work, mediation or documentation?

I’m interested in prompting this question in the viewer when encountering my work as its something that I’m eternally questioning myself. Perhaps through making the work ‘live’ (I’m keeping it within scare quotes as I’m starting to think of the work as being live without myself necessarily being present) the work can exist as all three. Is there a way to make a viewer experience production, mediation or documentation of a work interdependently?

I read somewhere about a piece by Peter Richards, I think from a body of work called ‘Performance Lucinda’ where he performs in one room with the audience being in an adjoining darkened room. The audience experiences the ‘live’ performance through a small hole in the wall which projects the live Richards onto unexposed photographic paper. Hence the audience witnesses the documentation of the event rather than the event itself; through the performances' remediation as documentation. It would be like memaking a viewer watch my work through the camera itself, even though they are physically present at the same time and in the same site that Iam performing in.

This also makes me think about how a shadow or reflection is evidence of presentness and how this could potentially be altered. Often in my works the real time ‘actual’ me is given away by my shadow in the projection light. Perhaps there is a way to separate it to further confuse what is present and what is past action. Then again maybe its an important tell tale sign, an opening in the work, exposing its construction. a little.