The ‘Extended Life’ of Performance: Curating 1960s Multimedia Art in the Contemporary Museum

TY - CHAP

T1 - The ‘Extended Life’ of Performance

T2 - Curating 1960s Multimedia Art in the Contemporary Museum

AU - Bodor, Judit

PY - 2019/5/9

Y1 - 2019/5/9

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - curating

KW - conservation

KW - performance art

KW - materiality

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105005524520

U2 - 10.1163/9789004396852_006

DO - 10.1163/9789004396852_006

M3 - Chapter

T3 - Studies in Art & Materiality

SP - 117

EP - 141

BT - The Explicit Material

A2 - Hölling, Hanna B.

A2 - Bewer, Francesca G.

A2 - Ammann, Katharina

PB - Brill Academic Publishers

CY - Leiden/Boston

ER -