ABSTRACT
As performance art is increasingly being presented, exhibited and collected, the necessity of conceptualizing a documentation strategy is essential to understanding how unique manifestations of a performance work are understood. This chapter will walk through the development and creation of cataloguing practices that unpack the historical components of a performance and how these is conveyed as archival units.
Developing a framework that draws on the differentiation between the performance “work” and each “performed instance,” the chapter demonstrates the complexity of situating the documentation of performance art by formulating an archival descriptive practice that allows for the contingencies of time and history to be understood as a fundamental part of performance art, while recognizing that future activations of a work are catalogued as part of that genealogy.
Drawing on archival concepts, such as the records continuum, the chapter gives an overview of how performance art pushes the boundaries of archival and collections information practices and provides further insight into developing core principles for their continued care.
