ABSTRACT
The terms “situation” and “event” are familiar terms from the vocabulary of art and performance theory, as well as from the particular lexicons of such diverse discourses as existentialist ethics, action theory, and historiography. Within the limitations of this chapter, I cannot begin to provide an exhaustive account of the multitudinous contexts in which these terms have been used, nor a philological survey of their development in the history of ideas. My aim will be more modest: to consider a limited number of theoretical sources with an eye towards their application in the arts of performance, and in turn, to sketch some revisionary perspectives on performance that a new understanding of these terms in light of the problem of avant-garde exemplarity might open up. In particular, “situation” and “event” allow me to specify in theoretical terms the inventive, proleptic function of exemplification in avant-garde works: their ability to elicit from a given background of artistic materials and context a new quality or concept of which the work itself is the singular example.
