Preservation
Posted by ben on 03 Mar 2007 at 04:14 pm | Tagged as: responses/reviews
Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green interviews Olga Viso (Part 1 and Part 2), raising some interesting questions about the preservation of art. The question has become more challenging as more and more artists create work that is inextricably tied to a specific location or, even worse, that is intentionally ephemeral. How do the museums and archives weigh respect for the (ephemeral, site specific) nature of the art against the cultural value of bringing it to a wider audience? One question that comes to my mind as I read the interview is whether certain kinds of art should not be documented at all. Of course this is an idea most curators and critics will be reluctant to entertain, but perhaps there is value in letting an artistic statement wither and fade as the context that birthed it recedes into the past.
this brings up an interesting debate, and i think that although most performances[documentation of...residual artifacts, etc.] and unfinished works usually end up in archives or dusty studios that doesn’t mean they no longer hold significance or importance. in addition, i think displaying the work posthumously or revisiting unfinished works seems like an intellectually piquant, curatorial endeavor. all performance harbors an inherently ephemeral quintessence, which is what makes it so important in a real time frame. still, this post/essay evokes the seminal work of artists like Marina Abramovic. Here is an artist who truly adores performance in all its curiously disjointed amalgamations. Her revisitation of previously notorious performances at the Guggenheim absolutely resonates with the wonderfully infinitesimal facets of contemporary art. Is it still her work if the performance concept is analogue to a deceased artist? Of course it is. Is it important? Absolutely. I see what you’re saying though, in a world where everything has to be documented, photographed, blogged, reviewed and categorized…it’s difficult to leave things to their own desuetude, and somewhat unheard of to let a performance just exist as a fleeting display of fireworks. but that’s the fundamental truth to life’s vicious cycle and sometimes we want to walk down memory lane…maybe i’m getting tangential here, but this really had me puzzling over documentation and Marina Abramovic, particularly just for a recent show that I didn’t document. NOw I feel a bit peculiar about it, did I miss something? If so, it’s all sand in the art hourglass by now…
Nauman walking is my favorite example of how not all contemporary art stands (koff koff) the test of time. I can’t even get through 16 seconds of it.