The conservation of live art works and their documents continues to challenge art historians, archivists and conservationist. Performance theorist, Peggy Phelan, has argued that performance art is best left without a trace in order to preserve its original and authentic expression in memory. Others, like Philip Auslander have suggested that witnessing the live event is not necessary given the proliferation of live art documents that regenerate and proliferate affective qualities. Both theorists posit ontological priority of either the live art event as a privileged moment, or the document as the site that evokes liveness. I propose that how we encounter the document is as crucial to the event as the event is to the document. This relation can be seen, not as a sequential movement between event and document or document and event, but as a continuing dynamic that is evoked through the encounter with the audience of the future.
This raises some pertinent questions that implicate all contemporary artists. If we consider encounters with the live event and its documents as creative and dynamic, then perhaps artists may need to now consider how conservation and the memory of the live work and its documents speak to audiences of the past and future. If this encounter is a major creative extension of the work, as I am suggesting, then are artists now to become conservationists and archivist of their work, or are “professional intermediaries involved in such conservation practices (like curators, museum archivists, librarians) the new intermediary artists of the 21st century? And furthermore, this begs the question: why remember live works and their documents, and for whom?
This one day workshop will tackle these concerns and questions through discussion and hands on production of a performative document in the form of an instructional manual.
Participants are invited to create prototypes for new archival platforms to display a performance event created by “the parasite” during the introduction of the workshop. Participants are further invited to imagine this work in the future through various mediated encounters. The intention is to generate ideas on how to extend the life of live event and the document in ways that are not currently utilized. These ideas will reexamine the notion of the archive and classification models used to categorize art works. The key is to imagine new possibilities for encountering documents and the archive that may be structurally impossible, yet potentially desirable. The group may further elect to document the group’s process through the day as a performance onto itself. Together, the group will collaboratively co-author the instructional manual for archivists, artists and interested stakeholders, on how to ( or not) evoke, rather than conserve, the memory of the performance and its documents through encounters with future audiences.
A reading list and/or small course-pack covering issues pertaining to this subject will be provided prior to the workshop.
It is highly recommended that participants attend the artists lecture on February 28, 8pm in the Bell Auditorium (D440) at NSCAD prior to taking the workshop.
The workshop is limited to an enrolment of 8.
The workshop will take place on Saturday, March 3, 2007 10-5:30pm. NSCAD Board room D500.
Contact Joshua Schwebel at piatejosh@yahoo.ca for more info or to sign up.
A 24 hour cancellation notice is required.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Questions to ponder from the UCLAN workshop
1. How do you see the audience of the present and future encountering the work and its memory?
2. What new forms of remembering can you think of that challenge and augment current taxonomies and classification systems used in conservation and collecting of live art? ( ie. Would you consider migration or emulation of the work through time and acceptable extension of the life of the work? How does the obsolescence of technology figure in the extension of the works life).
3. Is your artistic intention necessary for the experiential dimensions of the work and its documents/traces? If not, why? If so, how?
4. How might we negotiate the conservation of live art works within academia, museums and official archives? What legal ( or non-legal) transactions and processes do you imagine using? What creative role might financial transaction play in this process?
2. What new forms of remembering can you think of that challenge and augment current taxonomies and classification systems used in conservation and collecting of live art? ( ie. Would you consider migration or emulation of the work through time and acceptable extension of the life of the work? How does the obsolescence of technology figure in the extension of the works life).
3. Is your artistic intention necessary for the experiential dimensions of the work and its documents/traces? If not, why? If so, how?
4. How might we negotiate the conservation of live art works within academia, museums and official archives? What legal ( or non-legal) transactions and processes do you imagine using? What creative role might financial transaction play in this process?
Overview of UCLAN workshop: In Retrospect
The UCLAN workshop (Preston, UK)
5-9pm, Feb 5, 2007
Collaborators: Paul Craddock, JD Laing, Jon Aveyard, Paul Stapleton, Amy Rome and Tagny Duff.
This workshop consisted of the following:
1) a brief overview of my work, and the objectives and goal of the workshop,
2) a short presentation and discussion on examples of documentation strategies for live art works by artists/provokers including Tino Seghal, Tania Bruguera, Flashmobber Bill Wasik, Marina Abramovich, Operator of relations.
3) Questions to consider were discussed by the group.
