Reenactment, literally defined as “historical reconstruction”, is a method of recreating certain aspects of a past event, a historical period or a specific way of life. The resuscitation of the past through physical and psychological experience occurs through body-based discourse. According to Agness Vagnew, the appeal of reenactment, its implicit charge to democratize historical knowledge and its capacity to find new and inventive modes of historical representation suggest that there is also a contribution to academic historiography. Reenactment is practiced in various fields of activity and in particular in that of artistic performance.
Contemporary artists who choose to reconstruct these past works have various goals. We can think in particular of the desire to update messages in a different political and social context.
In 2005, in the context of the exhibition 7 Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim, the artist Marina Abramović proposed a model specific to the reenactment of performances established with a certain number of conditions:
- Ask the artist for permission.
- Pay royalties to the artist.
- Produce a new interpretation of the work.
- Exhibit original materials: photographs, video, relics, etc.
- Exhibit a new interpretation of the work.
Some artists resume performances characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s, at the time of the emergence of the second wave of the feminist movement.
Among these artists who have performed the need for women to free themselves from the codes that modernist society has imposed on them, some like Yoko Ono (Cut Piece in 1964 in Tokyo and Kyoto, in 1965 in New York, in 1966 in London (during the Vietnam War) and in 2003 at the Théâtre du Ranelagh in Paris) (in response to the events of September 11)); and Carolee Schneemann (Interior Scroll in 1975 and Interior Scroll – The Cave in 1995 where the artist and seven other nude women perform the 1975 piece each reading a text on a scroll) performed again their own play, in different places, situations and contexts.
Other artists re-enact historical performances by other artists. Among them, Marina Abramovic, a great figure in body art with her partner Ulay (for example The Lovers Walk on the Great Wall, 1988), delivered during the exhibition 7 Easy Pieces (2005) at the Guggenheim in New York, over five evenings and nights, his interpretation of some historic performances that deeply mark the history of this form of expression: Body Pressure by Bruce Nauman (1974), Seedbed by Vito Acconci (1972), Aktionhose: Genitalpanik by VALIE EXPORT ( 1969), Conditioning (“Self-portrait(s)” part 1 by Gina Pane (1972), Wie man dem totem Hasen die Bilder erklärt by Joseph Beuys (1965). The last two nights of the event were devoted to personal performances Lips of Thomas (1975) and Entering the Other Side, which she presented for the first time. For this exhibition, Marina Abramovic respected her instructions asking for permission and it turns out that the Gina Pane committee only made possible a part of the restitution of Gina Pane’s performance. Although coming from the past, these performances were nonetheless subject to the interpretation of the artist reenacter, since this lengthened them over a period of seven hours.
The approach aims to establish a better dialogue between the different generations of performance artists and to guarantee a clearer position of performance as an artistic practice. “She wanted to open a discussion with the public on the possibility of treating these gestures once made, sometimes these words already spoken, like a piece of music to be reinterpreted”, notes Anne Tronche in the preface to La performance: entre archives et contemporary practices. Considering that a large number of young performers have taken hold since the 1980s of a repertoire marked originally by an intensive commitment without citing their sources, she considered that it was a task of memory to fix again in people’s consciences what was the great ideological, poetic and social ambition of an art whose foundation was always anarchic and magnificently rebellious.
Other artists have resorted to this practice of reenactment. Among them, the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera has reconstructed all the documented performances of Ana Mendieta. In order to restore the work of the late artist in the Cuban collective memory. So that only the traces of the original performances remain, Bruguera destroyed all the documentation of these reenactments which she had titled with the name of Ana Mendieta, of the same title but changing the date of execution.
In an interview with American historian RoseLee Goldberg during the monographic exhibition, T. Bruguera confides that it is also with a view to learning the practice of performance and its documentation that she has worn out from the reenactment.
In this concern for learning by drawing from the source, the artist of Filipino origin Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, living in Copenhagen, has taken up and reinterpreted performances from this period. Indeed, from the visual arts department of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Lilibeth Rasmussen knew nothing about artistic performance. Drawing inspiration from artists like Yayoi Kusama, Lynda Benglis, ORLAN, Yoko Ono, Shigeko Kubota, she was able to grasp the challenges of such a practice at that time. When she inquired about the work of these artists, the documentation and traces remained very poor. With what little support was provided, she gave herself to an interpretation of these historic performances in these “Nevermind Pollock” pieces in How to break the Great Chinese Wall and The Void.
(Includes texts from Wikipedia translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu)
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