"Cours de soir", de Jacques Tati (1965)

A beautiful bit of comic how to.

A little closer

Email recieved from Guiness world records-

CLAIM ID: 288582
MEMBERSHIP ID: 253998

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Dear Miss Lauren O'Day,

We are glad to inform you that your record application has been transferred to our internal system.

You do not need to do anything at this stage.

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Claim Number 1

longest time spent pacing between two points

My claim will take up to 6 weeks. Fingers crossed

Rules and regulations

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Value

I’ve been thinking about documentation, in particularly my problem with it. I think this anxiety about it has been heightened by the up and coming portfolio hand in that includes documentation of work. Here in lies the conundrum. If my critical question is about the need or the problems of documentation how can I justify documenting my own work even if it is for educational purposes? This leads me to think about the value of documentation, surely all documentation is there to give validation to the work. Whether it be in the educational context of marking or in a gallery context of gaining an audience or promoting of the piece, it all leads back to worth. Whatever happened to art for arts sake? I was thinking about this on the way in today. Is art that is seen by no one still art? Again this leads back to the importance of a witness. Is the intention of this witness important? Can the witness be a passing member of the public that may or may not acknowledge that the piece or indeed anything is actually happening? This would surely lead to the neglecting of the ‘feedback loop’ but is this important? Who am I making art for? This is the question I need to answer first. The relevance of documentation is subsequent to this question. Or is it? Even if this is so, in terms of performance, the relevance of documentation is overshadowed by the importance of liveness and aura which, despite the necessity of it, documentation kills. Is necessity the be all and end all in the documentation debate? I think not.

The importance in documentation of live art.

For myself and to gain relevance to other post I thought I would shove the questions for my critical study proposal up here.

The importance in documentation of live art.

Is the documentation of live art important? Can we ever get the same experience from documentation? Is documentation subverting the intention of a live art model? Thorough this subversion I intend to question the importance aura in relation to live art. With links to Walter Benjamin is modernity affecting the need for documentation? In turn this questions the materiality of performance. Surely the beauty of performance art is in its ephemeral nature but with constant emphasise on art as a commodity we need to question its Value? Furthermore this questions the value of an action and whether documentation of such an action has more or less value than the original.

In particular I wish to launch an inquiry into documentation of durational art. I will question the importance of the witness/ audience within a piece of work and there necessity within a documentation process. With reference to Teching Hsieh I will question there value within the piece as well as there gain from it in the way of necessity of the performance actually happening.

In favour of documentation and relation to Marina Abramovic I will look at documentation through preservation in terms of Re-enactment of a performance. In this sense I will take into account the importance of process and whether or not the documentation can stand alone as a piece of work.

Overall I wish to question the necessity of documentation within a performance art model and whether or not in doing so the ‘liveness’ is lost.