Abstract
Over recent decades, museums have begun to re-evaluate the role of performance art within their collections and exhibitions. This essay reflects on my curatorial approach toward presenting Ivor Davies’s 1968 event-structured and multimedia work Adam on St Agnes’ Eve as part of the 2015 exhibition Silent explosion. Ivor Davies and destruction in art at National Museum Wales, Cardiff. I discuss how this approach differs from customary modes of exhibiting historical performance art in museums, including documentary archival displays or live re-enactments. Drawing on concepts of ‘changeability’ (Hölling 2017), ‘material multiplicity’ (Lillemose 2006), ‘remediation’ (Bolter & Grusin 1999) and ‘proliferative preservation’ (Rinehart & Ippolito 2014), I consider how Davies’s historical performance transformed in the context of the exhibition through its remediation into a performative archival environment and a re-performance. Here arises the question of what constitutes the artwork’s identity in performance. This essay concludes with a reflection on the necessary but often contentious material transformations of performance art in museological contexts and speculates on the relationship between the work’s material identity, authorship, and authenticity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Explicit Material |
| Subtitle of host publication | Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures |
| Editors | Hanna B. Hölling, Francesca G. Bewer, Katharina Ammann |
| Publisher | Brill Academic Publishers |
| Pages | 117-141 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9789004396852 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 May 2019 |