4) Break.
5) “Speed archiving”: Each collaborator answered the questions in relation to the conservation of their own document three times, each with a different person and a different possible scenario for conservation.
6) Group conversation on one selected scenario (of the three) for presentation/conservation of each live art document brought to the workshop.
Overview: In Retrospect
There is never enough time. In fact, we ran out of time before we could discuss how to compile the manual with the content generated in the workshop. Never the less, the discussions and questions that arose were insightful and revealed the diverse scope of live art practices that each collaborator brought with them.
Paul C. was thinking through ways to present documentation of a performance for his master’s thesis without resorting to the traditional video or photographic documentation format. Amy, who is close to completing a PhD dissertation in the form of a CD-Rom (an extensive archive collection of early avant-garde Russian theatre and performance of the voice) also articulated concerns about the difficulties of experimenting with forms of documentation within academic parameters that continue to privilege the written word as source of knowledge. JD, who brings a nursing practice to her live artwork, presented the idea of a “discussion archive”- a performance and live document- for various communities traditionally not represented in live art practices. Jon, a sound artist and instructor at UCLAN, who is about to complete his PhD dissertation, voiced his concerns over maintaining the quality of sound works through carefully considered migration. Paul, research fellow at UCLAN and organizer of the “Convivencia” symposia, discussed issues relating to creating an online networking that could feature live art documents- including a video document of a collaborative site-specific performance work he did in Victoria, Canada last year.
Some key concerns that surfaced from this workshop related to the problematic of creating and presenting documents within the frame of the academy. Most notably, all participants acknowledged the problem of a lack of flexibility for practice-led research and experimental non-print media forms of knowledge-presentation in academic environments. The omission of practice based art education (e.g. studio arts, performing arts) on the topic of presentation and conservation of artwork through time was also mentioned. This included underdeveloped pedagogy on intellectual property rights, copyright and alternative modes of collaborative knowledge sharing (such as creative commons) as they apply to artists-scholars.
As we did not have time to compile the documents and content generated from the workshop, the blog will be a space for continuing to post notes and documents to be inserted in the manual.
5-9pm, Feb 5, 2007
Collaborators: Paul Craddock, JD Laing, Jon Aveyard, Paul Stapleton, Amy Rome and Tagny Duff.
This workshop consisted of the following:
1) a brief overview of my work, and the objectives and goal of the workshop,
2) a short presentation and discussion on examples of documentation strategies for live art works by artists/provokers including Tino Seghal, Tania Bruguera, Flashmobber Bill Wasik, Marina Abramovich, Operator of relations.
3) Questions to consider were discussed by the group.
4) Break.
5) “Speed archiving”: Each collaborator answered the questions in relation to the conservation of their own document three times, each with a different person and a different possible scenario for conservation.
6) Group conversation on one selected scenario (of the three) for presentation/conservation of each live art document brought to the workshop.
Overview: In Retrospect
There is never enough time. In fact, we ran out of time before we could discuss how to compile the manual with the content generated in the workshop. Never the less, the discussions and questions that arose were insightful and revealed the diverse scope of live art practices that each collaborator brought with them.
Paul C. was thinking through ways to present documentation of a performance for his master’s thesis without resorting to the traditional video or photographic documentation format. Amy, who is close to completing a PhD dissertation in the form of a CD-Rom (an extensive archive collection of early avant-garde Russian theatre and performance of the voice) also articulated concerns about the difficulties of experimenting with forms of documentation within academic parameters that continue to privilege the written word as source of knowledge. JD, who brings a nursing practice to her live artwork, presented the idea of a “discussion archive”- a performance and live document- for various communities traditionally not represented in live art practices. Jon, a sound artist and instructor at UCLAN, who is about to complete his PhD dissertation, voiced his concerns over maintaining the quality of sound works through carefully considered migration. Paul, research fellow at UCLAN and organizer of the “Convivencia” symposia, discussed issues relating to creating an online networking that could feature live art documents- including a video document of a collaborative site-specific performance work he did in Victoria, Canada last year.
