The Pedagogies of Performative Afterlife

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Thanks to Amelia Jones for her insightful comments on an earlier draft; Amy Tobin for continued interlocution; and Kate Davis, Clifford Owens, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Patrick Staff, Faith Wilding and Carey Young for generosity with images.

Notes

1 Writing on socially engaged art has arguably investigated the relationship between pedagogy, performance and the performative to the greatest extent. See Finkelpearl, What We Made; Bishop, “Pedagogic Projects;” Jackson, Social Works; Kester, Conversation Pieces; Kester, The One and the Many; and Lacy, Leaving Art. Adair Rounthwaite, analysing participatory art in 1980s New York, makes a valuable connection between pedagogy and the performative, noting that in collaborative practice ‘education has come to function rhetorically as the performative instantiation of aesthetic experience’. Rounthwaite, “The Pedagogical Subject of Participation,” 77. For two studies of performance art that specifically address its relationship with pedagogy, see Bryan-Wilson, “Practicing Trio A;” and Grant, “A Time of One’s Own.”

2 Diana Taylor argues that embodied actions can have just as much of an afterlife as archival documents. See Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire. For an important account of the ways in which performance endures through documents and bodily repertoires, see Schneider, Performing Remains. Taylor and Schneider draw on, but nuance, Peggy Phelan’s foundational defence of ephemerality, which equates transience with resistance to commodification and essentializing identity constructs. See Phelan, Unmarked.

3 I am building here on arguments that performance documentation is in and of itself performative, especially Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation.” For an illuminating expansion of Auslander’s ideas, see Widrich, Performative Monuments, particularly 13–52. Christian Berger and Jessica Santone contend that even during the 1960s, ‘the potential for documentation to somehow re-stage site-specific or performative works for other audiences was compelling.’ Berger and Santone, “Documentation as Art Practice in the 1960s,” 204. For mediation’s role in live art, see also Giannachi and Westerman, eds., Histories of Performance Documentation; Maude-Roxby, ed., Live Art on Camera; and Auslander, Liveness.

4 These include A Short History of Performance: Part I (2002), Part II (2003), Part III (2005) and Part IV (2006) at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art (2005) at Witte de With, Rotterdam; Ahistoric Occasion: Artists Making History (2006–7) at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; and Not Quite How I Remember It (2008), at the Power Plant, Toronto. For a timeline of re-enactments, see Jones, “Timeline of Ideas.” For specific aspects of the phenomenon, see Blackson, “Once More… with Feeling;” Tomic, “Fidelity to Failure;” and Jones, ed. “Forum: Performance, Live or Dead.”

5 See for example Widrich, “Is the ‘Re’ in Re-enactment the ‘Re’ in Re-performance?”

6 In this respect I follow Grant, who uses Schneider to think through the expansive possibilities of re-enactment. Grant, “A Time of One’s Own,” 361–2. This converges to some extent with the artist Allan Kaprow’s preference for ‘reinvention’, which, curator Philippe Pirotte explains, enabled his scores to be adapted ‘to the moment and to the issues, themes, and fashions of the day – as long as the “central metaphor” […] was maintained.’ Pirotte, “Participation: A Legacy of Allan Kaprow,” not paginated. On Kaprow and reinvention, see Tomic, “Reinvention as Parallax;” Holte, “Happening Again;” and Buskirk, “Kaprow’s Vector.”

7 Tarsia, “Towards a Short History of Performance,” 34. Tarsia reflects here on his curatorial involvement in A Short History of Performance, for Notes on a Return, an exhibition curated by Sophia Yadong Hao that was also concerned with recreation. See Hao, “Memory Is Not Transparent.”

8 The imbrication of performance, capital, spectacle, and institutions is incisively critiqued in Foster, “In Praise of Actuality;” Siegelbaum, “Business Casual;” Lütticken, “Progressive Striptease;” and Lütticken, “An Arena in Which to Reenact.” The academic consolidation of performance studies has also contributed to the historicization process, although a disciplinary divide between performance studies and performance art history remains. See Jackson, Professing Performance.

9 Roms, “Archiving Legacies,” 37.

10 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 11.

11 Muñoz, “Teaching, Minoritarian Knowledge, and Love.”

12 Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 6. Austin rejected a rigid notion of the performative, emphasising the ‘many transitional stages between suiting the action to the word and the pure performative.’ Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 81.

13 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 225. For Butler’s foundational work on performativity and gender, see Butler, Gender Trouble.

14 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 241.

15 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 11. For a useful discussion of distinctions between ‘performance’ and ‘performative’, see Reinelt, “The Politics of Discourse.”

