presence & presentness

The question keeps arising if I’m performing in the work and what is the difference between enacting them live, as I have been in crit situations and then representing the documentation – as shown in this blog. It seems to be working somewhere in between as I’m not performing ‘live’ and then presenting the documentation (evidence of an action) rather the work is performed as it is recorded and rescreened. By not insisting the action be seen live, I’m interested in how the resulting evidence of action can make the viewer contemplate the series of events that have lead to that conclusion. Maybe this is a possible way of making it live, without necessarily being present.

There is also the importance of it occurring within a specific site, or situation and its relation to the audience, for example there is a difference between inviting an audience to observe something which I am presenting to them and then having them witness me enacting (performing) the actual situation itself. Say showing previous work in a crit vs. performing the crit itself.

A friend commented its like seeing the performance of the performance, something to do with the difference between performance and performativity. This is often bought up in relation to the ontology of performance; if the ‘performance utterance’ of J L Austin addressing language can be transposed to performance and performance theory. In investigating the pragmatics of language it is possible in saying something, to be actually doing something, rather than simply reporting or describing it. For Derrida the performative enacts the now of writing in the present time- perhaps so if this can be applied to the pragmatics of performance, by imbuing the performance in its actual situation so that one ends up enacting the activity that the representation signifies rather than describing and presenting it.

Peggy Phelan in Unmarked the Politics of Performance suggests that performance can only exist in the present, and its inability to be reproduced or repeated.

‘Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation, once it does so, it becomes something other than performance… It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as ‘different’. The document of a performance only a spur to memory, an encouragement of memory to become present.’

I am interested in how this can be sit alongside philosophy which opens up notions of temporal continuity such as that posited by Henri Bergson. The documentation of a performance serves only to spur memory, the moment of its existence is in the past, yet if we consider Bergson’s temporal paradox of the past (through memory) informing perception of the present, there is an opportunity for past documentation not only to contribute to present perception but also to exist in the moment of reception. I am interested in developing work that emphasises the presentness of performance yet through the means of recording and documenting the work for assumed re-presentation.