One of the Artists whose work has influenced the development of my performance is Sophie Calle, who I came across when researching the ephemeral in Peggy Phelan’s Unmarked. Particularly her work on paintings stolen in 1990 from the Garnder Museum in Boston and the subsequent ‘recreations’ made of them.

“Calle interviewed various visitors and members of the museum staff, asking them to describe the stolen paintings. She then transcribed these texts and placed them next to the photographs of the galleries. Her work suggests that the descriptions and memories of the paintings constitute their continuing “presence”, despite the absence of the paintings themselves” (Phelan, 1993,146)

Unmarked

Unmarked:The Politics of Performance from goodreads (2015) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. [online] Available from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/818363.Unmarked [Accessed 17th March 2015].

Coming across this concept of the the paintings lingering on was something I was keen to express in my performance. Originally this tied to my idea of preservation by having conservation reports of each of the ReconFigured paintings, each standing in for the painting they analyse. A conservation report is a document filled out by Galleries to check that paintings are in good condition, and where they perhaps need restoring. These are usually done when a work arrives and leaves a gallery, so that they can be continually monitored and preserved. However they are done in an extremely analytical way, leaving little room for the emotional and human side of the work, thus straying from Calle’s more human recreations.

This problem was overcome with the suggestion to collect responses to the ReconFigured artworks from young artists that could lead to a ‘Living script’, that will be constructed from the responses. This would accompany the conservation reports, creating both an analytical and human trace of the paintings for me to present in my performance. This idea was then developed even more by the feedback from my performance pitch that I learn the ‘living script’ to present during my performance. This is in order to further bring the human side of the paintings to life and juxtapose the cold analysis of  the conservation reports.

Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge.