Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Lincoln
Oral / response
Context
The performance 'Oral/Response' joins artist Bartram and theorist Mary O’Neill in research to analyse the dynamic, but often disjointed relationship between the live experience and its documentation by positioning both elements within the performance. The collaboration developed from a shared interest in ephemeral practice and its interpretation as situated writing.
Process
Traditionally, the documentation of performance is a record of the work, left to stand after the event, which demonstrates an out-of-time viewpoint. This is a problem for ephemeral practice which has the intention to be ‘live’ and in the moment. The research in this performance offers a different strategy to counter this. To demonstrate, O’Neill transcribes the actions of Bartram as she performs a drawing by grinding charcoal to dust and blowing it across the floor. Simultaneous dialogue between action and text evidences how performance and documentation can be reflexive and co-dependent.
Insight
By making the text as evanescent as the act it describes, it presents a nexus of theory and practice that combines different languages, different ways of knowing and experiencing. The rules and regulations that direct and confine solo compositions in text and action become less rigid, more malleable and symbiotic in this way.
Sharing
The artist/theorist research began with the peer reviewed e-journal article 'The Sacrifices Made by Audiences: the Complicit Discomfort of Viewing Performance Art' published by Interdisciplinary Press after presentation at 'Culture, Politics, Ethics' in Salzburg, in 2010.
Performances of 'Oral/Response' include 'Action Art Now' for OUI York, 'BLOP' Arnolfini, 'Environmental Utterance' and 'The Future Can Wait'. Analysis authored by the researchers was published in Total Art Journal and Emergency Exit. 'Oral/Response' was selected for development through a residency at Grace Exhibition Space New York in 2012, and developed as O/R for the International Internet Performance Art Festival Low Lives 4 2012.
