How to Perform an Artwork?
June 9, 2010
Part of the International Symposium : Contemporary Art : Who Cares?
Scott deLahunta stated materiality of dance is bound up in 'liveness'. It disappears and doesn’t leave something behind. In contemporary dance choreographers do not work from or leave behind a script or score and the problem of disappearing, presence and absence is dealt with differently within academia versus practice. Choreographers are working with reflexivity and asking about the form within the making of it.
In dance, there is clearly a movement towards publishing ideas in different media including books and multi-media. For example Improvisation and One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe, and Inside Movement Knowledge (IMK) and other projects by EG|PC. More recently the trend is towards reconstruction which is also practised by younger artists. Reconstruction is seen as a viable artistic strategy and the recovery in dance education is more apparent with courses at BA and MA level. Scott speculates that this is a move within the field to take charge of one's own memory instead of turning to the traditional archivist re: reconstruction – asking students to consider the past and reconstruct. This emerging practice of reconstruction means the field itself is looking toward recovery and understanding.
In the context of the IMK project, Annet Dekker showed how the NIMk team, with its background in contemporary art curating, conservation and documentation, explored to what extent the methodologies developed for contemporary art are considered useful to document a dance piece for the purpose of its perpetuation. What do we need to know in order to be able to recreate, re-perform, or in other ways, take a work of contemporary art or dance into the future? The research focused on documentation as a means for reconstruction developing a model for capturing the creative process and the core elements of the performance “Extra Dry” (1999-). Annet compared contemporary dance-, media art- and museum practice and observed the emphasis on multiple uncertain creation practices and contexts versus ideal state, the past and the present state, and problems with the rigid structure of the models and also the lack of participatory context of the work. Instead the model should be hybrid: a model of modules is also for the user to take responsibility and enables discussions. The next step is to visualise the model, its layers and relations.
The last speaker was Jan Mot, talking about his practice as art dealer in relation to Tino Sehgal. Jan describes Seghal’s work as people doing something for the whole duration of an exhibition, always able to reduce things to very simple concepts where no material is involved. Collectors and curators are often really confused by this (and frustrated as the discussion showed) and find it hard to envision visual art that doesn’t contain any material props and where no documentation is allowed. The main reason of the artist is to make a clear distinction between his work and performance art – many works as performances are known as pictures and videos but for him the work only exists while it is happening. All knowledge is captured in his and authorised people's minds and bodies. Tino teaches the guards and people in charge (depending on the work but never the conservators), in the presence of museum conservator and hands over information that is necessary to “re-install”. Jan sees the people working full-time with the artist to install work in different places as the living archive of Tino Sehgal.
The lectures were followed by a lively discussion where it was clear that documentation and preservation issues addressed institutional questions.