Joan Jonas and the Object of Performance by Chesli Nicole

Joan Jonas and the Object of Performance

by Chesli Nicole Lobue

A thesis submitted to the School of Art, Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

In Art History

Chair of Committee: Natilee Harren

Committee Member: Sandra Zalman

Committee Member: Rex Koontz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my chair advisor, Dr. Natilee Harren, for helping me navigate the thesis process and for helping me develop my knowledge of history and theory associated with performance art. Without her help, I do not think I would have been able to finish this thesis. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee. Dr. Rex Koontz aided in developing the archeological aspects of this paper. I was also fortunate to be part

of the object-based learning class at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, he and other

museum faculty held in 2019, which pushed me towards considering how to view and

present works in a museum setting. In addition, Dr. Zalman also contributed towards this

conscious critique of the museum setting I had developed. Her class, Museums and

Problems of Display, along with various sources she directed me towards, really pushed

me to consider the problems and limitations of the traditional museum environment. It was

fortunate that all of my committee members' areas of expertise could be threaded

seamlessly to aid in developing my thesis. I would also like to thank the rest of the Art

History faculty, who have served as invaluable resources to myself and my peers during

our time here. Lastly, I would like to thank my fellow graduate students, Ana, Cammie,

Sheri, and Lindsey, who have helped each other during this rather unprecedented graduate

school experience.

iii

ABSTRACT

Performance art as a medium poses numerous difficulties to scholars and museum

professions when trying to both study and preserve the works in question. The work itself

is tied closely to a performer’s actions with respect to its setting and audience, which contributes to its ephemeral nature. People have worked to preserve these events, acts, and happenings through various means, including memory, photographic or filmic documentation, and physical remnants or by-products from the event; however, these pieces only provide a fragmented, disjointed image of a complex, multidimensional work.

To more closely analyze problems associated with performance art, I refer to Joan Jonas and several of her pieces to serve as a case study for the overarching problems associated

with performance studies discussed in the thesis. Her work will enable one to see how the

physical remnant connects to the whole act of the past event.

After analyzing her works and understanding how Jonas incorporated props and objects

into her practice, I will address the residual prop’s potential to be displayed and serve as a

reference point or remaining testimony to the artist’s original intent and action.

Keywords: Joan Jonas; Performance Art; Preservation; Object; Prop; Ephemerality;

Interpretive Archaeology; Display; Time-based Art

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

ABSTRACT...... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER 1: JOAN JONAS AND THE OBJECT...... 18

MIRROR PIECE 1 – 1969 ...... 24

MY NEW THEATER 1 - 1997 ...... 29

THE SHAPE, THE SCENT, THE FEEL OF THINGS – 2004-2006 ...... 34

REANIMATION – 2010/2012 ...... 44

THEY COME TO US WITHOUT A WORD – 2015 ...... 50

CHAPTER 2: PERFORMANCE ART AND THE OBJECT ...... 60

The Terminology and History of Performance Art ...... 60

Relevant Literature and Discourse ...... 66

CHAPTER 3: INTERPRETIVE ARCHAEOLOGY ...... 79

CHAPTER 4: MUSEUMS AND POTENTIALS FOR DISPLAY ...... 87

CONCLUSION ...... 99

REFERENCES...... 103

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Joan Jonas, Reanimation, 2012...... 2

1.1 Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece 1, 1969 ...... 25

1.2 Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece 1: Reconfigured (1969/2010), 2010 ...... 28

1.3 Joan Jonas. My New Theater 1: Tap Dancing,1997 ...... 30

1.4 Joan Jonas, Interior view of My New Theater 1: Tap Dancing, 1997 ...... 31

1.5 Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2006 ...... 36

1.6 Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2005 ...... 39

1.7 Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2006 ...... 41

1.8 Joan Jonas, Reanimation, In a Meadow, 2012 ...... 49

1.9 Joan Jonas, Reanimation, In a Meadow, 2012 ...... 50

1.10 Joan Jonas, They Come to Us Without a Word (Wind), 2015 ...... 53

1.11 Joan Jonas, They Come to Us Without a Word (Bees), 2015 ...... 53

1.12 Joan Jonas, They Come to Us Without a Word (Nine Trees), 2015 ...... 54

INTRODUCTION

Imagine that it is 2012, and you find yourself sitting in a black box theater space

while attending Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany. You are sitting waiting for a

performance to begin but are not sure what to expect. The stage contains various props and

tool-like objects, but it is hard to make out everything clearly. A large white screen serves

as a backdrop to the piece adding to the theatrical quality and complicating the viewer’s

preparation for seeing the work. Then the performance begins (Fig. 1). A woman clothed

completely in white steps onto the stage amidst the props and workspaces as the screen projects a slideshow of self-recorded footage, nature photography, and bits and pieces of what look like past art works. As the slideshow plays, the woman moves, almost dances, across the stage, making sounds with different props, drawing on large swaths of paper on the floor, and sketching underneath a projector that overlays the real-time activities on top of the circulating images projected onto the wall. While this is all happening, the viewer hears a mix of piano, narration, and a person singing in a different language. There is so much going on at once that it is almost hard to take everything in and process it, and, once you finally let yourself go and lose yourself to this eclectic, choreographed collage of different artistic mediums, it is suddenly over. The music stops, the woman bows and leaves the stage, and fellow audience members start shuffling towards the exit. All you can see are pools of her splattered ink projected on the wall and papers with crude sketches of fish on the standing easel and the papers lying on the ground. It looks eerily similar to how it was when the performance began, but the traces of what just happened are visible and impossible to overlook. You want to see more, to know more, but the work is left in pieces.

Once the performance is done, and the performers and audience members have left, where does the artwork go?

Figure 1. Joan Jonas, Reanimation. 2012. Performance. Kassel, Germany. Photo Credit: Rima Yamazaki, Director of Joan Jonas Reanimation

The work previously described was Joan Jonas’s Reanimation (2010/2012) and the description provokes certain questions and problems when dealing with a work that heavily relies on performance. Instead of letting you sit and view the work at your own leisure, there is a limited window in which to view the execution of the choreographed gestures. In respect to this work, how would one be able to relive the series of events previously mentioned without being constrained either to written description or to having to be at the location during the time of execution? When a performance is complete, what remnant has a superior say in representing the past act? How does one begin to approach this herculean task of trying to preserve a moment in time? It is quite difficult to approach this task, especially since preservation is not always necessary or possible in some work, but recording an event for posterity is not an uncommon response to such ephemeral pieces.

Some may turn to first-person accounts and memories, and others may turn to film

evidence, but these will never be able to show a complete picture. Despite efforts from

scholars, conservators, and even the artists themselves, the initial act is essentially lost.

When dealing with performance art and acts with an inherently ephemeral nature, one has to accept that certain aspects of the event will be lost or forgotten due to time passing and the fallibility of memory and longevity of objects. While it may seem like a lost cause (and in some cases the opposite of what some artists would want), researchers and scholars will still be set on retaining any information possible with the hope to understand works that cannot be experienced in the present moment.

All artworks are affected by time in some way or another. Typically, when discussing the effects of time on a work of art from the perspective of conservation, one is speaking of failing parts, chipping paint, and other forms of material degradation. In order to preserve, there must be some material component, a thing that can be fixed, mended, and maintained. The issue with performative works is that there is not always a physical remainder. Even if there is a prop, an object, or another by-product, it usually does not take precedence over the action or event. This struggle between reality and representation, as well as action and contemplation, are ones that have existed for years and will most likely not be resolved in a straightforward, concise argument.1 This is neither due to disinterest

nor lack of effort; it is merely because the lines between the idea and the physical representation of the act tend to be blurred and can change depending on the context of understanding.

1 Paul Schimmel and Kristine Stiles. Out of Actions: between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979. (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998), 202. 3

To understand previously completed displays of performance art more accurately,

one could analyze the props and detritus which remain after an event is completed. Through

the analysis of a particular artist’s — in this instance, Joan Jonas’s — use of objects during

their practice, one can better recognize an object’s connection to the original act as well as discuss how to move forward regarding the object’s documentation and display concerning

the original work. While Joan Jonas is serving as a case study for this research, the thesis

at large is not ultimately about her. Instead, it seeks to focus on the objects of performance

and their role in the conservation and collection of performance art. Jonas’s works serve as

an example of one possible way to experience and display performances post-execution.

Through the course of the arguments that follow, I will be approaching the topic and

supporting works from the viewpoint of an art historian. I will also be referring to writings

and interviews of other scholars and professionals who focus on conservation, archaeology,

and the act of curatorially producing and/or reconstructing such artworks. It is pertinent to

note that, for my purposes, theories proposed by performance studies scholars Amelia

Jones and Nick Kay provide a certain foundation for the overall argument, with additional

scholarship by Diana Taylor and conservation theorist Hanna Hölling serving as a bridge

between the fields of performance studies and archeology. Jones’s work heavily focuses on the body and theatrical aspects of performance art. Meanwhile, Kaye’s focus will enable me to introduce an alternative understanding of objects and their connection to the original context of the performance through the lens of archaeology, specifically interpretive archaeology. Taylor’s notion of the “repertoire” as a record of the gestures and ephemeral aspects of performance, combined with Hölling’s work centered on not only acknowledging but embracing works with transient characteristics, can serve as a link

between the art historical and archaeological modes of thinking. Collectively, these four

voices, layered with additional scholarship, will provide a compounded understanding of

viewing, studying, and conserving performance-based pieces like those that Joan Jonas

produces.

