LOST & FOUND: Archiving Performance

Barbara Büscher (Leipzig/Cologne)

A remarkable number of exhibitions and performances in recent years have dealt with recalling and revisiting the performative arts of the 1960s and 1970s. They indicate a newly heightened interest in the historicity of these artworks and ask how access to this history can be gained.

Interest focuses on early performance art, from the first Happenings and Fluxus to their connection with post-modern dance, illustrated by the work of the Judson Dance Group and other performers/choreographers of the 1960s. It also lies in the relationship between performance practices and the camera, as first emerged in early video art. It is not only the temporal coincidence of the first phase of performance art with the development of video art that is relevant for current ventures in archiving. The historiography of both performance and video art is concerned with eventfulness, diverse forms of performance and presentation, the breaking up of the artwork into processes and public participation. 

While on the one hand exhibitions and re-enactments signify the institutionalisation and preserving of past events as well as their exploitation on the art market [1], their renewed staging and contextualisation also constitute new forms of appropriation. They represent a fluid approach to archives. They make the question of the nature of the artefacts on which old and new accounts of performances and their histories are based newly relevant and examine their readability in new contexts.