Supervision, Documentation and Other Aspects of Praxis

Abstract

The documentation of arts practices, and particularly of ephemeral performance, is a contested issue because strong and apparently conflicting views are held on its possibility, necessity and worth. Those who deem the ontology of performance to lie in its very ephemerality and disappearance may even see attempts to save and retrieve the fleeting moment of the live event as a betrayal.¹ At one extreme of the spectrum of viewpoints, the live experience (both of creators and witnesses) is considered to lie beyond representation or articulation — inexpressible to the point of the sublime. At the same time there are those who have an equivalent conviction that significant moments in the history of arts events should not be allowed to disappear but need somehow to be saved for posterity. As Reason has remarked in summary of these discursive positions, ‘articulations of both the value of transience and the duty of documentation possess their own political and moral imperatives and perceptions’.²