Reperformance: a dedication

© 2015 Georgia BanksThis research explores the relationship between reenactment, performance art, and the document. Seminal performance artworks from history can now only be accessed through their documentation; this paper explores the effect this may have on reperformance, as well as how it can be utilised, particularly through a discussion centred around my own practice, and Marina Abramovic’s Seven Easy Pieces. This conversation takes place through the lens of a number of prominent performance art theorists, such as Peggy Phelan, Amelia Jones, Philip Auslander, and Christopher Bedford. In this thesis and through my practice, I also use and adapt Jacques Derrida’s theory of the archive of the body proper, which can be found in his paper ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’. My paper extends Derrida’s writings on the archive of the body proper, and explores the ways in which performance art, and reperformance encompasses them, putting forward that within performance artworks, the wound can also operate as a document. My thesis accompanies five video works, each of which reperforms a performance artwork from history; Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971), Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 10 (1973), VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), and Mike Parr’s Drip Blood from Your Finger onto the Lens of a Camera... Until the Lens is Filled with Blood (1972) and Have a Burning Match Dropped onto Your Bare Chest (1973). Through this process of reperformance, I explore the ways that documentation can function within performance art, and the myriad ways it might be accessed and continually appropriated by contemporary artists