Full text loading...
-
Working with fragments: A performance art’s archive
- Source: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Volume 7, Issue 3, Sep 2014, p. 557 - 567
-
- 01 Sep 2014
- Previous Article
- Table of Contents
- Next Article
Abstract
This article investigates the potential of the disparate and unconventional aspects of what can be considered an archive, as a means by which to respond to a past performance. According to French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, commentary on artworks seeks to link onto the gesture or trace of the event and to provoke further artworks as commentary. It is this affective response to fragments from a past performance that motivates this project. In 2013–2014, I worked with students from two art institutions, one in Poland and one in the United Kingdom, to respond to a performance by British artist Stuart Brisley, which took place in Warsaw in 1975. Photographs from the performance are readily accessible online, but there remains no archival record of the performance at the event’s location. It was, therefore, to investigate this performance by other means that students were asked to work with fragments from the past.