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Hello. Sitting in another of my onerous day jobs here (hopefully soon to
be my last ever of these!!), reading old PAJs online about Marina
Abramovic, contemplating Falling Man, etc.
So without sounding too glib, would we see Falling Man as a kind of "re-
performance" of the actual event? I was wondering what the difference is
between a performance artist re-creating someone else's piece and a
performance artist re-creating something that actually happened. I
suppose under Schechner's definition of performance as twice-behaved
behavior most, if not all performance is re-performance in a way . . .
And I am also thinking through why is it such a big deal for MA to re-
perform the piece of another artist? After all, artists re-perform work
all the time. Every time a new version of a play is mounted, it is re-
performed. With ritual dance or performance, re-performing is the goal,
to be of a lineage of those who have performed the piece before.
Authenticity is in the re-performance rather than in the original. I have
to think it comes from the close relationship between visual art and
performance art. From the performance lineage, it's not a big deal. But in
the visual arts, when you replicate what someone else has done before it's
a copy. In writing of course, it's impossible to do such a thing--that's
merely a transcription. With performance art, it is the singular, rather
than the repetition, that is valued and the "originality" of the piece is
emphasized far more than in, say, a production of Macbeth sponsored by the
DoD, and so it becomes "news" when one artist performs another artist's
piece. I think it's also a consequence of how much solo performance is
understood as tied to the identity of the performer themselves and is seen
as reflecting their identity or consciousness. But again, Shakespeare's
identity, point of view, etc., is not changed or compromised by the
remounting of his work. Or Beckett (whom I am throwing in intentionally
here because of the tight control over productions of Bs work . . . ).
Etc.
I am also interested in the motivations behind re-performances. Abramovic
re-performing Seedbed of course changes the context significantly not only
through gender, but also because these are now different times than when
the piece was first done. I think, like Falling Man, which is how I
started thinking about this in the first place, there can also be a desire
to experience the piece for yourself.
I have been interested in the idea of re-performing pieces in places that
have never heard of the original so as to bring them to audiences that
would not otherwise have the exposure or access to them, which does not
preclude the desire to experience the pieces for myself nor the
probability of recontextualization. As someone growing up in small town
in Illinois, I certainly did not have access to any of the work that I've
seen and read about in the past 10 years. How many young performance
artists might be inspired in Davenport Iowa by some of these
performances? Even if they don't become performance artists, how would
people's psyches be affected and changed by exposure to works that were
previously available only to New Yorkers? (Don't laugh--My plays tend to
be very absurdist and the production I had that showed the most
understanding of the piece by another director -- as opposed to self-
produced/directed-- was in working class Davenport, Iowa. The worst? An
equity student production at NYU.)
I've seen some excellent examples of re-performances in theatrical pieces,
retrospectives, and homages, but they've been more to movements than to
individual artists. Lipstick Traces recreates some Dada performances very
well and I saw a great student production at the University of Minnesota
of Futurist and Dada performance pieces that were very very true to their
descriptions. Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance project toured with a great
recreation of the work of the Judson Dance Theatre, complete with Yvonne
Rainer and Sally Banes here in Minneapolis to talk about the original
work. All of these still seem very different than Abramovic re-performing
Seedbed and "making it her own".
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