Traces and Documents as Medial Transformations, or: How to Access Performance Art History / Büscher, Barbara
Büscher, Barbara, «Traces and Documents as Medial Transformations, or: How to Access Performance Art History». Stedelijk Studies, #3, (2015), pp.
Abstract
For several years there has been a growing interest in reviving and revising performative art from the 1960s and ’70s, expressed in exhibitions, reenactments, and accompanying publications. This revival indicates a new, more intense interest in performance art’s historicality, and has raised the question of how to gain access to this history. Curatorial practices and stagings have managed to rewrite discussions about performance’s alleged tracelessness, which for a long time was considered the key characteristic of performance and its subversive qualities. And yet, the same question arises time and again: which documents and statements, traces and media artifacts, can performance art history rely on? Present investigations on archival processes and performance art combine the call for “fluid access”1 to past events—and thus also to a newly contextualized appropriation—and questions related to media theory. Documents and traces are considered medial transformations, which, depending on the quality of each respective media, focus on different referential levels. What and how does a filmic recording represent differently than a series of photographs? What do we learn about spatial and temporal structures through notations and scores? These and further questions about the artifacts of a potential archive arise in both current presentations and research on performance history. The three examples I will address in the following focus on exhibitions, installations, and one of the most classic forms of presentation, the catalog/book. These formats are used to examine different constellations of artifacts ranging from photographs to texts, scores, film, and video. I chose the three following artworks with regard to the diverse nature of the access points and public presence they offer. How they are (re)presented, in turn, sheds light on the stories and history of performance and action art and its presentability.
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URL: https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/traces-and-documents/
Language: EN
key: 35IIF7WG