ABSTRACT
The recent exhibition Evidence of Movement at the Getty Center in California (10 July to 7 October 2007), presented visitors with a survey of contemporary performance objects from the second half of the twentieth century. Featuring artists such as Gunter Brus, Tehching Hsieh, Linda Montano, Yves Klein, Alison Knowles and others, the exhibition displayed a range of documentary and supplementary objects produced in relation to performances, including preparatory sketches, scores, photographs, posters, artifacts, video and audio recordings. Objects were grouped under thematic headings to highlight the different kinds of approaches used by artists to document, preserve and promote their performances for public dissemination as well as for commercial sale. The overlapping presentation of stories in the exhibition — from the immediacy of live events within specific historical contexts, to mediated and often manipulated performance documents created for later audiences, to remnants of artistic actions packaged as marketable relics — offered visitors a complex setting in which to understand the history of an ephemeral art form defined by process, temporality, and live audience interaction. The exhibition also posed questions regarding the authenticity of various kinds of performance objects, presenting a creative gallery environment combining fact and fiction which immersed viewers in a game-like situation of playing detective, putting the pieces of evidence together, and forming their own interpretations.