16 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 34.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 17. Sedgwick cites Jacques Derrida’s reading of Austin, which emphasises ‘the fatal and formal constraint of a performative effect’. Derrida, Archive Fever, 67.

19 Felman, The Literary Speech Act, 126.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 104–5.

22 Muñoz, “Teaching, Minoritarian Knowledge, and Love,” 118.

23 See Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, particularly 87–121.

24 Schor, “Authority and Learning,” 134.

25 hooks, “Paulo Freire,” in Teaching to Transgress, 45–58.

26 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 54.

27 See Finkelpearl, What We Made, especially 1-50 and 343–361. See also Lacy, Leaving Art; and Lacy, ed., Mapping the Terrain.

28 Phillips, “Education Aesthetics,” 84.

29 The pedagogic function of performance can also be linked to its history within art schools; Elena Crippa traces how the performance-lecture emerged from this context during the 1960s and 1970s. See Crippa, “The Artist as a Speaker-Performer.”

30 Allen, “Introduction//Art: Education,” 12. See also Rogoff, “Turning,” 34. For the education system’s replication of cultural capital, see Bourdieu, “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.”

31 Rogoff, “Academy as Potentiality,” 19.

32 Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson note that ‘unlike the term pedagogy – etymologically, the art of teaching the child – education does not privilege the theme of teaching over that of learning and, unlike pedagogy (with its complementary construct, andragogy), education is not etymologically posited upon the adult/child distinction.’ Rather than ‘education’, I employ the term ‘pedagogy’ precisely because this unequal power relation is one that many artists deliberately explore. O’Neill and Wilson, “Introduction,” 15–16.

33 Hayes’ work is discussed in Schneider, Performing Remains, 169–186; Grant, “Fans of Feminism;” and Reckitt, “To Make Time Appear.”

34 On Hayes’ relationship with the performative, see Greaney, Quotational Practices, 115–154.

35 Sharon Hayes, in Bryan-Wilson, “We Have a Future,” 88.

36 Jones, “‘The Artist is Present’,” 19.

37 Widrich observes that AbramoviĆ based her re-performances ‘consciously on the photographic documents she knew’, approaching the works as images. Widrich, “Can Photographs Make It So?,” 98. AbramoviĆ’s promotion of a performance art canon risks ignoring feminist critiques of canon formation. See Pollock, Differencing the Canon, particularly 3–21.

38 Young employs the term ‘re-works’ on her website. http://www.careyyoung.com/works#/body-techniques/ [Accessed 15 August 2017].

39 Young, “Unfinished Business,” 145.

40 See Mauss, “Techniques of the Body.”

41 This is underscored by the work’s execution within the context of the Sharjah Biennial’s Artist in Residence Program.

42 Farquharson, “The Avant-Garde, Again,” 17.

43 Lütticken, “Progressive Striptease,” 194.

44 For a history of the exhibition series to which this belonged, see Butler, ed., From Conceptualism to Feminism.

45 See Molesworth, “House Work and Art Work,” 76–78.

46 Weeks, The Problem with Work, 26. On artistic engagements with the feminization of labour in relation to globalisation, see also Dimitrakaki, Gender, ArtWork and the Global Imperative.

47 Jackson, Social Works, 16. On performance art and neoliberalism see also Harvie, Fair Play.

48 Wilding, “The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts, 1970–75,” 38.

49 On the erasure of feminist work from definitions of ‘relational aesthetics’ during the 2000s, see Jones, “Unpredictable Temporalities,” and Reckitt, “Forgotten Relations.”

50 Wilding was invited to revisit the work in conjunction with WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, and re.act.feminism. See Mark, ed. WACK! and for the second iteration of the latter project, Knaup and Stammer, eds., Re.Act.Feminism #2.

51 Faith Wilding, “Waiting: A Poem by Faith Wilding” (1972), in Jones, “Faith Wilding, Waiting and Wait-With,” 255–258.

52 Jones, “Faith Wilding, Waiting and Wait-With,” 254.

53 Wilding, “The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts, 1970–75,” 39.

54 On Womanhouse see also Chicago, Through the Flower, particularly 93–111 and 112–132. For the afterlives of Womanhouse in the UK, see Tobin, 14 Radnor Terrace; and Hamblin, “Los Angeles, 1972/Glasgow, 1990.”