Due to certain limitations, I was not able to visit and create an in-depth, in-person

analysis at a museum or archival space; however, through focusing on the works of artists

and other professionals and utilizing their written and pictorial evidence, I evaluate an

object’s status as a fragment of a past event and assert its value in respect to areas of

memory recall, display supplement, and conservation efforts. It almost seems strange to

fight for something this fragmentary, since its existence would be deemed fragile both in

its physical state as an object that was used and in respect to its tenuous and fading

connection to the original conceptual qualities of a performance work; even so, I would

like to posit the claim that it would be a greater injustice to simply let works of performance

art fade into obscurity, and possibly, oblivion. Of course, this previous statement can easily

be argued against if the artist in question intended for decay and disappearance to be part

of their work, but for the sake of this paper, the pieces discussed are not regarded in such a manner.

Typically, physical representations of a performance work are highly favored for both research and general appreciation. While it is not a replacement for the original act, several types of evidence can remain and fill the void left by the completed gesture. It would also be pertinent to reiterate that these fragments of information (e.g., objects, props, costumes, set pieces, etc.) are not trying to replace the completed piece. Firstly, a piece cannot stand in perfectly for the whole. Secondly, the question is not about replacing the

original, but rather finding a way to remember more efficiently and look at the original act that can no longer exist. Broadly, some of the main types of information fragments include memory, videography and photography, re-staging and re-performing the works, and props

and physical remnants. All types will be briefly defined and discussed here to establish a

baseline when referring to them throughout the argument.

First, one can look at memory.2 This can be defined as one’s idea of an event that

happened to them in the past. As noted by art critic and art historian, Barry Schwabsky,

our experience of the present can be regarded as “a palimpsest of other times — of recurrent

pasts and emergent futures.”3 While some may consider the memory to be a more precise

form of the event because the person would had to have been there to witness and experience the moment, it is still a poor record that is not easily transferred from one person to the next. Robert Blackson stated, “memory, like history, is a creative act.”4 Its retelling is subject to the person’s perspectives and personal proclivities. An action cannot be experienced the same way by two individuals, and, because of this, no memory of an event

2 While this thesis is not psychological or philosophical in discussion, it seemed important to note this aspect of preservation since it could be argued that the other types of remnants work in tandem with memory to conjure up a past event. This thesis does focus heavily on material fragments; however, as discussed later, an accurate representation of past events will ultimately need multiple layers of reference and context to appropriately record an event. 3 Barry Schwabsky, “Seeing Through a Glass: Perhaps Joan Jonas has been making her ‘late’ works all along,” The Nation, April 19, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/joan-jonass-fragments/ 4 Robert Blackson, “Once More…With Feeling: Reenactment in Contemporary Culture,” Art Journal 66, 1 (Spring):31, quoted in Amelia Jones "‘The Artist Is Present’: Artistic Re-enactments and the Impossibility of Presence." TDR (1988-) 55, no. 1 (2011): 16-45, 42 6

can be considered complete.5 Thinking about the act requires a particular type of

reconstruction, which in turn creates an act different from the original. Memory produces

a fragment of the original event tainted by the observer’s mind and faults. This fragment is

even more difficult to grasp when considering performances that existed in the distant past

and do not have any living witnesses to relay what they remember in the present. Memory

can provide crucial information regarding aspects not commonly noted in typical

documentation, but, on its own, it does not provide a stable understanding of what

previously occurred.

Next, one can look at videography and photography as another potential means of

recording a live event. While both could be discussed independently, I address both forms

as part of one category because they represent external perspectives of the work and give a partial glimpse at what the viewer would see. Photographs produce a still image of a fluid act, whereas film captures movement alongside sound, thus giving a slightly more fleshed- out record. Capturing the act in film offers a different perspective at the expense of the camera technology, which utilizes its own sets of rules and transforms active performance into representation.6 Artists such as Laurie Anderson even began taking control over the

documentation of their performances to preserve the integrity of their work and prevent

people from misremembering the work or imagining parts that never existed; this can be

5 Jen Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…? Hyperallergic, June 28, 2012. https://hyperallergic.com/53624/can- performance-art-be-collected/. 6 Pilvi Porkola “Objects that matter: Performance Art and Objects.” Research Catalogue: An International Database for Artistic Research. KTH Royal Institute of Technology. 2019. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/513141/513142#:~:text= Objects%20that%20Matter%20%2D%20Performance%20Art,new%20materialism%20a nd%20performance%20art 7

seen most clearly in Anderson having to dispute audience members remembering an orange

dog in her performance when she had never done any work including such an animal.7 For posterity, scholars and some artists try to ensure documentation from “all performances, public actions and presentations including talks with the artist,” yet “it doesn’t have the same ‘value’ as experiencing the live performance.”8 Amelia Jones has argued that

documentation adds to the importance of the work by exposing body and performance art

pieces reliance on the communicative exchange between various parties as well as its

various states of presentation and re-presentation. To rephrase, the documentation

legitimizes the original work by acknowledging its existence and continuing the life of the

work in question.9 Instead of rendering a sufficient attempt of retrieving or maintaining the

past, the photograph ultimately fails and instead is a reminder of “an always failed means

of our resecuring our hope of having the photographed subject ‘live’ forever.”10 The pictorial documentations are contradictions in and of themselves. They are imprints of something that has happened but is now trying to reoccur in the present. Videography and photography offer an alternative window into the past, but, as with memory, it is still not a successful stand-in for the original gesture.11

7 Amelia Jones, Body Art/ Performing the Subject, (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1998): 32. 8 Hector Canonge, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 9 Amelia Jones, “‘Presence’ in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation,” Art Journal. 56, no. 4 (1997): 11-18. Doi:10.2307/777715. 16-17 10 Amelia Jones, Self/Image: Technology, Representation, and the Contemporary Subject. (New York City: Routledge, 2006): 46 11 Barbara Clausen, and Margarethe Clausen. "Performing Histories: Why the Point Is Not to Make a Point…." Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, no. 23 (2010): 36-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711778. 42-43. 8

To take a different perspective, one could re-stage and re-perform a work of

performance art to garner a better understanding of the act from set up to completion. There is a certain presence in performing the act that cannot be re-created at a whim. These works

are not like science experiments that can be duplicated repeatedly to render the same result

with each iteration. In an interview with The Brooklyn Rail, Joan Jonas has claimed to not

fully believe in repeating an old work because it would never be the same. Re-working or

re-inventing the work into a new form is, in her mind, more beneficial and, in a sense, more

honest because it does not chase after a past, unachievable version of the work.12

Performance art, inherently, is live and transient; it is often performed just one for a limited

audience or sometimes even for no particular audience at all.13 The ephemerality of the act is what makes the piece. Contrary to other performative disciplines like dance and theater, historical and contemporary performance art from the 20th century to the present exists in

a specific moment supported by a larger historical, social and political framework.14 Re-

stagings of past performances, unless they directly contradict the artist’s intention, can help

with understanding and scholarship because it is not likely that everyone would have been

able to see the original act; however, as Rod Dickinson states, “The audience is presented

with something inherently contradictory in that they are being presented with something

live and happening in real time, yet they know that this is an impossible scenario, since the

12 Joan Jonas, interview by Daisy Desrosiers. “The New Social Environment 3104: Joan Jonas.” The Brooklyn Rail, August 10, 2020. 13 Jenni Sorkin. “Mythology and the Remake: The Culture of Re-Performance and Strategies of Simulation.” East of Borneo, October 13, 2010. https://eastofborneo.org/articles/ mythology -and-the-remake-the-culture-of-re- performance-and-strategies-of-simulation/. 14 Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 9

event has already happened.”15 Just as with memory, these repeat performances only

conjure up a fraction of what occurred in the original event. It is another option or possibly

another step in the process of trying to reclaim a lost and fragmented past.

In addition, one can look at scores and sketches as a means of documentation or instructions for reanimating an artwork. This type of record can be seen most notably with

Fluxus who “began creating quasi-algorithmic work reliant on the execution of tasks based

on predetermined models and instructions, and made audience participation a key them.”16

The work could in a sense live on conceptually and then re-performed by an ordered set of

instructions and elements crucial for the art to exist in its revived iteration. As noted by art historian Jessica Santone, the textual score lends itself to reproduction and prompts whoever is reading the piece to take on the role of performer and enact their own version.17

Maciunus even referenced these event scores as “temporal readymades” which framed the

work “not as a fixed material entity but as a perceptual ‘event’ framed by the artist — a

multidimensional, multi-sensorial phenomenon carved out of lived space-time in order that

it may be recast as art.”18 In a sense, this mode of recording almost eschews problems

associated with time and loss of the original iteration. By nature of the event score or

15 Phil and Gallia Kollectiv, “RETRO/NECRO: From Beyond the Grave of the Politics of Re-Enactment.” ART PAPERS 31, (2007) 6:44-51, www.kollectiv.co.uk/Art%20Papers% 20feature/re-enactment/retro-necro.htm, quoted in Amelia Jones, “The Artist is Present,” 24. 16 Steve Dixon. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007), 130. 17 Jessica Santone, “Archiving Fluxus Performances in Meiko Shiomi’s Spatial Poem.” In Across the Great Divide: Modernism’s Intermedialities, from Futurism to Fluxus, edited by Christopher Townsend, Alex Trott, and Rhys Davies, 120-136. (Newcastle upon Ture: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 122 18 Natilee Harren, Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 9. 10

sketch, the idea of the “original” intended to be copied is negated. In theory, the set of

instructions should enable an individual to execute a successful performance of the work

as long as everything is performed according to the original script. The repetitions will not

be carbon copies of each other; yet, it presents a unique opportunity for the work to exists

perpetually without constantly drawing attention to the loss of the original.

