How much has the photographic image shaped the performance
cannon?
1970s performance culture has left a legacy of unanswered questions.
One of the unresolved issues from this period is the role of the document
within radicalised practice.
Many extraordinary performance works, only witnessed by a handful of
people and a photographer, would have been documented by friends, colleges
and associates. This places the cannon of performance documentation into
the hands of the ‘amateur professional’, whose names in any performance
book offer insight into the social milieu around individual artists and
performance works. Symbiotic relationships between performer and photographer/filmmaker
often grow over alongside the individual artists cannon. This might be
seen in the relationships between for example Kurt Kren and the Akionists
and/or Ken McMullen and Stuart Brisley.
For me, the problematic of the performance document has always been
its insistence on presenting the photographic image as a transparent medium,
as something that is looked though to see the performance. Such images
provide access to a performance work while also distorting the reception
of a performance moment.
Can the transferal of energy between performer and audience be recorded
by the photographer in an image?
The photographic document is not only a record of an artist’s work;
it is also the result of a collaborative process occurring between photographer
and performer. Witnessing a live performance usually involves watching
a photographer moving in tandem with the artist. Subsequently the documentor’s
point of view is replaced by the photographic image and the photographer
is substituted for a secondary audience. This secondary audience is defined
by having solely seen performance works as photographs or films, of which
it might be said that the more blurred and casual documents often offer
the most rarified photographic experience. Charismatic performance moments
do not always translate directly to become great photographic images and
the photographic punctum often remains as elusive as the intangible performance
moments sought out by the original audience and photographer.
How much does the relationship between text and image shape our reading
of the event?
When talking about the performance image we must not ignore the relationship
between image and text. The narrative of action or experience combined
with photographic evidence of the event provides us with information that
points to ideas and actions beyond the image. It is worth thinking about
the self reflexive nature of image and text and their collusion in the
(re)creation of the performance works they are attempting to represent.
The relationships between image and text have been instrumental in establishing
the performance cannon as we know it, and were perhaps the first ever performance
reconstruction’s, replacing the performance itself with photographs and
words.
How can we understand performance beyond its representation in image
and text?
Recently artists have taken the photographic document as the starting
point in a series of reevaluations of performance. My own 1998 photographic
work Connotations Performance Images 1994 1998, a series of faked performance
documents, established the central role of documentation in the reevaluation
of the performance cannon. In the 1990s artists began to excavate works
from the 1970s. Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley worked on the project Fresh
Acconci in 1995 creating pop versions of Acconci’s original avant-garde
video performances such as Prying, Theme Song and Claim.
Other artists have addressed issues of biography, and the reception
of performance through the photographic image. In her 1993 performance
work Biography Marina Abramovi? looked back at her life in images. Photographs
of her childhood, mixed together with iconic stills of both her solo performance
works and collaborations with Ulay presented themselves as cues to her
life-story as she re-enacted performances for the theatre audience in front
of her. By drawing on photographs of herself as both a child and adult,
Abramovi? identifies aspects of portraiture within performance documentation,
presenting both her life and art as performance. In this work, the obsession
of 1970’s performance art with the ‘real’ (an obsession intrinsically linked
to the documentary genre) is returned to the relative safety of the theatre,
which, like many of Marina’s extant books, allows the viewer to watch performance,
safely and at a distance.
Since 1998 Ma Luiming has been performing while sitting (sometimes)
drugged and naked with a large mirror behind him and a photographic stills
camera in front of him. Reminiscent of Dan Graham’s work Performer / Audience
/ Mirror (1975) Luimings performance reflects the audience in the image
of the performer. Photography becomes the central focus of Luimings performance
as audience members are invited to sit next to him, and take a photo in
that position. Luimings psychic absence during these moments of the performance
is witnessed and recorded by the camera for his future consumption.
Hayley Newman |