Hi Monica,
is there anywhere we can access your essay, The Trouble with
Performance Art?
On 25/11/2007, at 12:26 AM, monica wrote:
> hi tim , norie and all,
>
> Re; I'm wondering whether the event/artwork itself doesn't/
> shouldn't alter our conceptions of desire so that preservation and
> event are more interwoven in an ongoing, unpredictable way.
>
> yes agree, it's on a spectrum between these desires and what desire
> is driving the impulse for preservation - preservation,
> establishment of a fixed value as a goal per se or using
> preservation strategies as the means/ basis to achieving durational
> transmissibility.
>
> re; This could mean emphasizing the emulation of the events/
> artworks, networks, processes, procedures, and interactions more,
> say, than the reproduction or replication of particular source
> code, exhibition environments, or recording/playing instruments.
>
> yes, think this gets close to a different desire of (re) generation
> that also admits 'loss' . or 'letting go'' as simon put it, and
> adjusting one's relation to this 'loss' as a space of reproduction:
> '
> so that: <in the emulation of the events/artworks, networks,
> processes, procedures, and interactions more, say, than the
> reproduction or replication of particula source codes...>
>
> this provides for a ' new' interactive space of reproduction',
> where the viewer/ interactor 's interaction is vital; to the works
> re-assembly, a space of encounter which is infinitely renewable in
> that the viewer is situated in the role of assembling and reviving
> what remains/ is preserved/ rather than only being confronted by
> the determinations of what has been assembled as an ' authorised"
> version.
>
> simon wrote:
> I once had to run a project that recovered and rebuilt a system
> that had been 'retired' three years earlier. This is never a simple
> process but if it was not considered during the build and design
> process I think it would have been impossible.
>
> think this last sentence is very usefu in thinking about this, in
> terms of what the ' original' constituted and how " its present
> form" simultaneously indicates ' what its possible futures/ forms
> of reproduction might be.
>
> i 've recently written a long essay looking at particular '
> reproducing strategies' in relation to performance art which
> produce specific forms of continuity ,in - new continuums-
> produced through the agency of new/ different/ related authors
> e.g. filmmakers/ photographers/ writers/ archivists. it's far too
> long to add chunks from it here, but to try and summartise one of
> its main thoughts: the essay ( The Trouble with Performance Art),
> revolves around how the material / strategies/ experiences of a
> performance can be reproduced by those who encounter 'what remains"
> to enable, not a replication of the originatory work, but a
> constructing of the work which reproduces it anew within the terms
> of what the work constitutes when it is encountered at any one
> time. (a travelling forward , rather than a looking back).
>
> i.e. as the new authors step into the gap/ absence of the first
> author-they re-construct the work anew and also add it to a chain
> of experience which can travel into the future- so, yes, the
> paradigm is storytelling/ fabulation; the wayward and additive
> energy of vitality rather than authority.
>
> best for now,
> monica
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>> Hi, Norie and Monica,
>>
>>
>>> Your interwoven threads are extremely interesting and directly
>>> engage my own sense of archival practice. I think that Monica is
>>> right on the mark when she says "the desire for an event/artwork
>>> to have duration is primarily concerned with unconstraining the
>>> artwork from its chronological assignment (to become untimely) so
>>> that it has the potential to continue to be to communicable
>>> within a continuum whose parameters of form and value are not
>>> predictable." But I'm not sure that I would strictly contrast
>>> that, anymore, with the "desire of preservation" ("to be
>>> timeless: unchangeable status quo/monumentalisation / stabilised
>>> form and value"). Particularly within the context of planned
>>> obselescence and and short shelf lives of recent new media art,
>>> I'm wondering whether the event/artwork itself doesn't/shouldn't
>>> alter our conceptions of desire so that preservation and event
>>> are more interwoven in an ongoing, unpredictable way.
>>
>> If so, then your combined emphases on storytelling (what Deleuze
>> calls "fabulation") becomes all the more important as a crucial
>> structural element of the archival process itself (since is also
>> something that Mickey pointed us toward via Derrida's Archive
>> Fever). This could mean emphasizing the emulation of the events/
>> artworks, networks, processes, procedures, and interactions more,
>> say, than the reproduction or replication of particular source
>> code, exhibition environments, or recording/playing instruments.
>> Such an emphasis would be on the open-endedness of fabulation, a
>> process that grows and changes in time, rather than
>> "incontrovertible status of value" that drives the work of most
>> museum collections and archives.
>>
>> Thanks for such stimulating thoughts.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> --
>> Timothy Murray
>> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>> Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
>> Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
>> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
>> 285 Goldwin Smith Hall
>> Cornell University
>> Ithaca, New York 14853
>>
>> office: 607-255-4086
>> e-mail: tcm1 at cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Monica Ross
> 07940143126
> 00 44 (0)1273 381480
> www.justfornow.net
>
>
>
>
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