Lastly, there are physical remnants that remain after the performance, which can be

claimed to have a greater level of authenticity compared to aspects previously discussed.

This can include props used during the event, things created or destroyed by the performers,

costumes, instruments, and any other material thing. In other words, these physical remnants include anything that was physically part of the performance and acts as a trace

of the main event rather than an independent object.19 This aspect of incorporation is what

differentiates it from the previously mentioned videos and photos, which exist as external

representations of the work at hand. As the drama studies scholar Jon Erickson has stated,

the object can be viewed as “the expressive labor of the artist’s spirit, as separate from and

resistant to the proliferating reduction of meaning to univocal sign, to commodity status.”20

They are directly connected to the art piece and the artist’s work overall and can stand as

an autographic rather than allographic physical representation of the artist’s touch and

signature. These physical elements were chosen by and handled by the artist directly, thus tying them intimately to the work; one could even see them as an authentic extension of the work because they are essentially the only aspect of the work remaining, even in their

19 Joan Jonas, interview by Stefanie Hessler, Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art Summer Lecture Series. August 5, 2020. 20 Jon Erickson. The Fate of the Object: from Modern Object to Postmodern Sign in Performance, Art and Poetry. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 39; Italics are original to the author. 11

deactivated state. Regardless, “the objects left by the artists serve as mementos of what

happened live, but they are only pieces, and those pieces cannot reflect the entire

performative act.”21 Again, we are presented with a piece of the whole without truly obtaining that elusive original act.

So, what does this all mean for a researcher, an art historian, or even the general viewer? Well, the temporal separation certainly complicates one’s ability to connect with the original piece. Unlike a sculpture or a painting, a performance art piece is not easily framed and displayed in a museum setting. While there are still contextual gaps present when viewing sculptures and paintings, performance art is tasked with the added difficulty of not having a comprehensive object readily available for the viewer to see. The reliance on these individual documents, descriptions, and ephemera to experience the original is

necessary to complete understanding. Nevertheless, one can see specific issues in

paradoxically reducing a live performance with multiple layers and components into a

commodifiable object frozen in time and statically rendered in a display case.22 This complicates the notion of a live performance’s definition and “life” after the act is complete. The act is finished, but it is forced to live on in this suspended, fictitious setting for the sake of research and enjoyment. While it may be antithetical to the artist’s intent and is no way the event-cum-artwork, there is a certain need and want in the attempt to

preserve what tries so hard to be ephemeral. A representation can only deliver what we are

open to seeing. Referring back to Erickson, the nature of the art and “of human consciousness is its split character, in which the source of consciousness can never be

21 Hector Canonge, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 22 Amelia Jones, "‘The Artist Is Present,’” 21. 12

located, and therefore never objectified.”23 Trying to capture the original and translocate works from their original context into an archival setting produces certain challenges and necessitates certain skillsets not originally conceived in respect to the production of the original event. When working with ephemeral pieces like this, they can come to an institution in a variety of forms (e.g., a still of a video of the performance, a physical remnant of the piece, written instructions created by the artist or an assistant, or a description by a participant or witness of said gesture); however, the original cannot be possessed as it originally existed.24 The entire exercise of curators and conservators working with acts that have minimal physical grounding has particular problems and requires a calculated nuance not seen with other types and styles of works.

To remedy problems associated with dealing with the ephemerality of performance art pieces, I propose to look more closely at props and attempt to show how physical fragments can ground the work. It might seem a bit contradictory or futile in light of the previous discussion, which explained how the variety of ephemera and remnants are in many ways not sufficient individual representatives of the more extensive, fundamentally time-based work; though, because of archival and display needs along with our interest in documenting, preserving, and understanding events that came before, there has to be some method of trying to go back and materially and conceptually reconstructing events of which we were not a part. I believe that the material fragments from the event can most efficiently ground the past works to be viewed in the present by providing a tactile, physical object

23 Erickson. The Fate of the Object. 54. 24 For more on conserving performance art, please see Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 13

with a direct connection to the selected work(s).25 This thesis focuses on performance art

and the object because it shows how works which seemingly exist only in a metaphysical

space can be rendered concretely for better understanding and future study.

It is almost natural to direct one’s focus towards the material aspects of the performance. Theorizing and conceptualizing past events, while necessary, has a level of ambiguity attached to it when compared to a tangible object that someone is able to clearly see and hold. Materials that have been manipulated by or altered by people in some way

carry traces of the acts done to them as well as a connection to whomever has enacted upon

the object in question. Performance art can be viewed as a genre of creative practice closely

tied to the body and the body’s interaction with itself, other people, and any objects

inhabiting the space of the event. Thus, a better understanding of the materials present can

result in a potentially better interpretation of the practice at hand. Petra Lange-Berndt, an

art historian who focuses on media culture, remarks, “The path one takes when ‘following

the materials’ is … not linear, not clearly divisible into avant-garde, high modernist,

postmodern, and so on. Rather, one encounters entangled anachronistic layers,

incorporating references that point beyond canonical art-historical boundaries.”26 In these

events that do not have as clear documentation as a painting or a sculpture, the physical

remnants (props, objects, costumes, etc.) can potentially trigger memories for those who

were present and help those who were not there construct a tangible understanding of what

25 For the sake of this argument, physical materials does not include flyers, pamphlets, and other advertising material. It is solely contained to material objects that were connected directly to the gestures within the performance. 26 Petra Lange-Berndt, ed. Materiality (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2015), 16. 14

occurred. These physical fragments can serve as an anchor in a sense by helping ground

the work through giving a glimpse into what occurred.27

In what follows, an analysis of the eminent multidisciplinary artist Joan Jonas's practice serves as a case for the role of physical objects in preserving a work of ephemeral, time-based art for study and enjoyment in the present and future. Because of Jonas’s unique body of work, which includes performance, re-performance, self-documentation of said performances through installations, and the integral role of objects used throughout her practice, Jonas’s body of work provides a compelling opportunity for considering the life of a performance-based work through its individual material fragments. Through an

analysis of her collective works, with special emphasis on a few emblematic pieces, we

can find clarity regarding the study and documentation of works that incorporate elements

of performance.

To create an argument vouching for the importance of residual objects in respect to

the performances of which they were part, I will explore various stages in the life of such

an object as well as their relative importance from the viewpoints of various disciplines

related to art, art history, archeology, conservation, and museum studies. Chapter 1

explores the work of Joan Jonas, whose practice heavily relies on performance and the

layering of different media including, but not limited to, recorded video, photography,

drawing, sculpture, and music. By offering a closer look at five of her works, I want to

highlight how she utilizes and re-incorporates physical objects between her various

performances and installations to show the significance of material fragments to the artist’s

27 For more information on materiality, objects, and ephemerality, please reference Lange-Berndt Materiality; Tillman, Rachel. “Toward a New Materialism: Matter as Dynamic.” Minding Nature. 8, no. 1 (January 2015): 31–36. 15

practice. In Chapter 2, I look broadly at performance art and the object to see how

performative works have developed over time. This section will also discuss several

scholars and specialists whose work relates directly to the conceptual study of or physical

presentation and display of fragmented, ephemeral works. After this overview, Chapter 3

offers the lens of interpretive archaeology to deepen the understanding of how these objects

can relate back to their originating events and artists as well as hold on to everything done

to them since their creation. Lastly, Chapter 4 will take ideas discussed in the previous

chapters and try to reconcile these notions with information from museum and conservation

specialists to postulate how these objects will fare in the static space of the museum or archive. Collectively, these individual pieces should culminate in a better understanding of the object as an authentic representative or mark of the original performance while not trying to force the object to embody the entirety of the work on its own.

While I argue for the importance of the remnant object as a physical anchor for works of performance, it must of course be admitted that one lone fragment (in this case, physical material) cannot serve as a complete substitute for an entire act. Much like a historical event can be represented or referenced through an artifact found at a site, so can a performance piece be recalled through the detritus and remaining objects. Nevertheless, from the perspective of performance art studies, art history, and conservation, one can fruitfully analyze the props and detritus which remains after an event is completed as part of a broader effort to more accurately understand previously completed displays of performance art. Through analyzing Joan Jonas’s use of objects in her practice, one can more clearly understand an object’s connection to the original act(s) as well as discuss how

16 to move forward regarding the object’s documentation and display as a reference point to the original gesture.

CHAPTER 1: JOAN JONAS AND THE OBJECT

The bulk of Jonas’s oeuvre pioneered new avenues for visual art by experimenting

with video and body art as well as performance. Her practice demonstrates a collective melding of performance, video recordings, installations, drawings, and video sculpture as

her ideas are threaded back and forth conceptually and physically between her

performances and stand-alone installation pieces.28 Her pieces have drawn inspiration from various sources, including film, literature, poetry, history, and music, thus leading them to have various connections to the present in both their referential qualities and in the remnants of physical products they have left behind.29 This chapter will explore several of

Jonas’ pieces to reach general conclusions regarding the works at hand and performance

pieces overall. To help highlight and illustrate key conclusions that can be drawn from her

practice, an in-depth focus will be given to five key works - Mirror Piece 1 (1969), My

New Theater 1 (1997), The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things (2005), Reanimation

(2010/2012), and They Come to Us Without a Word (2015).

