ABSTRACT
This chapter shows why such practices such as arrangement, homage, reappropriation, and emulation constitute fundamental strategies for preservation, focusing specifically on re-enactments and re-interpretations. By preservation, the author do not so much mean the conservation of something that occurred in the past, but rather a claim to its 'living' quality in the present. The chapter starts by looking at case studies that include both historic and artistic re-enactments, as well as re-interpretations of past works through different media. It then explores the notion of repetition, building on Giorgio Agamben's proposition that repetition is what prevents the medium from disappearing, where, by 'medium', Agamben intended 'an image, a word, or a colour'. Finally, the chapter shows that performance generates an environment whose unfolding through re-enactment and re-interpretation brings us closer to the edge of what philosopher Gilles Deleuze described as the 'living present' and explains how this is significant for the preservation of artworks.
