| This dissertation reevaluates the relationship between performance acts and documents by considering the way documentation was understood within the time of an event. Expanding on Alain Badiou's theory of evental 'Twoness' in Being and Event, I develop an approach to performance that always takes documents and performance acts together, as corresponding producers of an art event. Looking at acts and documents together, one notices how the type of repetition enacted between them allows for variation and novelty in an event. One important implication of this approach is a stronger valuation of audiences of performance, including audiences that may not have been present to witness a live event.;I investigate several cases of private or unannounced conceptual performances from the late 1960s to make my argument here. In these performances -- On Kawara's I got up (1968-79), Alison Knowles's The Identical Lunch (1968-73), Adrian Piper's Concrete Infinity Documentation Piece (1970), and Mieko Shiomi's Spatial Poem (1965-75) -- the artists study everyday phenomena, drawing our attention to what is otherwise unnoticed and engaging participation by encouraging repetition. As documents of these serial performances circulate, they help locate and sustain audiences. In the circulation of performance acts and documents, there is the potential as well for developing performance community, which is evident in an analysis of Fluxus performances, like Spatial Poem. The events studied here, in different ways, reveal that even seemingly private performances are fundamentally social in their orientation. |