Jonas’s childhood experience can be best described as “an eclectic environment of

family members who were artisans and artists or friends of the arts” coupled with various

excursions which developed her interests in cultures, collections, and creating.30 She was born in 1936 in New York as Joan Amerman Edwards. Jonas presented an interest in

becoming an artist during her childhood which was encouraged while she attended Walt

Whitman, a progressive elementary school on the Upper East Side that focused heavily on

28 Joan Jonas, and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow: the Work of Joan Jonas (New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2015), 28. 29 Joan jonas, interview by Daisy Desrosiers. 30 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 83 18

letting the students determine what they wanted to learn.31 Her parents separated early into

her childhood; however, both, along with her new stepparents, worked in different ways to

encourage her creative interests.32 Her father, Curtis Edwards, had an interest in writing

and introduced her to modernist poets, fiction writers, and political activists. Her mother,

Jane Edwards, took Jonas to various antique stores and museums around New York. Her

stepfather, Richardson Turner, was a jazz musician and amateur magician who introduced

Jonas to certain aspects of performing; magic shows, circuses, and Broadway musicals

along with editing techniques seen in international films and 1950s television that proved

to be key influences for the young Jonas. Lastly, Roxanne Edwards, her stepmother,

introduced Jonas to New York’s contemporary art scene through the means of her sister,

Jeanne Reynal, who was a mosaic artist and art collector.33 This combination of being

exposed to the New York art scene from a young age as well as developed interests in

spectacular worldly things such as magic would become largely influential to her art pieces

in her adulthood.34 Collectively, her formative experiences emphasized multimedia expression by introducing elements of illusionism, varying artistic practices, stagecraft, sleight-of-hand, and alternate ideologies. This served as a precursor for her artistic practice in adulthood which incorporated several of these elements either thematically or in physical presentation.

31 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 82. 32 Treloar, Marley. “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” TheArtStory.org, October 5, 2018. Accessed April 1, 2020. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/jonas- joan/life-and-legacy/#biography_header. 33 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 82. 34 Joan Jonas, interview by Liam Gillick, “Joan Jonas.” ArtReview., March 2018. 19

In her early adult years, Jonas attended Mount Holyoke College and graduated in

1958 with a B.A. in Art History and Sculpture. She went on to attend Columbia University,

where she graduated with her MFA in 1965.35 After reflecting on her period of education

and early experimentation, she states that she does not consider these works to be art in the

exact sense that she does in the present with her video, performance, and installation pieces.

Her practice mostly consisted of sculptures that were compared to works created by Alberto

Giacometti.36 Early on she gravitated towards experimenting with the notion of movement,

although she has never stated if this was a conscious or subconscious decision. This aspect

of movement and gesture would later be explored in her practice in a less abstract and more

literal manner. From reading descriptions about her sculptures, the pieces seemed to be

symptomatic of an amateur artist who had not yet found her foothold stylistically. Another

potential issue with the sculptures was their static nature and their antiquated,

straightforward process of making which in Jonas’s mind hindered their ability to express

the themes she was gravitating towards. She would later find a solution to this dilemma

through her performance and video pieces. Because Jonas was not completely satisfied

with her sculptures and their creative limitations, she destroyed these works to cut herself

away from her past artistic life. Ultimately unsatisfied with the sculptures, Jonas stated, “I

decided I wanted to make something — I can’t remember what I thought it was — I wanted

to perform my work.” 37

35 Treloar. “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” 36 It is unclear what period of his works this comment was referring to, and, since her sculptures no longer exist, it is not easy to confirm this; however, I believe this comparison was most likely in referenced to his post-World War II pieces which were slender, tall, and played with the individual’s viewing experience. 37 Jonas, in “Imagist: Joan Jonas in Conversation with Joan Simon,” Art in America 98, no. 10, November 2010, 60, in Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 85. 20

While if we take the artist at her word, it seems she tried to cut herself off

completely from her sculptural background, one can see how certain aspects of this early artistic practice carried over into her more developed works. In addition to the newer elements of videography and performance that she began to employ, she would draw on these past, highly material practices to create collage-like installations which layer the physical (props, video imagery, drawings) with the intangible (music, narration, lighting) to create a sculptural environment rather than a stand-alone, static object. Jonas has not shown any remorse regarding the finality of the destruction and regards it as a natural, necessary step of growth in her artistic journey.38 In this period of investigation and self-

discovery in the 1960s, Jonas exposed herself to various music, film, and dance pieces

presented by New York-based artists. This, in connection with her parents’ early encouragement regarding her interest in the arts, would set her on a path toward her

performative, avant-garde works.

After destroying her early sculptures to detach herself from her previous artistic

endeavors, Jonas began transitioning to the next iteration of her artistic career. She began

working with choreographers like Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and Steve Paxton to

develop a better understanding of dance and moment. Alongside the maturation of experimental art practices using performance in the early-to-mid 1960s, she began merging and combining different elements, including dance, theater, props, and cultural influences, that she discovered during her independent travels and from the various artists with whom she interacted.39 In the early 1970s, she bought her first Porta-Pak video camera in Japan,

38 Rima Yamazaki, Joan Jonas: Reanimation. Michael Blackwood Productions, 2005, Video, 00:19:00-00:20:00, https://uh.kanopy.com/video/joan-jonas-reanimation. 39 Treloar. “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” 21

which launched her experimentation with film, montage, narrative, and time-based

media.40 Through this new technology, Jonas pushed the boundaries of her practice and

general knowledge to understand both herself and the world around her more clearly. Some

of her earlier works included Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (1972), Glass Puzzle

(1974), and Volcano Saga (1989).41 Through these works, we see Jonas play with film and video in addition to experimenting with separate identities to help work through and better understand different concepts.42 She has stated that the 1980s were not as productive for

her work as other periods because, in her view, people at this time were only interested in

money and making a profit.43 The 1990s, however, introduced a newfound passion to her

practice, which led her to produce pieces like My New Theater, which played with the

audience’s perception of video. Jonas brought the legacy noted with hers and others

performance art experimentations in the 1960s and updated it by working within the

framework of postmodernism tempered with additive, multicultural perspectives. Still, her

video performances would not become more widely known until later in her career.44 While

40 Jonas, Joan, interview by Stuart Corner, “Live Q&A with Stuart Corner and Joan Jonas.” Virtual Views. MoMA, July 2, 2020. 41 Because the primary focus of this thesis deals with performance art and the object, I decided to highlight works which had either an in-person performance element or relied heavily on the artists use of props and objects (in either an activated performance or in a self-curated installation). For more information on her collective work please reference Joan Jonas and Joan Simon In the Shadow a Shadow. 42 Yamazkai. Joan Jonas: Reanimation. 00:20:00-00:29:00 43 Commodification of artwork is heavily tied to the money-based nature of our society and can prove frustrating to an artist when a work is sometimes forced into being a singular interchangeable thing. While the processes associated with commodification can seemingly hinder an artwork, there are certain advantages to preserving pieces in regard to developing scholarship and conservation techniques. For more views on preserving ephemeral works, please reference Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected … and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 44 Treloar. “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” 22

she had developed installations in the 1970s with pieces such as Stage Sets (1976) and

Three Tales (1977), in retrospect it seems that the period of the 1990s was when her

practice began shifting towards a self-referential, documentary style of installation that

enabled her performance and video based works to exist more naturally in a museum or

gallery space. By that time, her practice was moving fluidly toward more dynamic,

interactive pieces that relied on choreographed actions and the simultaneous capture and

re-projection of said actions via film.

Currently, Joan Jonas is a professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT), a position she has held since 2000. She continues to make pieces in the

same vein as those listed previously, such as Reanimation (2010/2012) and They Come to

Us without a Word II (2016). Her practice has included everything from low-fi films to

more technologically involved installations covering difficult, complex topics like climate

change.45 Other topics covered in her fifty-year career include, but are not limited to, “her dog, animism, Japanese Noh theatre, the moon and the sun, insects, masks (metaphorical and literal), ghosts, landscape, Hopi mythology, the female body, the female artist, the nature of presence versus representation, memory, [and] her home in Cape Breton.”46 Her

continued body of work alongside her role as a professor has resulted in a substantial

influence on a generation of burgeoning artists.47 She “is an artist who has continued to

engage sculpture and the acts of drawing since her art school and graduate studies in the

late 1950s through mid-1960s, gradually adding the time-based mediums of performance

and film (in the late 1960s) and video (experimenting with the medium beginning in

45 Treloar. “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” 46 Joan Jonas, interview by Liam Gillick 47 Treloar, “Joan Jonas Artist Overview and Analysis.” 23

1970).”48 Jonas’s fluid style and reluctance to be restricted to one medium or even a

singular curated version of her work enable her to remain up-to-date with the status of the

world and as she discerns ever-new ways to communicate her ideas to a contemporary

audience.

