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Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces" - Critical Documentation Strategies For Preserving Art's History20206555
Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces" - Critical Documentation Strategies For Preserving Art's History20206555
Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces" - Critical Documentation Strategies For Preserving Art's History20206555
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The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo
JL n his essay "An Archival Impulse," Hal Foster de umentation is not a new issue. of repetition and temporality;
Abramovic's re-performances
scribes a trend in contemporary art to produce works that re Having originated in a debate on act as performative documents
semble collections of data. He writes that archival art "not only the role of technology, specifically of the past performances she
draws on informal archives but produces them as well, and video, in a body-based practice and cites. Lessons learned from a
does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival ma the possibility of reproduction by close analysis of re-performance
and performance documentation
terials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet technological means [4], the pros
can provide useful insights for
private" [1]. Foster's reading develops an analysis of works that pect of experiencing a mediated and promote critical thought
"call out for human interpretation" as he emphasizes the performance has troubled perfor about conservation strategies
processes of memorializing and history-making so important mance art scholars for the past 15 for time-based art.
to early 21st-century culture [2]. While Foster's "archival im years [5]. What is at stake is whether
pulse" in contemporary art is easy to detect, I want to point in a performance produced solely for
stead to a variation on this trend?the drive to produce an electronic recording medium
documentation. can be evaluated in the same way as a live event. As Amelia
Although similarly concerned with re-creating the past, Jones so aptly pointed out in 1997, for young scholars today
artists interested in producing documentation have a sense studying early performance art, we can only know historical
not of the past as incomplete, as in Foster's account of the performance through documentation?and, more impor
archival impulse, but of history as incomplete. That is, these tantly, "there is no possibility of an unmediated relationship
artists are not interested in adding contemporary ideas or to any kind of cultural product," including performance art
structures to objects from the past; instead, they seek to con [6]. Whether one understands performance as always disap
tribute to the narrativized and/or mediated understandings pearing, endlessly mediated (technologically or socially), or
of the past that already come after an originary moment. Their perpetually repeating scenes of loss, the question of inter
production of materials is not archival in the sense of creat preting not the performance itself but its documentation
ing an ordering or logic to a set or collection, but instead com continually comes to the fore [7]. With this reliance on doc
prises work that repeats and multiplies an historical idea, umentation come attendant questions on the media of those
inflecting its image through a nostalgic lens. documents.
Documentation is here understood as a mode of produc Issues of authorship, medium and authenticity pose prob
tion of contemporary art anda, mode of critical interpretation; lems in discussions of performance art documentation. Each
these practices mutually inform each other and should be of these concerns stimulates the drive to produce, through
brought to bear on one another [3]. Problems raised by the repetition and multiplication, a host of materials related to a
existing discourse on performance documentation provide so-called "original." Authorship comes into question because,
the grounds for the present investigation and offer points of like the archival impulse, the drive to produce documentation
connection between artist-initiated, creative documentation is also conditioned by a relation to materials that are both
practices and institutionally sponsored documentation of con found and constructed?and thus by an individual who both
temporary time-based media arts. Indeed, the ephemerality manipulates existing documents and produces new docu
and interactivity (qualities also attributed to media arts) of ments. One must account not only for the perspective of the
performance art pose substantial problems for conservation documenter (occasionally elided when the document is pre
and preservation. Likewise, time-based media arts are fre sumed to be objective), but also for his or her engagement
quently preserved through some means of documentation that with the performance and the degree of subjective selection
in turn is often described as performative?that is, something apparent in the documentation.
that must be replayed, reread or reinterpreted in order to Secondly, one must address the medium and style of the
be experienced. A theoretical exchange exists between per documentation. Although scholars such as Peggy Phelan sug
formance, documentation, preservation and media art. gest that the documentation properly "belongs" to the medium
In the field of performance art studies, the problem of doc used and not the medium of what is documented, a broader
approach addresses the variety of ways that documentation is
Jessica Santone (researcher), Department of Art History & Communication Studies, only partly contingent on the technological medium selected
McGill University, 853 Sherbrooke Street W., Montreal, PQH3A 2T6, Canada. [8]. In either case, the medium matters, demonstrating how
E-mail: <jessica.santone@mail.mcgill.ca>.
artists and art professionals think about documenting as well
LEONARDO, Vo
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During a tal
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hierarchy of
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Fig. 2. VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants
aluminum, 65 x 48 in,
thenticity
1969/2001.
co
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cussion after
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focus
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formanceis a amples
substantial
of
at artist-produced
that documenta poinp
peating The
the Guggenheim
original, through
tion projects?"authenticity" acts as a Mu
and word-of-mouth.
video of the Spectators
structuring mechanism.
piece Each document show
critics have commented
shiftingorganizes
around on
itself around the idea of an Abr
counter as one
during ofthethe
"original most
evening.
experience." The drive to pro int
ments of woman
the seven duce documentation
began night stems from a need
her series
face-o
Burton the
writes,twoforto cameras
produceexample,
a truer account of the past, a assu
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ent were cusing
held captive
more complete historyby
directly of whaton: a
happened near
( 1 )
long, wordless exchange
Abramovic, and how something was perceived. How betw
gazing int
artist andright
a youngand woman
ever, the (2)
layers the
of documentation around fa
brav
to inch woman,
up to the aimed
the closely
idea up
of an original, around a frag to
guar
form. After both
stare. These
mentparties of the thing it succu
cameras
or single moment f
tears, Abramovic
documentingself, cannot be thought
released of as nested her
(capture
girl document?the
departed" [22]. The
hierarchically value. Each doc vide
in terms of prose of
ical review ument touches
reflects
multiplication and at its root the
ofidea of the the
multip g
event of performing.
the encounter,
original, and then moves out from making
there,
formance available
From diverging inas
this layering
various ways,a person
connecting to of
8. Phelan [4].
D.C.: Council on Library
Body
2000).
University
and Infor
Art: Guggenheim
Performing
recording:of 3
Museum, 8-9 April 2005) [video
9 April 2005,Minnesota
tape 2].
the
14. T. Nikki Cesare and Jenn Joy write that Seven Easy
P