55 For an insightful examination of Davis’ work and re-vision as a feminist strategy, see Horne, “Kate Davis.”

56 Davis, in Bowman and Davis, “What Are You Doing it For?,” 111. As a result of their simultaneous investigation of Waiting in 2007, Wilding and Davis exhibited together at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts in 2010. See Davis and Wilding, The Long Loch.

57 Danbolt stresses that ‘merely gathering documentation of feminist performance art is far from enough to preserve queer and feminist art movements.’ Danbolt, “Arresting Performance,” 99.

58 In 2014, Owens continued Anthology during his exhibition Better the Devil You Know at Cornerhouse, Manchester, commissioning scores from UK artists whose work addresses race and representation, including Lubaina Himid, John Akomfrah and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

59 Clifford Owens, in Stillman, “Interview with Clifford Owens,” 52.

60 See Cheng, In Other Los Angeleses; Bowles, Adrian Piper; Smith, Enacting Others; Oliver, ed., Radical Presence; McMillan, Embodied Avatars; and Jones, South of Pico, particularly 185–263 on performances by Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, Houston Conwill, and David Hammons.

61 The catalogue references the scores using sequential letters of the alphabet rather than page numbers, underlining this inference.

62 On Nengudi and Hassinger see Jones, South of Pico, particularly 192–211; and Jones, Now Dig This!, 264–303. Hassinger re-performed the work in 2013 as part of Radical Presence.

63 Maren Hassinger, “Repose,” 2011, in Owens, Anthology, C.

64 Kara Walker, “Instruction,” 2011, in Owens, Anthology, R. Owens includes the email exchange which evolved between him and Walker, in which they discuss the ensuing media attention, and their alterations of the score’s parameters.

65 Lew, “Trust Me,” 52.

66 Staff, interview with Guggenheim, 114.

67 Ramakers, “The Art of Pleasure,” 26.

68 Staff describes this as ‘a sort of spatial set of the house’. Staff, in “A Structural Idea of Fluidity,” 282.

69 Staff, interview with Guggenheim, 116.

70 Staff, in “A Structural Idea of Fluidity,” 281. Staff reflects: ‘to say that I’m trans, but to also be assigned male at birth and presenting as pretty masculine, I can be seen as a kind of dilettante, or just a man playing with ideas. It’s a very particular gap, and one that actually a lot of people exist in. Society grants us very little freedom in our gender.’ Staff, interview with Guggenheim, 120. Jack Halberstam observes that ‘the transgender body is not reducible to the transsexual body, and it retains the marks of its own ambiguity and ambivalence.’ Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place, 97. See also Preciado, Testo Junkie, particularly 99–129.

71 Staff, in “A Structural Idea of Fluidity,” 281.

72 Douglas Crimp movingly reflects on this disjunction in “Mourning and Militancy.” For an important critique of the dynamic of relation and forgetting that Staff addresses, see also Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind.

73 Sharp, interview with Staff, 12.

74 Lord, “The Fourth Pussy,” 17.

75 Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” 209.

76 Laaksonen’s enthusiasm for uniforms has been attributed to his experience as a solider in Finland during World War II, which swung between support for the allies and allegiance to Germany; his sexualised portrayals of Nazi soldiers remain highly contentious. Ramakers, “The Art of Pleasure,” 26.

77 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 22. Muñoz draws here on Lee Edelman’s polemic No Future, but also marks his divergence from it, refusing ‘to give up on concepts such as politics, hope, and a future that is not kid stuff.’ Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 92. See also Edelman, No Future; Freeman, Time Binds; and Dinshaw et al., “Theorizing Queer Temporalities.”

78 Grant, “A Time of One’s Own,” 360.

79 Grant, “A Time of One’s Own,” 362.

80 Staff, interview with Guggenheim, 120.

81 Grey and Klein note that the * in Trans* constitutes ‘a linguistic manifestation that aims to umbrella many different identities, bodies, and configurations’ that defy ‘gendered conventions and expectations’. Grey and Klein, “Trans*feminism,” 321. For wide-ranging discussions of Trans* identity and performance, see Jones, ed. “On Trans/Performance.” See also Stryker, “The Transgender Issue: An Introduction.”

82 Butler reflects that: ‘many trans people, or trans advocates, have argued that queer is exclusionary, that it does not include or describe trans experience.’ Butler, in Ahmed, “Interview with Judith Butler,” 490.

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Catherine Spencer

Catherine Spencer is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of St Andrews. She has published articles in Art History, Tate Papers, British Art Studies, and Oxford Art Journal. With Jo Applin and Amy Tobin she is the co-editor of London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, 1960-1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018). She regularly writes art criticism for publications including Art Monthly. Email: [email protected]