After looking broadly at her background, we can begin to narrow our scope and

look more closely at selected works that illustrate her development from her post-sculptural

phases to endeavors closer to the present day. These works, which include and rely heavily

on objects, enable us to explore the larger idea of physical remnants serving as a contemporary reminder of a previous act. The works in question are as follows: Mirror

Piece 1 (1969), My New Theater 1 (1997), The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things (2005),

Reanimation (2010/2012), and They Come to Us Without a Word (2015). Many of these

works included and reused physical objects. A sequential examination of key pieces that

rely heavily on the idea and action of performance via material means will enable

conclusions to be drawn regarding how the artist has handled her work, which will provide

a basis for later discussion regarding conservation and display.

MIRROR PIECE 1 – 1969

Mirror Piece 1 was indicative of Jonas’s early forays into solidifying her

experimental artistic style (Fig 1.1). As stated previously, she presented herself as a

pioneering force in body art, performance, and video art; still, it is important to note that

she does not label herself specifically as a performance artist. This is because she works

with so many different mediums as part of her artistic vocabulary that it does not seem fit

48 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 14 24

to limit herself solely to one descriptive modifier.49 While her later pieces will present

larger, more complex productions comparted to this one, Mirror Piece 1 illuminates her

beginnings with props, photographs, and choreographing performers to produce an active

work.

Figure 1.1: Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece 1, performance, Loeb Student Center NYU

Perhaps Jonas’s most famous early work, Mirror Piece 1 was performed at the Loeb

Student Center at New York University in 1969. The piece includes fifteen women performers wearing short dresses and holding standard full-length mirrors in front of them.50 Throughout the piece, the women move in choreographed patterns while always facing the audience. The mirrors ebb and flow while capturing and revealing the audience’s

49 Joan Jonas, interview by Liam Gillick 50 Possible performers in this and earlier performances, include: Frances Barth, Eve Corey, Susan Feldman, Pam Goden, Carol Gooden, Deborah Hollingworth, Keith Hollingworth, Barbara Jarvis, Joan Jonas, Julie Judd, Jane Lahr, Lucille Lareau, Jean Lawless, Susan Marshall, Rosemary Martin, Tom Meyers, Judy Padow, Linda Patton, Corky Poling, Peter Poole, Susan Rothenberg, Andy Salazar, Lincoln Scott, Michael Singer George Trakas, and Pam Vihel. For more information, please reference Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 36 25

reflections to the audience themselves. This accosts the viewers as they are forced to confront their reality of looking at the women on stage while not being able to interfere

with what happens to the female performers. The piece can be broken down into roughly

three stages. At the beginning, the aforementioned women move slowly in a zigzag pattern

across the space directly in front of the spectators, who are confronted by their reflections

as the mirrors pass in front of them.51 The viewers see themselves as passive players in the performance; instead of just enjoying the performance, they are made uncomfortable by being forced with disconnected, moving images of themselves as the mirrors move across the stage. While this happens, two men in suits walk amongst the women as they interrupt the choreographed paths and lifts and move the performers to various places on the stage at random. The disruptive presence of the men almost mirrors the presence of the audience except in a more active role; the audience can tell they also do not belong, but all the spectators can do is watch as the original flow of gestures is corrupted.

In the next stage, the two suited men bring in Jonas, who is wearing a blue-and- gold satin robe. Jonas holds herself rigidly horizontal as they first place her on the floor.

The men in suits continue to pick her up and move her throughout the piece while the performers continue to dance and move their mirrors around them. Again, the audience is

rendered helpless as they must watch another woman being handled by the two male

performers. All they can do is continue to sit and watch as the mirrors continue to force

themselves to confront their passive role as a spectator.

Finally, at the end of the performance, the women sit in a row on the floor and peer

over the tops of their individual mirrors. They then disappear completely behind their

51 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 44 26

mirrors as the suited men waltz in the background. The piece ends with the two men falling

to the ground. At this point. Jonas is still lying down as she stares at the ceiling.52 Typically, a performance is done when the stage is empty; however, in this instance, Jonas is still occupying the space in a deactivated, disconnected state. Even at the conclusion of the performance, the viewers are left unnerved by notions of what it means to be a spectator and how they are connected to the performance that just unfolded before them.

Mirror Piece 1 was recorded only by means of still photographs and memory. There were no written scripts or video recordings. When re-creating the piece, under the new title

Mirror Piece 1 (Reconfigured) (1969/2010), Jonas incorporated the movements and actions she remembered and supplemented the performance with new improvisations along with two singers, three songs, and a new duet performed with Ragani Haas.53 The piece

had to be re-worked to adapt to the central space and spiral ramp of the Guggenheim

Museum in New York, where it was staged as part of the exhibition Haunted:

Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance in 2010 (Fig. 1.2). Performers in this

iteration were chosen from students from a Jonas workshop for the Hunter College studio

art MFA program. While this piece exists under a different name from the original, it is

interesting to note how fragments from the original performance live on in this re-imagined

fashion. Because the documentation of the original piece was minimal, this re-creation can

serve as a sort of documentation and remembering of the original piece. This notion of re-

creating past works and taking bits and pieces from old performances to create a layered

new work is something that remains a constant part of Jonas’s recursive practice. When

52 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 44 53 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 50 27

the work is renewed, instead of trying to recreate a perfectly scripted copy, Jonas embraces

the iterative nature that is already inherent to performance as an art form and pushes it

towards a state where it intentionally changes over time in addition to the natural changes

which comes with its temporal nature.

Figure 1.2: Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece 1: Reconfigured (1969/2010), 2010, performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. Photo Credit: Enid Alvares

Compared to what we will see with her later performances, this piece does not have a wide variety of props. The piece is mainly focused on the choreographed movements between the performers and the movement of the mirrors. With this being said, the mirrors were not mere afterthoughts to the work overall. Jonas used the mirrors to interact with both the space the piece was performed in as well as the audience viewing the work. Mirror

Piece 1 and its various iterations and reconfigurations were performed in large open areas such as gymnasiums, auditoriums, and outdoor spaces.54 The performers with their large

54 Because of the iterative nature of her works, I was unable to determine a definitive number regarding the different times Jonas has performed or directed versions of this work. 28

mirrors would slowly move in carefully choreographed geometric patterns that echoed the

dimensions of whatever space they were inhabiting. Jonas stated she is interested in how

images she makes or finds are transformed by different mediums — the reflections in the

mirror, the physical distance in the outdoor works, and the closed-circuit systems of video

performances.55 The mirror served not only the role as a physical object to structure the

performance and to move around and manipulate, but it also brought an expanded, mirrored

dimension into the performance space. Jonas states, “You don’t want other people to see you looking. It’s the taboo of the mirror. Visually, also, the mirror breaks up a space; your perception of it changes.”56 The object is closely integrated and crucial to the piece. The

motion without the prop would not be as meaningful, and the prop without the action would

remain lifeless and inert. Both performance and object are integrated to create a unified,

charged event and deepen the psychological experience presented to the viewer as their

position implicates them in the spectacle.

MY NEW THEATER 1 - 1997

Roughly 28 years later, Jonas produced My New Theater 1, which experimented

with and developed her penchant for producing installations about her work. This was not

the first instance of Jonas exploring installation and the material-based portion of her work;

however, it is distinct in that it was uniquely a piece in its own right and not the self-

documentary follow-up to a performance or video piece with which she still continues to

55 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 40 56 Rachel Cooke, “Joan Jonas: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing sometimes. You just begin,’ Art/The Observer. The Guardian. March 4, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2018/mar/04/joan-jonas-video-art-pioneer-tate-modern-exhibition-interview 29

experiment (Fig 1.3).57 This piece, as well as others in the series, can be interpreted as a scaled-down performance, or a performance in miniature. Throughout her oeuvre, Jonas has experimented with not only showing a presented work but also revealing the process of its making. She has stated, “I thought of my work as revealing the process as well: revealing all the illusions. I am showing you how to make it. Right from the very beginning that was part of my desire.”58 Her work tends to have multiple layers and elements being engaged simultaneously, so each viewing of her piece will highlight something new to a viewer based on their individual perspectives and varying levels of perception. This iteration of her work enables her pieces to be presented in a manner that allows the viewer to mull over their thoughts slowly and parse out the various layers and meanings, something that is less feasible in a performance that has a set beginning and end.

Figure 1.3: Joan Jonas. My New Theater 1: Tap Dancing, 1997, installation/sculpture/video, Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, NY. Photo Credit: Estate of Colin de Land.

57 Earlier installation works based on previously executed video/performance pieces include: Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy/Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll (1972/1994) and The Juniper Tree (1976/1994) 58 Joan Jonas, interview by Liam Gillick 30

My New Theater 1, the first in a series of about six different pieces, began with

Jonas’s desire to perform in ways that would not always require a physical presence. This

resulted in a standalone box which resembles a portable or compact video player. Jonas created a six-foot-long narrow box which gradually sloped from front to back. The box took on a kind of squared-off cone shape and was placed on sawhorses so it could stand at eye level (approx. five feet off the ground). The viewer looks into the widest mouth of the box to peer inside at the miniature theater space that Jonas has constructed inside. A looping video (roughly four minutes) of a documentary about a Cape Breton step dancer is projected onto the far side of the box’s interior. In front of this projection, Jonas has placed an assortment or props —including a miniature fishing pole, toy owl, toy rabbit, and paper cut-outs of furniture pieces — which not only refer to the content within the video but also mimic what Jonas would have on stage with her if she was performing a piece live and at full scale (Fig. 1.4).59 My New Theater 1 almost feels like a maquette anticipating a larger scale iteration that will not come.

