Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events
From ESIWiki
My presentation will explore a range of perspectives on the relationship between performance and documentation practices, specifically reflecting on the primary outcomes of my current 10-month research project Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events. The project is active from mid September 2006 to mid July 2007, and has received support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Central Lancashire.
Historically, performance documentation has commonly been characterised as an unfaithful representation of the ephemeral art experience. However, in recent years the relationship between documentation and live performance practices has moved towards reconciliation. The reasons for such a shift are many, possibly including the validation of practice-led research, the use of new technologies within performance, anxieties over disappearing legacies, and/or the wider acceptance of the value of mediated memories. Yet not all are encouraged by the promises of digital technologies, or the increasing demands for reproducible evidence by funding bodies and archive-oriented institutions. The role that documentation plays in the recording of performance continues to be described as negative or destructive towards the knowledges embodied in live events. It may be that this oppositional view is largely a reaction to economic values that emphasise the need for reproducible products. Such values are evident in forms of academic assessment and validation that privilege documents of performance over performance per se.
In response to this current climate, the Dialogic Evidence project has been designed to explore the possibility (and the limits) of a productive co-existence between performance and documentation practices. Furthermore, the project aims to discover ways in which documentation practices can remain sensitive to the (often undervalued) temporary nature of performance. Such an endeavour remains a significant challenge in the move towards the wider acceptance of performative knowledge by the academy. With this aim in mind, I have been engaging in the collection, production, and analysis of multiple case studies that explore the diverse ways in which performance and documentation attempt (for better or worse) to work together. To aid in the process of gathering diverse perspectives on this relationship I have found it necessary to adopt a mixed-mode methodology, making use of various ‘knowledge-gathering’ and ‘knowledge-generating’ activities including:
• A review of performance documentation case-studies and related discourses;
• Small-scale performative explorations (e.g. theybreakinpieces’ collision interventions and performed archive at Collision 2006: Interarts Research and Practices Symposium at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada);
• Convivencia: A one-day symposium on existing and potential relationships between documentation and live art practices, featuring presentations by 5 leading scholars/artists in this field;
• LiveArchives.org, a pilot website that explores the use of emergent social web technologies as means to archive, discuss and remember live performance; and
• Live Archives Workshops, a week long sonic/live art-documentation workshop series (for further information visit: http://www.livearchives.org/live-archives-workshops/);
My presentation will consist of documents and memories from these activities, which I will attempt to critically interpret, with particular focus on the LiveArchives.org website and its potential applications.
