ABSTRACT
What is the relation between performance as embodied practice and live performance recorded in media? Phelan (1993, 146) argued in the 1990s that performance as a live event is distinct from its renderings in media: once performance is recorded or documented it becomes something else and can no longer be classified as performance. The perspective that the original live event has an ontological status that is privileged above its documented version has been contested by theorists (Jones 1997, 16). Auslander (2006), for instance, envisions documentation as a performance in itself that produces its own presence and authenticity. Taylor (2003, 19) adds to this dialogue by showing how both embodied lived practice, which she terms the repertoire, and its storage in tangible media or the archive are mediated. Whereas the archive, for Taylor, captures live performance in durable
*Email: sheenagh.pietrobruno@mail.mcgill.ca
Saint Paul University/University of Ottawa
forms of media, the embodied performance of the repertoire can be recreated and transmitted only through repeating bodily patterns and codes, a process that incorporates a type of mediation.
