Perform, Repeat, Record (Book)

Live Art in History

Bringing together contributors from dance, theatre, visual studies and art history, Perform, Repeat, Record addresses the conundrum of how live art is positioned within history. 

Edition

Bringing together contributors from dance, theatre, visual studies and art history, Perform, Repeat, Record addresses the conundrum of how live art is positioned within history. Set apart from other art forms in that it may never be performed in precisely the same way twice, ephemeral artwork exists both at the time of its staging and long after in the memories of its spectators and their testimonies, as well as in material objects, visual media and text. These multiple occurrences and iterations offer new critical possibilities for thinking and writing the histories of performance. Among the artists, theorists and historians who contributed to this volume are Marina Abramovic, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Rebecca Schneider, Boris Groys, Jane Blocker, Carolee Schneemann, Tehching Hsieh, Orlan, Tilda Swinton and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Amelia Jones is an art theorist, curator and researcher. She is the author of several books, including Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts.

Adrian Heathfield is a writer, curator and professor of performance and visual culture at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of Live: Art and Performance and Out of Now, among others.

INTRODUCTIONS
 
The Now and the Has Been: Paradoxes of Live Art in History – Amelia Jones
 
Then Again – Adrian Heathfield
 
THEORIES AND HISTORIES
 
Introduction 
Amelia Jones
 
Chapter 1: The Performativity of Performance Documentation – Philip Auslander
 
Chapter 2: Dead Mannequin Walking: Fluxus and the Politics of Reception – Hannah B Higgins
 
Chapter 3: The Viral Ontology of Performance – Christopher Bedford
 
Chapter 4: Can Photographs Make It So? Repeated Outbreaks of VALIE EXPORT’s Genital Panic Since 1969 – Mechtild Widrich
 
Chapter 5: Macular Degeneration: Some Peculiar Aspects of Performance Art Documentation – Mónica Mayer
 
Chapter 6: History and Precariousness: In Search of a Performative
Historiography – Eleonora Fabião
 
Chapter 7: Performance Remains – Rebecca Schneider
 
Chapter 8: Not as Before, but Simply: Again – André Lepecki
 
Chapter 9: The Prosthetic Present Tense: Documenting Chinese Time-based Art – Meiling Cheng
 
Chapter 10: Progressive Striptease – Sven Lutticken
 
Chapter 11: Repetition: A Skin which Unravels – Jane Blocker
 
Chapter 12: Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation 209 – Boris Groys
 
Chapter 13: The Interstices of History – Angela Harutyunyan et al.
 
An Unofficial Timeline of Socialist and Post-Socialist Performance – Angela Harutyunyan et al.
 
DOCUMENTS
 
Introduction 
Adrian Heathfield
 
Chapter 14: A Text on 20 years with 66 footnotes – Tim Etchells
 
Chapter 15: Faith Wilding, Waiting and Wait-With 
 
Chapter 16: Lynn Hershman and/as Roberta Breitmore 
 
Chapter 17: We Are Formatted Memories – Orlan
 
Chapter 18: Franko B and Kamal Ackarie, Don’t Leave Me This Way
 
Chapter 19: Make Me Stop Smoking – Rabih Mroué
 
Chapter 20: The Personal Evolution of the Performance Object (Or, What to Do with Leftovers) – Nao Bustamante
 
Chapter 20: The Personal Evolution of the Performance Object (Or, What to Do with Leftovers) – Nao Bustamante
 
Chapter 21: Cai Yuan and J.J. Xi, Mad For Real 
 
Chapter 22: Hayley Newman, MiniFlux 
 
Chapter 23: Daniel Joseph Martinez, Call Me Ishmael or The Fully Enlightened Earth Radiates Disaster Triumphant 
 
Chapter 24: Multiple Journeys: A Performance Chronology – Guillermo Gómez-Peña
 
Chapter 25: Attending to Anthony McCall’s Long Film For Ambient Light – Lucas Ihlein
 
Chapter 26: ReCut Project – Ming-Yuen S. Ma
 
Chapter 27: Assuming a Migrant Woman’s Identity – Tanja Ostojic
 
Chapter 28: Barbara Smith, Intimations of Immortality 
 
Chapter 29: Santiago Sierra and the “Contexts” of History 
 
Chapter 30: Reconstruction2 – Janez Janša
 
Chapter 31: Documents of Chinese Time-based Art: Three Impressions from Three Fragments – Meiling Cheng
 
