ROUND-TABLE #1: REDEFINING PERFORMANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Introduction: Archiving the Ephemeral
Thursday October 21, 6-8pm
Presentations by RoseLee Goldberg (Visual Art Performance),
Location: NYU Law School. Furman Hall, Room 110, 245 Sullivan
Street ( South of Washington Square Park)

Participants [Total Attendance: 11]

Presentation: 100 Years of Performance Art [Powerpoint/ Video]by RoseLee Goldberg, Associate Adjunct Professor, NYU and Founding Director, PERFORMA

Moderator: RoseLee Goldberg

PARTICIPANTS

NYU Professors

1. Tom Bender, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
2. Andre Lepecki, Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts
3. Tavia N’yongo, Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts
4. Bruce Altshuler, Director, Program in Museum Studies, Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Graduate Students

1. Rachel Bowditch, Graduate Student Coordinator, PhD Candidate Performance Studies
2. Ayanna Williams,  MA in Performance Studies
3. Joe Shahadi, PhD Candidate in Performance Studies
4. Jonathan Berger, MA, Steinhardt School of Education
5. Anthony Clune, undergraduate, Steinhardt School of Education

Attendees from other Institutions

1. John Reijchman, Professor, Columbia University
2. Wiebke Arke, Performa Intern from Humboldt University, Berlin.

Themes: The discussion on ephemerality and the archive was led by RoseLee Goldberg who insists, in Performance Anxiety an editorial in Artforum, that performance historians need to 'read' documentation of performance (photograph, video, film), much as art historians read images of paintings, for clues as to iconography, time frame, formal developments. Such documentation can provide even more information than a one-time viewing of a performance.  RoseLee Goldberg contends that for too long, 'emphemerality' has been used as an excuse for ignoring the impact and influence of performance in the history of twentieth century art.  "For the artwork that leaves nothing or little behind we lack the kind of shorthand taken for granted in discussions of the 'solid arts.'"

 In the Ontology of Performance, Peggy Phelan argues that performance exists only in the present, transforming and becoming something else when it transfers into documentation and the archive. How then do we archive and capture performance? In Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor distinguishes between the archive, [the document, the photograph, and the traces of a performance that remain] and the repertoire, the ephemeral acts that are transmitted through practice and action, passed on from generation to generation through acts of transfer.  She elaborated on the following key points:

• How to read performance documentation? (black and white or color, entire performance space or close up on performer and what this tells about the historical context as well as formal structure and intentions of the artist)
• What clues and traces can we glean from photographs that can provide useful information to performance art historians and dance scholars?
• The photograph extends the life of the performance.
• Mythology created by the photograph
• Transmission of energy and the performance repertoire
• Reading documentation as a discipline and empirical data
• Can we trust the photograph?
• How do we recreate performances of the past?
• Performance artists used photographs to document their work: Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Marinetti etc…
• The relationship between Earth Art and documentation
• The self-conscious re-historicizing of performance
• How do we discuss performance in terms of visual art?
• Photography complicates the idea of artist control: How is the work received, frame and discussed?