Traditionally performance is considered as a work enacted ‘live’ in an original event. The event is then normally documented and this documentation (be it photography or film) is shown as a distilled representation of that previous event. There is the potential for the event to be re-enacted by the original performer or remade by someone else, but this is seen as somewhat less authentic to ‘being there’ and experiencing the original event. Perhaps it helps to consider the difference between simulation, reproduction, repetition and re-enactment, more so than the other terms re-enactment seems to rely on memory (previously lived experience) along with a consciousness of time passed and an existence in the present moment.
Re-enactments of performances have the potential not only to act as a ‘live image’ occurring in real space and real time but also become displaced, acting as an inserted past moment in a present situation. Through re-enacting a historical event there is also the potential for interpretation and interaction with the past, an opportunity to change the past or alter ones conceived memory of a perceived past moment (Bergson again). If there occurs ‘an error’ in the re-enactment, if it is not truly performed as-it-was, there is the opportunity to disregard the rhetoric of authenticity rather highlighting the presentness through interpretation or the impromptu. The next-time-around erases the need for the original.
So there is a move away from the traditional understanding of performance rather to see it as an ongoing process between event, mediation and reception. The role of documentation, then is involved in a mutual relationship between performativity and mediation.
Documentation and representation not only gives form to the message but also participates in the translation and reception of the message. Performance as documentation as performance… as simultaneously the moment of production and the moment of reception can itself become the subject.
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