Chapter 32: Both Sitting Duet and Cheap Lecture – Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
 
Chapter 33: Aftermath: The Performance / Installation Nexus – Blair French
 
Timeline of Ideas: Live Art in (Art) History, A Primarily European-US-based Trajectory of Debates and Exhibitions Relating to Performance Documentation and Re-enactments – Amelia Jones
 
DIALOGUES
 
Introduction
Adrian Heathfield
 
Chapter 34: Interior Squirrel and the Vicissitudes of History – Carolee Schneemann and Amelia Jones
 
Chapter 35: I Just Go in Life – Tehching Hsieh and Adrian Heathfield
 
Chapter 36: The Maybe: Modes of Performance and the “Live” – Tilda Swinton and Joanna Scanlan
 
Chapter 37: Photography as a Performative Act – Shezad Dawood and Amelia Jones
 
Chapter 38: Do it Again, Do it Again (Turn Around, Go Back) – Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, with Andrew Renton
 
Chapter 39: Touching Remains – Janine Antoni and Adrian Heathfield
 
Chapter 40: Perverse Martyrologies – Ron Athey and Dominic Johnson
 
Chapter 41: The Live Artist as Archaeologist – Marina Abramovic and Amelia Jones
 
Chapter 42: Every House Has a Door – Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish
 
Chapter 43: Alliterations – Mathilde Monnier and Jean-Luc Nancy
Introduction and Translation: Noémie Solomon
 
Chapter 44: Intangibles – Hugo Glendinning, Adrian Heathfield, and Tim Etchells
 

'A work of art can never be produced the same way twice. ... this concern ... continues to provoke a multitude of questions and opinions regarding how works should be documented and re-created. ... [Jones and Heathfield] address these concerns in relation to performance art, body art, and live art; simultaneously, they construct a history of these broad artistic fields.' – Caylin Smith, Moving Image Archive News

 

'The breadth and depth of Perform, Repeat, Record are astonishing and the range of artists, scholars and insights invigorating ... It leaves me overwhelmed.' – Caroline Wake, RealTime Arts

 

'An impressive collaboration between two of the field's most dedicated scholars.' – Lisa Newman, Artillery

 

'This is a weighty text in all senses of the term' – New Theatre Quarterly, Chris Gilligan

 

'In its exhaustive presentation of different types of performances, documentation, and critical approaches, it suggests a way of reading performance that is no longer beholden to modernist notions of transgression, transformation, and the avant-garde.' – A Journal of Performance and Art, Jennie Klein

 

'“[A] broad and thoughtful investigation of how the history of performative art should be documented and studied….The book covers a particularly international scope, with essays devoted to performance art in the U.S., Western Europe, South America, China, the Middle East, Australia, and the Soviet Union, including a timeline of Soviet and Post-Soviet performance and another of performance historiography–that is, surveys and re-performances. The final section records eleven conversations between scholars and performance artists, including Carolee Schneemann, Tehching Hsieh, Ron Athey, Janine Antoni and Marina Abromavic…. The book will be very useful for scholars of performance and can serve as an introduction to the history and questions around the field for performance artists themselves.”' – The Drama Review, Pannill Camp

 

'The collection offers a wealth of research on previously little researched work.' – Drama and Performance Studies

 

'Taken as a whole, then, 'Perform, Repeat, Record' embraces the mammoth task of challenging how history making occurs within this field of contemporary art. Embracing a diverse and unconventional range of responses to the provocation ‘How does live art get remembered?’, it has implications for the broader field of historical discourse' – Limina, Janet Carter

 

'A valuable sourcebook and toolbox' – Theatre Journal, Marie Pecorari

 

'[A] broad and thoughtful investigation of how the history of performative art should be documented and studied….The book covers a particularly international scope, with essays devoted to performance art in the U.S., Western Europe, South America, China, the Middle East, Australia, and the Soviet Union, including a timeline of Soviet and Post-Soviet performance and another of performance historiography–that is, surveys and re-performances. The final section records eleven conversations between scholars and performance artists, including Carolee Schneemann, Tehching Hsieh, Ron Athey, Janine Antoni and Marina Abromavic…. The book will be very useful for scholars of performance and can serve as an introduction to the history and questions around the field for performance artists themselves.' – Artblog, Andrea Kirsh

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