Dear List,
Hello, My name is Alina Hoyne, I'm currently conducting research for a PhD
at Melbourne University on re-enactments in contemporary art. This is my
first post. My apologies for being a lurker, but until fairly recently I
thought I would have little to contribute to the monthly discussions as my
knowledge of new media technology is not so great, I am not a curator and I didn't want to
throw the list off topic with too many re-enactment led
discussions/questions.
But recent discussions of the relationship between "Live Art" and
recording/reproduction/replaying media be it new - the web, digital
technologies - or older video, film etc, have been really inspiring, so
here is my contribution. I hope it is not too theory heavy.....
Marina Abramovic’s recent show at the Guggenheim seems to me to
challenge the (perhaps false) binary that seems to persist in theatre and
performance studies between live and media forms. It is an interesting
example of the relationship between live art and mediatized reproduction,
as Abramovic used recordings of the original performances where possible
to create her reconstructions or translations of these seminal art pieces.
Some people have been calling Abramovic's Seven Easy Pieces a series of
reenactments - and while in some ways they are replaying an original or a
re-performances of past events, there is little evidence of the drive for
authenticity or fidelity to the original event within her work that can be
found in the work of other artists working with reenactment as a form.
The methodology of Seven Easy Pieces seems to me more akin the traditional
practices of a theatre company or an orchestra who rehearse a score or
play script, the only difference being that Abramovic is working from
video footage. What do others think about these issues? What are the
limits of reenactment? When does reenactment stray so far from the
original that it becomes an original rather than a copy? Or is all this
talk of originals and copies completely defunct in contemporary discourse
on art and (re)production technologies?
As for the relationship between live art and media art, if indeed there
can be any division drawn between the two, it is a lot more complex than
many of the key texts which have dealt with this phenomenon in performance
art or theatre have conceeded. I think that Philip Auslander has gone the
furthest in his study Liveness, though he does employ quite an ugly
umbrella term "mediatization" to apply to all forms of technology used in
live events.
In Liveness he claims mediatization and liveness are mutually dependent,
suggesting that "liveness" was created in the process of mediatization for
before the advent of recording technologies there was no concept of the
live event. He also suggests that recent developments in new media
technology and in live art have problematized the assumption that the live
preceeds the mediatized as now the "apparatus of reproduction and its
attendant phenomeonolgy are inscribed within our experience of the live."
This idea, that our experience of the live is always attended by or
informed by the apparatus of reproduction, is interesting to consider when
regarding the practices of many artists who work at the edge of live and
mediatized forms. This even brings to mind the practices of photobloggers
who capture and curate their daily experience eg. electro-folk musician/
artist Momus:
www.imomus.com
But for me Auslander's most interesting claim is that live performance
cannot necessarily claim ontological difference from mass media, a claim
made against those of performance theorist Peggy Phelan - in particular
her suggestion that live performance escapes commodification through
resisting repetition - in the book Unmarked. He also challenges the
binary oppositions set up by others - including Herbert Blau and Jacques
Attali - which differentiate between economies based on representation and
those based on repetition.
It seems to me that reenactment also resists the categorisation as either
representation or repetition. But does this mean that reenactment somehow
escapes the commodification associated with repetition? I could say so
much more, but I'll leave it there for now.
Hope this has not been too long and/or boring. Apologies again for
lurking and I look forward to future discussions!
alina--
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