Some key concerns that surfaced from this workshop related to the problematic of creating and presenting documents within the frame of the academy. Most notably, all participants acknowledged the problem of a lack of flexibility for practice-led research and experimental non-print media forms of knowledge-presentation in academic environments. The omission of practice based art education (e.g. studio arts, performing arts) on the topic of presentation and conservation of artwork through time was also mentioned. This included underdeveloped pedagogy on intellectual property rights, copyright and alternative modes of collaborative knowledge sharing (such as creative commons) as they apply to artists-scholars.
As we did not have time to compile the documents and content generated from the workshop, the blog will be a space for continuing to post notes and documents to be inserted in the manual.
Selected Bibliography
for the workshop: Encounters with the live art document
February 5, 2007 University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.
___________________________________
Auslander,Philip. The Performativity of Performance Documentation. PAJ 84 (2006) pp.1-10.
Jones, Amelia. “Presence” in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation. Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice at the End of This Century. (Winter, 1997), pp.11-18.
Granger, Stewart. “Digital preservation & emulation: from theory to practice.” 289-96, in ICHIM01: international cultural heritage informatics meeting: cultural heritage and technologies in the third millenium. Vol. 2 David Bearman and Franca Garzotto, eds. Pittsburgh: Archives & Museum Informatics; Milano: Politecnico di Milano, 2001. Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/papers/ichim01SG.html
Laurenson, Pip. “The conservation and documentation of video art,” 263-271, in Modern art: who cares?. IJsbrand Hummelen and Dionne Sillé, eds. Amsterdam: The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art: Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999. Access: http://www.incca.org/Dir003/incca/cmt/text.nsf/0/06aee06d030db4a7c1256e450036c7
Sterling, Bruce. “Digital Decay [Décomposition numérique].” Permanence through change: the variable media approach [L’approche des médias variables : la permanence par le changement]. Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones, eds. Montréal: Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology; New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003. [ref. May 22, 2003]. Available on the Internet : http://www.variablemedia.net/pdf/Sterling.pdf
“The Decision-making Model for the Conservation of Modern Art” (SBMK) during the project ‘Conservation of Modern Art’ (1996-97). (Reference: 3 October 2005) Access: http://www.incca.org/dir003/incca/cmt/text.nsf/0/3bd096d3c248026bc1256af0004a6e8a/$FILE/Decision-making%20Model.pdf
International Network for the conservation of contemporary art:
Outlines for how to work with artists, ethics:
http://www.incca.org/
DOCAM ( The Daniel Langlois Foundation research centre for conservation of media).
http://www.docam.ca
February 5, 2007 University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.
___________________________________
Auslander,Philip. The Performativity of Performance Documentation. PAJ 84 (2006) pp.1-10.
Jones, Amelia. “Presence” in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation. Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice at the End of This Century. (Winter, 1997), pp.11-18.
Granger, Stewart. “Digital preservation & emulation: from theory to practice.” 289-96, in ICHIM01: international cultural heritage informatics meeting: cultural heritage and technologies in the third millenium. Vol. 2 David Bearman and Franca Garzotto, eds. Pittsburgh: Archives & Museum Informatics; Milano: Politecnico di Milano, 2001. Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/papers/ichim01SG.html
Laurenson, Pip. “The conservation and documentation of video art,” 263-271, in Modern art: who cares?. IJsbrand Hummelen and Dionne Sillé, eds. Amsterdam: The Foundation for the Conservation of Modern Art: Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1999. Access: http://www.incca.org/Dir003/incca/cmt/text.nsf/0/06aee06d030db4a7c1256e450036c7
Sterling, Bruce. “Digital Decay [Décomposition numérique].” Permanence through change: the variable media approach [L’approche des médias variables : la permanence par le changement]. Alain Depocas, Jon Ippolito and Caitlin Jones, eds. Montréal: Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology; New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003. [ref. May 22, 2003]. Available on the Internet : http://www.variablemedia.net/pdf/Sterling.pdf
“The Decision-making Model for the Conservation of Modern Art” (SBMK) during the project ‘Conservation of Modern Art’ (1996-97). (Reference: 3 October 2005) Access: http://www.incca.org/dir003/incca/cmt/text.nsf/0/3bd096d3c248026bc1256af0004a6e8a/$FILE/Decision-making%20Model.pdf
International Network for the conservation of contemporary art:
Outlines for how to work with artists, ethics:
http://www.incca.org/
DOCAM ( The Daniel Langlois Foundation research centre for conservation of media).
http://www.docam.ca
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