Documentation

This morning on the walk in I began to think about documentation of a performance. I have never been great at documenting my work nor have I every really felt the need to and began to think about its importance. For me the power of a performance is gained by actually being there and I am often left thinking that documentation of such an event can never truly suffice. That is not to say in every case, the Joshua Sofaer documentational book perform everyday is indeed a piece of art in its self. But documentation for documentations sake really gets on my wick. Ok I’ll explain myself-

Over the summer I went to go and see the documentation of the Marnia Abramovic performance at the Whitworth gallery Manchester. The original piece required the viewer to commit at least four hours to the event in which several performances took place. They were required to sign an agreement and complete exercises which would aid them in viewing the performances before they were aloud to view them. To me this was a lesson in duration. She was asking the audience to invest a lot of time in the pieces which all had elements of duration.

The documentation however lovely, completely contradicted the work. Video documentation of the performances on individual screens meant I could hop from one to another at will with out investing a lot or indeed any time in some. I was not first confronted with the instructions to view (although they were there) or asked for a minimum commitment to the work, instead I was able to view what I wanted when I wanted how I wanted. To me this documentation completely lost the intent of the piece. I guess what I’m getting at is weather the piece needed to be documented at all. Again I think the importance of the witness comes into play. Is it enough for a witness’s recollection of such an event to act as documentation? In a storytelling way can the information and ideas of an event be passed on from person to person as a form of documentation? Is it enough to know that the event actually happened?