The documentation of practice: framing trace

by Sophia Lycouris
This article deals with the issue of documentation of art practice and
the role it plays in a postmodernist context of ‘no boundaries between
disciplines’. The author departs from the assumption that in a research,
theory and practice can be combined in a discontinuous, fragmented way
and that documentation can be understood as “a hybrid domain”
(Lycouris 2000) within which this meeting can happen. Approaching Peggy
Phelan’s point of view that documentation goes against the characteristic
of liveness in performing arts (Phelan 1993, 1997), Lycouris exposes her
idea that the role of documentation is not to represent or reproduce a
work of art. On the contrary: because of its nature being so different from
that of art practice, its multidisciplinary aspect allows the appearance of
something distinct from simple reproduction. Documentation is, therefore,
“about dialogue, reflection and response” and it is “a site where all these
things (...) happen” (Lycouris 2000).

Bibliography:

Lycouris, Sophia (2000) "The Documentation of

Practice: Framing Traces." [online] Working papers
in art and design,1. Available from:
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wp
ades/vol1/lycouris2.html [acessed 16/01/2010].
Phelan, Peggy (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London and New
York: Routledge.
Phelan, Peggy (1997) Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, London and
New York: Routledge.

A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?

By Barbara Bolt
In this article, Barbara Bolt exposes the term ‘performativity’ and
analyses its use as a new research paradigm for the performing arts. For
this, she investigates the linguistic origins of the term (Austin 1962), in
which certain words would not just serve as descriptions or reports about
the world. They would instead have a power of direct action into the world
and would thus generate consequences from these acts. She then
examines the contributions that other theorists made out of these so-
called ‘performative acts’. By tracing a parallel between language and art
practice, which would both become materialised through repetition, she
exposes the problem that emerges when, for example in live art, the work
is only possible to be performed once. In these cases, she then concludes,
the repetition is possible to be noticed when identified a certain ‘style’ for
the artist’s work. Another idea explored by Bolt is Derrida’s (1992, 1998)
‘repetition with difference’, whose investigation/identification would be a
possible mechanism for research in the creative arts.

For me, the central key in this article was the differentiation that
Bolt made between research in science and in art. According to her, what
is traditionally understood as methods for research are the scientific ones,
which are based on ideas of measurement and calculation. With this in
mind, how would be then a suitable way to approach research via artistic
methods, whose results are not measurable or quantified? Bolt argues
that the traditional paradigms in science-as-research, in their effort of
representing or describing the world via identical repetitions of the same
procedure, would not be suitable in a new way of investigation that deals
with the difference that lies in every repetition. In this sense, the
performative paradigm could shed new light into the research field, since
it, just like the creative arts, have a power of direct action into the world.

Bibliography:

Austin, J.L. (1975) How to Do Things With Words, J.O. Urmson and Marina
Sbisa, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Bolt, Barbara (2008) ‘A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?’,

[online] in Working Papers in Art and Design, 5. Available from:
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/bbfull.html
[acessed 16/01/2010]

Derrida, J. (1998) Limited Inc., S. Weber, trans. Evanston: Chicago

University Press

Derrida, J. (1992) ‘Differance’, in A. Easthope and K. McGowan, eds. A

Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 108-
132.