Figure 1.4: Joan Jonas, Interior view of My New Theater 1: Tap Dancing, 1997, installation/sculpture/video, Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, NY. Photo Credit: Estate of Colin de Land

59 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 354 31

Jonas has described these works as “video sculptures, little poetic video works” as

well as “an extension of the studio.”60 This work attempts to layer different mediums in a

scaled down form. There is still an element of collaboration, as noted by the step-dancer

from Cape Breton who provided the footage of dancing feet that played on the back panel

of the box’s interior, but the presence exists in a form that does not require both parties to

be physically in each other’s presence.61 In this instance, My New Theater 1 along with the later iterations in this series can be viewed as condensed versions of the theatrical experience associated with other notable works in her practice. This form subtracts the physical aspect from the equation, presenting an environment where the performance can continuously occur without a performer being present. Jonas has created an alternative form for her work that both returns to her sculptural roots and utilizes her long-standing relationship with video while also maintaining the performative elements that have increasingly characterized her practice as it has progressed. The wooden box “funnels its imagery directly to the eye, while at the same time maintaining an inseparable distance between them.”62 In a way, the box performs a similar function to that of the mirror discussed in the previous piece in that it heightens the viewer’s awareness of their physical act of viewing. The viewer’s position as an audience member is compounded with their position as a viewer in a gallery space.

Compared to other pieces she has worked on, My New Theater 1 seems fairly

simplified and straightforward; however, it embodies a large part of Jonas’s practice in a

60 Joan Jonas. Joan Jonas. Southampton: [published by John Hansard Gallery in association with Wilkinson Gallery], 2004. 14 61 Jonas, Joan Jonas, 14 62 Schwabsky, “Seeing Through a Glass.” 32

different way than the large-scale installations or performances. Her oeuvre plays with

layering and differentiating levels of perception, both for the participants as well as the

viewers. This piece in particular shows how Jonas is preserving performance and engaging

with themes that are often difficult to capture precisely, such as an individual’s culture (the

folk dancing) and how music relates to movement. Jonas frequently collapses the boundary

between performance and documentation; these installations even have a research quality

to them as she is carefully parsing out bits and pieces she wants to include to explore the

topics at hand. This work reinforces that notion by creating a miniaturized stage for video

work instead of operating at the human scale. This piece shrinks the life-size work into a

more intimate experience that is less constrained by temporality but still permits the similar

multiple perceptions present with them. Jonas even noted that “one person’s interpretation

and experience of [a work/performance] can be slightly different to the next” but also that

it “is true of all perception of art, even if you do see the whole thing at once.”63 Adding on to this idea of layered, eclectic pieces evoking unique responses from each individual,

Jonas has identified herself as an “Imagist” in addition to her other roles of writer, editor, sound creator, and performer, thus cementing her practice as one that constructs pictures in a variety of mediums throughout time and space.64 Even in the scaled-down version of

her work, Jonas has managed to incorporate most of her skillset to create an engaging,

layered performance via sculpture. Her decisions here clearly demonstrate her interests in

display and self-documentation and foreshadow the processes she will develop with larger

scale pieces such as Reanimation.

63 Jonas, Joan Jonas, 11. 64 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 14. 33

THE SHAPE, THE SCENT, THE FEEL OF THINGS – 2004-2006

A highlight of Jonas’s work in the early 2000s is The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of

Things, which was presented by Dia:Beacon (Fig. 1.5). In addition to the choreographed

movements and assorted props one would typically associate with a Jonas piece, this work

also engaged the collaborative efforts of renowned composer and jazz pianist, Jason

Moran. The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things was heavily inspired by art historian Aby

Warburg’s essay Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America.65 Prior to her learning about this essay, Jonas had traveled in the Southwestern part of the United

States and was able to see several Hopi rituals, including the Hopi Snake Dance, which also influenced her practice.66 With her past travels and Warburg’s essay in mind, Jonas

traveled back to the region in January 2004 where she stayed on a Hopi reservation in

Arizona. She stated that she “began a dialogue with people in the community, but [she] did

not wish to impose on, or take away from, the Native American people.”67 Instead, she

took this opportunity to reflect on her own personal experiences and artistic practice

alongside Warburg’s observations and pitfalls which would in turn lead to the creation of

The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things as well as Lines in the Sand (2002).

This performance was created to be a site-specific work designed for a basement

exhibition space at Dia:Beacon, a former factory space filled with columns arranged in a

grid across an expansive concrete floor. The audience was positioned on bleachers

overlooking where the performers carry out the piece. The area where most of the action

65 Translated and with an interpretive essay by Michael P. Steinberg, Cornell University Press, 1995 66 Out of respect to the tradition, Jonas never tried to directly copy the Hopi Snake Dance and place it into her works. 67 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 418. 34

takes place resembles a long hospital corridor with the back wall serving as a projection

screen. A white wooden modernist chaise is positioned in the front at stage-right, and a

wooden representation of a seismograph is positioned nearby towards center-stage. This

piece includes multiple performers and components including Jonas, projected video, choreographed movement, lighting, narration, music by Jason Moran (who is hidden behind a column stage-left of the performers), various props (including a wheeled bench, taxidermied coyote, and large swaths of cloth), and assorted drawing materials that Jonas

uses during different parts of the piece. The transcript of the performance shows there are

sixteen scenes in total with some having titles and others being left only numbered.

Different character parts include Woman 1 (Nurse 1, Dr. Binswanger, and prerecorded

voice-over), Woman 2 (Nurse 2, Nymph), Aby Warburg, Pianist, and Singer. Narration is

formed from assorted fragments from the aforementioned Aby Warburg piece along with

other pieces which represent Joan Jonas’s voice in the work. Projections are created both

from prerecorded video as well as live footage being overlaid on top of it.68 Again, we can see this eclectic assortment of artistic mediums and ideas overlapping and creating multiple layers of meaning within the piece. The audience must simultaneously pay attention to the minute details of each aspects so that they may support each other and fit together to reveal the nature of Aby Warburg’s observations paralleled with Jonas’s similar musings related to travel and experiencing a culture different from one’s own.

68 Joan Jonas, Karen. Kelly, and Jason. Moran, Joan Jonas: the Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things (New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2006), 15. 35

Figure 1.5: Joan Jonas, The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things, 2006, performance, Dia Beacon, Beacon, NY. Photo Credit: Paula Court.

As the audience enters the space, the performance area appears dark and empty

aside from a still image from a paused video being projected on the back wall. Once the

video begins to play, the house lights are turned off signaling the beginning of the

performance. As narration of Aby Warburg’s text plays, three performers — a man playing

Aby Warburg and two women (one being Joan Jonas) playing nurses — move throughout

the space and interact with each other in an attempt to convey Warburg’s time in the

sanitorium. The projected video switches back and forth between scenes of nature and

projection of the performer’s interactions in real-time.69 While the performers are at the front portion of their demarcated stage, the video does not cover them; it is only when they step away from the frontal, fictive hospital scene and move upstage that they dissolve into the projected background. Eventually, Jason Moran begins playing the piano; his cadence

69 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 422 36

serves to modulate tone and pacing in the performance and gives the audience an additional

auditory input to consider. His music is interspersed with other noises such as a bell ringing or wood planks clapping together that coincide with different acts occurring in the

performance.

As the scenes progress, the female figures shift roles from nurses into other characters such as Nymph and Melancholia. Excluding the Aby Warburg character, the individual’s roles shift during the performance to match what the scene requires; this forces the viewer to accept change within the performance. The instability of characters and constantly changing scenes unsettles the audience and ensures they feel, rather than merely see, what Warburg’s experiences and thought processes would have been like. In each stage, Jonas and the additional performers move and interact with each other in choreographed vignettes as opposed to improvised gestures. The players monologue and

interact with each other, move set pieces around, and manipulate various props including a large parachute-like cloth, a canvas with various images placed on it, and a stuffed coyote

(among numerous other objects). Jonas also creates drawings and bangs objects together to produce sounds in dialogue with the piano playing throughout the performance. The players’ performances are layered over with the piano accompaniment, voice recordings, and changing lights from the constant video projections. Individually, these pieces provide different bits of information and context, but, as opposed to isolating or highlighting any one individual element, Jonas forces them to crash and crowd each other, producing a multi-sensorial experience that effectively realizes Warburg’s musings. Each scene develops Aby Warburg’s monologue until he finally finishes and exits the factory floor, leaving the nurses and the stuffed coyote behind along with the other props. The women

move towards the audience dragging the coyote behind them in the final moments. This

brings the sixteen-scene exploration of Warburg’s work, memory, and ritual to a close.70

Literally and figuratively, Warburg was able to depart from the asylum, thus leaving the audience and other performers behind amidst the fragments of this stage of his life.

Important to my purposes here, Jonas also re-worked the piece into an installation format executed in two places: first at the Renaissance Society in Chicago (2004) and then at the Yvon Lambert Space in New York (2006) (Fig 1.6; Fig 1.7). Both spaces provided enough room to arrange props from the performance amidst projected video and other pieces Jonas chose to include in this reimagined format. Jonas carefully parsed down the narrative in a series of video projections and select objects to translate the sixteen scenes into a specific space. For the Chicago version, she “included a number of projections —

Wolf Lights (2004-2005), Melancholia (2005), landscape footage, a long pan of a fence

(untitled video [fence]) — and a My New Theater box with a narrative video in it about a

Hopi man [she] met in New Mexico ([she] didn’t use this footage again in The Shape, the

Scent, the Feel of Things).”71 The stuffed coyote was also present as the only object in

addition to the My New Theater box. While the absence of the performers would yield a

different reaction from the audience, Jonas’s reimagined piece gives the work new life and

enables the viewer to have a more active role compared to the performance. The audience

carries themselves through the space thus moving themselves through the narratives

created by Warburg and Jonas. They are forced to confront the complexities and confusions

70 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 420-437. 71 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 439. 38

associated with the varying trains of thought through the various materials presented to

them.

