I am seduced.  The first thing I do upon having in my hand a book on performance is to flip through the pages to see the photographs.  There is something that I desire here, in the seeing of the photograph.  I suppose I am looking for something “real”, some form of correlation between the image and myself.  My eyes act as though they are hungry, they devour the image.  The image becomes imprinted upon my eye: Angelika Festa and her outstretched hands holding forth bread, Joseph Beuys and his rabbit.  I cannot deny my desire for the photograph.

However, coupling this desire, is an equally strong feeling of frustration and anger.  And as I know that anger comes from hurt I wonder to myself wherein lies the root of this pain.  Somehow it is a betrayal.  This photograph that I seek upon opening the book, as though it is going to fill some lack, some need, is betraying something deeper.  It is the easy fix that never satisfies.  Not only does this photograph take the body out of the present and attempt to hold onto that which is meant to disappear; but it stays still, frozen, able to be apprehended in a way that denies the liveness of the performance.  It speaks a wanting to be here and there at the same time. 

The photograph is a mechanically produced object in the world that comes to stand in for the real thing.  And although we say we know that the photograph is not real, that it can never replicate the event, part of it’s seduction lies in our wish for it to be so.  There is, I think, something of our childhood belief in the realness of the photograph that stays, and as a consequence our adult self continually has to defend itself against this belief.  I will never forget watching t.v. with my three year old son.  It was a reportage about the oil fires in the mid-east and at one point one of the fire fighters waved at the camera.  My three-year-old son looks up at me and says, “look mommy, that man is waving at me”. 

It was once more clear to me.  That this photograph betrayed the presentness of performance, that it came to stand as an object in the world that was open to economic manipulations.  That it paraded itself as index.  That it’s rason d’être was primarily based on ego concerns and status seeking.  That it was apathetic lazy thinking of the worst kind, a refusal to allow performance it’s own values, a trying to have it both ways, a cop-out, a sell out.

Things are not so clear anymore.  The first thing I do upon having in my hand a book on performance is to flip through the pages to see the photographs.  There is a desire here. 

Karen Spencer
 

Document ... or die 
(excerpts taken from the original text translated to French for ESSE: Arts+Opinions, autumn 2002.)

Relational practice

How does one value the present? How can this space be opened up, articulated and honoured?  And how does one value relation?  The person here, before you now.  This space that exists between a you and a me.  Are the two somehow inextricably connected, this present and this relation?  If I say that I am with you, valuing you and this space that we are making together, can I at the same time invite the stranger, invite the future eye to look into our space?  Have I not somehow placed a use-value on an exchange that exists between the two of us, the one for the other?  Have I not betrayed some unspoken promise?  

I believe what is sought in relational public performance is closer to an intimacy, or an authenticity which requires the other to complete the meaning.  It does not set itself up to gain anything or to use anything for a future venture.  It is, I believe, expressing a desire to let itself be encountered in itself.  To let itself be with, to let the other exist, one with the other.  I believe it seeks to allow an unfolding in space together.  Perhaps it is an attempt to glimpse an equal power relation that is different from lack which leads to the desire to be fulfilled, completed - consumer or consumed.  And as such there is no second skin that can be peeled off and sold, it is a whole body and it has the right to insist on itself, to refuse the pecks of consumerism, for whatever reason, noble or not, that threaten to, piece by piece, fragment and destroy its body. 

Re-presentation versus the experiential

However, a second exchange is implied through the act of documentation.  This second exchange between the image and the intended audience of the image is generally based on a very particular product positioning, and a very particular audience.  The product is generally positioned as a document (rather than as a “work of art” in it’s own right) and the intended audience is generally an art audience. 

A tangible object that is open to exchange is produced.  The artist’s mode of communication once again falls back into the very codes of spectatorship that the gallery implies. We now have a product; a photograph, a video, that can be positioned, and it is a product that is positioned primarily in conjunction with other established structures: a gallery, a title, a name.  As such the value of the image produced is ascertained through the particularities of the people engaged in the exchange.  Who is the artist, which gallery is she connected to, where and how is the image to be disseminated? By exchange here I am referring to ownership as well as to sight.  The photograph of Zhang Huan’s Family Tree (2001) at Harbourfront Gallery seen by someone with the leisure and money that allows culture to be consumed is granted more status than the reproduction of the same photograph seen by x number of people in the daily newspaper.  What is at stake here is the particular conditions of the exchange (the real photograph seen in an established art venue, versus the reproduction seen in the local newspaper) and the particular people engaged in the exchange.  It becomes an issue of economics.  The economics of the exchange. 

