Traces and Documents as Medial Transformations, or: How to Access Performance Art History

Abstract

For several years there has been a growing interest in reviving and revising performative art from the 1960s and ’70s, expressed in exhibitions, reenactments, and accompanying publications. This revival indicates a new, more intense interest in performance art’s historicality, and has raised the question of how to gain access to this history. Curatorial practices and stagings have managed to rewrite discussions about performance’s alleged tracelessness, which for a long time was considered the key characteristic of performance and its subversive qualities. And yet, the same question arises time and again: which documents and statements, traces and media artifacts, can performance art history rely on?