Figure 1.6: Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2005, Installation, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL. Photo Credit: The Renaissance Society.

The installation at the Yvon Lambert space was a bit more complex. Five videos

were chosen to be projected as background images for the space. Melancholia (2004), Wolf

Lights (2004-2005), and Mirror Improvisation (2005) were displayed on screens that hung

from the ceiling while Beacon Footage (2005) and Electric Wires (2005) were projected

on two large opposing walls in a way that unified the space into one cohesive environment.

The soundtrack that accompanied the original performance plays throughout the gallery space. Objects on display included one of the large snake drawings produced during the original performance along with the coyote, his shipping crate, and the other furniture and set pieces first used. This iteration of the installation also had a secondary smaller room connected to the main space where a video recording of the 2006 Dia:Beacon performance that Jonas had edited together was playing. Jonas edited shots of the entire performance

together with the original video backdrops, frequently foregrounding the latter to make

them stand out more clearly to the viewer.72 This decision illustrates Jonas’s interest in documentation and experimentation with different methods of display and curation These installations let the audience understand the ideas Jonas is grappling with without needing the body of the artist to be present. The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things in its installation format takes the viewer through Jonas’s understanding of culture through her own eyes and that of Aby Warburg. Instead of watching Jonas execute these movements, the viewers are able to immerse themselves in the installation environment and take on

Jonas’s role to process and work through complicated themes such as ritual, cultural practices, and anthropological understanding of lives different from one’s own. Compared to the previous installation, Jonas has increased the amount of information present and has pushed her process to the forefront to stand alongside Warburg’s influence. It was one step closer to fully encapsulating her want of self-referential documentation alongside the display of complex, theoretical reflections. Instead of being hindered by problems associated with performance art’s preservation, Jonas integrates each aspect of a documentable fragmentation mentioned previously. By doing this, she ensures that her performance- and object-based oeuvre will not exist a disconnected series of fragmentary, disembodied objects but will be preserved as more cohesive vignettes curated at her discretion which have the ability to be altered and adapted as she sees fit. It is apparent that her installations in essence pre-curate her performance remains into arrangements that may more comfortably align with traditional museum collecting practices which are still adapting to works that have a less stable, less commodifiable nature. In this manner, the

72 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 439. 40

hand of the artist is still present, but the piece is more flexible since it just holds a trace of

the performer’s body rather than needing the performer to actively be present. This notion

of having the work perform without her being present could also be prompted by the artist’s

advancing age and the reality that she will not be her to perform or direct the performative

variants of her works one day.

Figure 1.7: Joan Jonas, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2006, installation, Yvon Lambery Space, New York, NY. Photo Credit: Michael Falco.

One can see how the various iterations of this piece have touched on memory,

storytelling, ritual, historic connections, display, and the intermingling of various mediums

to ultimately create a palimpsest effect where one can shuffle through the various layers

presented by the artist and her collaborators. Jonas summarizes the piece by stating, “It’s

about this character, an art historian who spoke to me. Through making a piece about this

character I could express, without words, some of the things I was struggling with,

particularly my attraction to ritual in other cultures.”73 She created this piece (in all

73 Joan Jonas, Karen. Kelly, and Jason. Moran. Joan Jonas: the Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 59 41

iterations) as a means to work through her own interests in ritual and observing different

cultures. By executing seemingly ritualistic movements throughout her performance, Jonas is able to process for herself and show an audience a unique view of the intimate experience of an individual slowly understanding a culture different from one’s own. While the pieces used in the performance are not traditionally sacred objects and are not tied directly to a specific culture or practice directly, Jonas has referenced first and second-hand accounts of traditional practices (in this case, those indigenous to the land in the southwestern part of what is now the United States) to capture what she feels is the connection between ritual, culture, and performance without directly penning down a direct account of what occurred.

In other words, Jonas is capturing the essence of cultural practice and how insiders and outsiders view them without directly copying the dances and rituals she experienced. In addition to the varying aspects of subject and content, Jonas was also able to concentrate on form and space and how that plays into the execution and viewing of a piece. Jonas has noted that another area of her interest is in circular, iterative telling and retelling of stories along with the different interpretations that come from this on-going re-telling process.74

Through her work, she has experimented with similar forms paralleling the “beginnings of expression in other cultures in relation to [her] own beginnings” to gain more clarity on both subjects.75

In conjunction with the other works previously mentioned, this piece fits in with the artist’s progression of constantly evolving and reworking her pieces in both scale and methods of curation. The piece exists both in performance form and as an installation as

74 Jonas, Joan Jonas, 16. 75 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon. In the Shadow a Shadow. 419. 42

well as in the various fragments of video, recordings, and set pieces created throughout her

recursive process. This repeated idea of “layering” or, to bring in a different term, collage,

is incredibly evident throughout her practice, especially in the pieces mentioned thus far.

To further understand this idea, we can understand artists, particularly Jonas, as a bricoleur.

Bricolage, theorized by Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1962, entails a “science of the concrete” or the “do-it-yourself process of constructing objects from odds and ends, much like assemblage.”76 This aspect can be applied directly to the work of Jonas because she compiles her performances and installations out of works she has previously made, items found on her travels, and bits and pieces of literature and artistic references she has accrued over her life. Upon hearing the term brought up in an interview Jonas did with the Brooklyn

Rail, it provided an accurate description of her creative process and how she worked with whatever she had on hand to create large-scale recursive pieces through collage.77 The

material can be seen to have the meaning imbued in its pre-fabricated raw state that bring

added dimension to the artistic process.78 The artist, as the bricoleur, uses objects not only to speak through them but also with them.79 Through this, the components of the works are

charged with even more meaning since all objects are integral in order for the work to

appropriately communicate between themselves, the artist, and the viewers. For instance,

Jonas performs a series of choreographed movements and interactions and, as a result,

some large-scale drawings are produced. These, in turn, serve as references to and

fragments of the work overall. She often takes motifs from the text she is referencing and

76 Anna Dezeuze, “Assemblage, Bricolage, and the Practice of Everyday Life.” Art Journal 67, no. 1 (2008): 31–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/20068580. 31. 77 Joan Jonas, interview by Daisy Desrosiers. 78 Lange-Berndt, Materiality, 37. 79 Dezeuze. “Assemblage, Bricolage, and the Practice of Everyday Life.” 31. 43

incorporates them into the work. For example, Jonas produced large drawings of a snake using paint as means of referencing Aby Warburg’s famous “A Lecture on Serpent

Ritual.”80 As with her other works, Jonas states, “there is not always a direct [clear] relation between the image and the source, but, of course, the performance is totally inspired by these sources, while it takes form within and is a response to a very particular space.”81

The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things touches on a human, experiential element that has

remained constant throughout various stages in her practice.

REANIMATION – 2010/2012

As with the previous pieces, Jonas’s more recent, incredibly ambitious work

Reanimation can be viewed as an artwork or art experience that defies specific archival

categorization. Various art techniques and styles were employed in the execution of the

work, but Jonas also edits and evolves the piece with each iteration to ensure a unique,

novel experience for the viewers.82 Each new iteration incorporates additions of events she

has seen, items she has accrued and adapts to new means of display depending on the space

in which she is working and to whom she is presenting.83 Later iterations of Reanimation

are not identical copies of the first performance of the work done at MIT in 2010. When

researching this piece, along with other works of hers, it is sometimes difficult to discern

which elements are original, adapted, or later additions; still, the overall theme and message

80 Jonas, Joan, Bonnie Marranca, and Claire MacDonald. "Drawing My Way In." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 36, no. 2 (2014): 35-57. Accessed April 1, 2020. doi:10.2307/26386683. 39. 81 Joan Jonas, Karen. Kelly, and Jason. Moran, Joan Jonas: the Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 7. 82 Yamazkai. Joan Jonas: Reanimation. 00:29:00-00:31:00. 83 Joan Jonas. “Joan Jonas, Reanimation, An Ongoing Performance, December 9, 2013.” MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, January 20, 2016, Video, 00:15:00- 00:18:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOPZULK7QmI. 44

of the work and the various methods utilized in the performance (e.g., video, performance,

sound, drawings, etc.) remain consistent in their base forms.