The ideological structure of public relational performance, that which it seeks to apprehend, is corrupted by the impact of the documenting process. The meaning of the corruption does not stand apart from the performance no matter how much we may want it to.  And no matter how well built the blinders are that the artist and the gallery and the whole marketing system hold over their eyes, it cannot be denied.  There is a conflict. There is a force, which is seeking to express something and another which is striving to prevent its expression.  The camera is not a neutral object in the world.  Its presence is not without impact.  A second exchange; the image, taken from the first exchange; the performance, is implied by its very presence. 

And the camera is there, over and over and over again. Someone wants it there.  It is serving the interests of someone.  
the camera

Contrasted to those times when the camera is a formally considered element in the performance, most public performance proceeds as though the artist and the public do not know the camera is present.   It is an almost universal sub performance to act as though the camera is not physically present, as though the camera is an invisible yet necessary condition that one accepts as part and parcel of the business of performance. 

And we, the viewing public, perform as if the relationship between the photographer and the performer is privileged.  We grant the photographer a value, a value that asks of us to not get in the way of the line of sight, to not disturb.  It is as though the recording apparatus gives the person holding it a level of power, and the person whom it is pointed at a status.  A power and a status that I would wager comes from the perceived relationship among the photographer, the performer and the “someone whose interests are being served”.

That there is a value to the visual document is unquestionable.  It is a quickly perceived medium from which to share the performance -- thereby making gallery applications, grant applications and artist talks both more seductive than the written or oral word, and easier to disseminate where language is an issue.  It offers visual “proof” that something happened and it is a potential commodity value. It is an object that enlarges an audience base, crosses the language barrier, and is expedient.  And artists need to market their work to fit the demands of the market, right? 

Pressure to document

Performance artists' reluctance to address the conflict of position between performance and the visual document may come from the desire to meet the demands of those who have the power to award exhibitions and grants; in short, funding bodies.  Success here is measured in terms of influence and reproducibility.   And yet, there appears to be a refusal to acknowledge our very own implication in the perpetuation of a given standard.   We, performance artists, have taken the structure of validation from within the existing format even though we may no longer work within the confines of this structure.  It is as if we have transplanted the framework of the gallery onto the street, all the while proclaiming the value of the street over the institutionalisation of the gallery.  The question becomes, as performance artists, do we enter into the pre-established agreed upon illusion that the present, the experience, can be open to re-possession, or do we challenge this illusion and refuse to valorise this object that stands in for something that can never be had?  

And what are we afraid of losing if we do not document with the tools of our time?  What is our fear?  That we are not going to be seen, that we are not going to be recognised, that our worth will not be known?  Or, is it that we will not be seen by enough people or the right people?  Or, is it that we will not be recognised as artists working within an art framework, that no-one will value that which they cannot have or own?  That we will sink into oblivion, vanish from sight, disappear? 

Legitimate fears they are.  And yet, in keeping this structure of validation present, other structures will not be given the opportunity to find and establish and make known their own values. Omissions and distortions and accidents.  Smells and sounds and feelings.  Chance encounters, unforeseen connections.  A body that is in relation to an ever changing, unstable, yet-to-be.  Are not these some of the things that performance itself proclaims?  The power of the invisible, the power of the irreducible, that which cannot be owned.  And here we are, acting oblivious to this camera which dissects, flattens, freezes into a neat little package, and presents itself at the very door we say we have closed.

The visual document covers over and blankets a deep loss. The photograph shows.  If the picture says we did this, we must have done so.  In a practice that disappears in the making, in which the performer never “sees” herself or her work, the photograph or the video become one last vain attempt to face the lost.  How can one see, look back, appraise, one’s life’s work if there is nothing to show?  Roland Barthes speaks of looking at the photograph, seeing what is no longer there, as a traumatic event.  He writes “… chaque act de capture et de lecture d’une photo es implicitement, d’une façon refoulée, un contact avec ce qui n’est plus, c’est-à-dire avec la mort.”   I would like to complicate this by adding that the act of and the product of photography seems like a futile attempt to control and have power over death.  To not let the moment pass into itself, but to try and freeze what is no more and will never be again.  This is something that every performer grapples with, this sense of disappearance and loss.  And yet, I strongly believe that this is somehow the unspoken content of performance, and to avoid or to deny this through an overabundant reliance on the visual document is to betray those unspoken ideologies that performance itself rests upon.  I believe it is one of the intense beauties of performance, that it disappears upon creation, that its value lies in the exchange of the moment.   Period.    

Karen Spencer