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Hi Neal, Charlie, and all, Regarding the difference between the artist-intended "real-time" performance speed of a piece and the once-removed, institutionally archived "memory-time" of a piece, something like William Pope L.'s "The Black Factory" ( http://www.theblackfactory.com ) is wonderfully and intentionally problematic. The project intentionally self-sabotages its own eventual/inevitable recontextualization as an archived art object. The project is basically a mobile performance factory that takes "black" objects submitted by people and physically converts them into other objects. So the project is a machine that modulates the "aura" of a discrete/singular object. There's no easy way for the project itself to be archived as an object (although it is technically an object [a mobile home] that generates residual objects). A machine that transforms objects (The Black Factory) can't itself be transformed into an object (an institutional archive of The Black Factory) without throwing a boot into the institutional machine that wishes to transform it into an object. In the archiving process, the institutional machine is immediately revealed for what it is (A Memory Factory? A Culture Factory? A sterilization factory?). The Black Factory is thus properly multi-dromological. Regarding the mystique of "real-time" -- might real-time be to "time-based art" what Benjamin's aura was to the "original art object?" Aura as ontological object-essence; real-time as phenomenological event-essence. psycho-archival texts likeSchwenger's "The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects" and Carey's "Observatory Mansions" become relevant. Best, Curt At 11:08 PM +0100 9/11/09, Neal White wrote: >If we then consider the museum or archive as a space which sets out >to preserve objects, artefacts , codes etc, (death drive or >cryogenics...) we can also say that the archivist understands the >need to reduce the time-base of each object/item to their own >time-base - that is institutional time. This arrest is not >specifically problematic, but indicates issues relating to archives >and events, part of the the real problem at hand. You may ask >yourself why certain kinds of event based work have encountered >resistance not only in the galleries, but within the archive of the >museum itself to the extent it should be present, and then to >examine the time-base of technologies, situations, contexts upon >which it relies, to realise these are awkward at best, if not >completely incompatible at worst. If nothing else these works made >in one context would be at the mercy of another entirely, that is >the event structure of the institutional practices of a collection, >its overheads and relevance. For me, the loss of work to the >real-time of its context should be balanced against its incidental >potential (otherwise known as a 'unit of attention') both >immediately and within the broader time-base of society.