As stated previously, Reanimation was first performed in 2010 at MIT, where Jonas

currently serves as a professor emeritus. The piece was largely inspired by Halldór

Laxness’s novel, Under the Glacier (1968). She was specifically drawn to the chapters which heavily focused on nature. Her first performances of Reanimation did not vary as

much from iteration to iteration, but one can note key differences. Between her first and

second performances at MIT, she changed the pictures used in the performance to ensure

the audience would experience a new version of her work instead of a second-hand run-

through of the original production. Pianist and composer Jason Moran was also invited to

accompany her and provide live music during the second performance at MIT and her

performance at dOCUMENTA(13) (Fig. 1). The two artists would later collaborate on They

Come to Us Without a Word (2015), discussed later in this chapter.84

When looking at recordings of the piece, Jonas can most commonly be seen

wearing a white blouse and white pants. One might say this clothing makes her resemble a snow bunting, which is one of the animals discussed in Laxness’s novel.85 Before the performance, a stage is set with various stations that she would move through, accompanied by the music and narration. On the right side of the stage, a drawing board on a workbench is set up with a camera positioned over it. As Jonas draws on the workbench, her actions are projected onto a large projection screen along with videos and images of nature.86 This

84 Yamazkai. Joan Jonas: Reanimation. 00:31:00-00:45:00 85 Gillian Young,“Glacial Pace:Joan Jonas’s ‘Reanimation,’” Art in America. Accessed April 25, 2020, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/glacial-pace-joan- jonass-reanimation-59604/. 86 Yamazkai, Joan Jonas: Reanimation, 1:00:00-1:05:00 45

screen also serves as a backdrop to the performance. On the left side of the stage, a station

with a small folding stool is set up with various instruments, noisemakers, and props she

would use during the performance. Next to this, an easel is set up with either black or white paper. The middle of the stage in front of the screen remains open; however, during the performance, Jonas drags paper to the center and paints animalistic shapes on it with blue paint or ink.87 While the piece is largely considered performative, she heavily relies on the props to either help accentuate her actions or as items activate during the performance.

During the piece, narration would play accompanied by piano music from Jason

Moran, yoiking (a singing style of the indigenous Sami people) performed by Ánde Somby, and a compilation of still images and video clips on the screen.88 Jonas would draw pictures of animals and nature at the station on the right, which would be projected over the video

compilation; this would parallel the accompanying audio of someone (typically her)

reading parks of Laxness’s text.89 She would also draw on the easel on the left part of the

stage and on paper placed at center stage with art utensils attached to sticks a couple feet

in length. During a portion of the performance, Jonas would don a mask and draw on paper

she placed over her body while standing. Jonas would also utilize the instruments, paper,

and bells she placed on stage to mimic sounds of nature seen in the videos.90

While one is tempted to follow Jonas as the main element of the piece, this would result in missing imagery being projected on the screen and the musicians and narration accompanying the piece; there is not a true focal point to the work. Jonas’s actions and the

87 Jonas, “Joan Jonas, Reanimation, An Ongoing Performance,” 1:16:00-1:20:00. 88 Yamazkai, Joan Jonas: Reanimation,. 00:14:00-00:16:00. 89 Young, “Glacial Pace.” 90 Yamazkai, Joan Jonas: Reanimation, 00:50:00-00:55:00. 46 narration form a dialogue with one other as one reacts to or prompts the other to move forward in the performance. As a result, it is difficult to adequately condense an elaborate performance with a lot of different layers and elements into a simple brief description. It is because instead of merely taking the text of Under the Glacier and making an accompanying artwork, Jonas in fact uses the ideas behind Laxness’s words as a foundation on which she grounds the entirety of her performance. The narration of his work helps give the performance a semblance of straightforward meaning. Still, Jonas’s various actions, as mentioned previously (e.g., drawing, making sounds, and movement), make the piece relevant to the viewer who may either feel indifferent towards current natural crises or have no knowledge of Laxness’s book. The piece begins with her taking the stage and ends with her leaving. While choreographed in advance, the movement creates a unique, semi- spontaneous amalgamation of actions, video recordings, and sounds that are loosely following Laxness’s imagery. Jonas uses a myriad of actions and components to activate her work into a roughly hour-long visual spectacle loosely centered around a central theme of man’s negative impact on the environment and climate change as evidenced by animal’s natural habitats degrading, such as glaciers melting. Jonas’s takes a rather somber aspect of the current state of the work and transforms it into a romantic, captivating display that reaches the audience emotionally and qualitatively rather than scientifically and quantitatively.

In addition to being shown as a performance, Reanimation was also reworked into an installation format shown at dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Germany, and various museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Much like the performance

variations, these installations change and adapt to their respective settings.91 For the

installation portion of Reanimation shown at dOCUMENTA(13), Jonas was given the

choice of a pre-fabricated house in which she would adapt and install her work. Jonas chose

a house situated in the middle of a green meadow in order to emphasize the connection to

nature, which was heavily prevalent in the piece (Fig. 1.8). Because the house was

relatively small, viewers could only access the interior of the house by peering in from the

outside. To adapt to this specific vantage point of the viewer, she used an earlier work of

hers, My New Theater, as an inspiration to reformat the windows into viewing vignettes

(Fig. 1.9). The windows displayed various objects alongside running video collages which

were intended to imitate an anthropologist’s collection of assorted materials.92 Images and objects in the installation include pictures of snow buntings (an animal referenced in

Laxness’s book), pieces of her past works such as Melancholia (2005), a structure with hanging crystals that emulate snow or rain, and drawings of animals that resemble

Rorschach Tests that would be similar to images produced through drawing during her live performances.93 In respect to other museum’s installations of Reanimation, video collages

and recordings of Jonas making the drawings on two or more screens have been exhibited

together in a singular space.94 Additional features utilized include a soundtrack of

91 Young, “Glacial Pace.” 92 In a way, this could resemble the art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas with its collection of visual material that is supposed to evoke meaning in the viewer rather than outright explain the connections present. Jonas’s touched on his thoughts previously in The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things (2004-2006). 93 Yamazkai. Joan Jonas: Reanimation. 00:05:00-00:11:00 94 Robin Kathleen Williams, “A Mode of Translation: Joan Jonas’s Performance Installations.” The Place of Performance. Stedelijk Studies, no. 3 (2015): accessed April 29, 2020, https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/a-mode-of-translation-joan-jonass- performance-installations/#top 48 narration, yoik songs, and piano accompaniment as well as the structure with hanging crystals and the drawings mentioned previously.95 The vestiges of the performance and the assorted accoutrements utilized by Jonas tend to take preference over recordings of the performances in the installations, which end up resembling inactive, but not quite lifeless, renditions of the piece. The vignettes created keep the objects in a performative space.

Instead of existing as an inert, suffocatingly curated scene, they are inherently more “alive” because they are created under the original artist’s supervision. They are not fixed; Jonas can reinvent them and rework them in any way she sees necessary to adapt to the space and better suit the themes she is trying to comprehend and relay. To do this, she mirrors the collage-like quality of her performances with the collage-like display of objects. The installations can be seen as an alternative attempt to capture her work's nonlinear narrative quality without her actively being present in the piece.

Figure 1.8: Joan Jonas. Reanimation, In a Meadow, 2012, Installation, Kassel, Germany. Photo Credit: OKNO studio, Ela Bialkowska, Ilan Zarantonello

95 Tracy Valcourt, “The Art of Joan Jonas.” Border Crossings 35, no. 3 (September 2016): 117. http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db =lfh&AN=117971370&site=ehost-live. 49

Figure 1.9: Joan Jonas. Reanimation, In a Meadow, 2012, Installation, Kassel, Germany. Photo Credit: Nils Klinger.

THEY COME TO US WITHOUT A WORD – 2015

A final work worth addressing in this context of object-based works in Jonas’s practice is They Come to Us Without a Word (2015), which was a multi-media installation originally commissioned for the United States pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale. While

this work was originally created for the biennale, like many of her recent projects, the work

was later edited and reworked for a 2016 performance (entitled They Come to Us without

a Word II); during that process, Jonas noted, “I will continue to work on these ideas — this

is basically a work in progress.”96 This work in its installation format blends performance, video art, drawing, and sculpture to produce an experience the viewer is truly immersed in and must walkthrough to understand the complex messages being told fully. The piece employed several collaborators and contributors including the following: David

96 Paul Ha, Ute Meta Bauer, Joan Jonas, Ann Morris Reynolds, Ingrid Schaffner, Marina Warner, and Jane Farver. Joan Jonas : They Come to Us Without a Word (Cambridge: List Visual Arts Center, 2015), 19. 50

Dempewolf as veejay and assistant editor, David Sherman with video, Meredith Walker

and Jin Jung on assorted tasks with props and modeling, Jan Kroeze with lighting, and

Jason Moran with piano accompaniment and music creation. The most unique

collaborative partners were children, mostly those of Jonas’s artist friends. In the US

pavilion in Venice, the children in the performance could be seen in several of the videos

projected throughout the building. Their presence compounded the poignancy of the

ongoing ecological deterioration constantly alluded to throughout the work because the

plight will one day be theirs to inherit.97

They Come to Us Without a Word was set up over a six-week installation period at

the U.S. Pavilion, which has four galleries, a rotunda space, and a courtyard area.98 The

pavilion’s layout resembles an upside-down U-shape with the courtyard existing in the

negative space in the middle of the U. Rooms of equal size are numbered in ascending

order starting at the left and proceeding in a clockwise direction; the smaller rotunda space

is positioned between rooms two and three.99 The four galleries were centered around a specific theme (Bees, Fish, Wind, and Homeroom) and each had two stories being told simultaneously through video projection (Fig. 1.10; Fig. 1.11). Joan Simon notes, “One of the two videos is related to the named theme, with sounds by Jonas, songs by Sami singer

Ande Somby, or new compositions by Jason Moran. The other is accompanied by a spoken soundtrack voiced by Jonas, the artist Adam Pendleton, and the writer and critic Charles

Ruas (who is known for his radio broadcasts), telling ghostly tales drawn from Nova

97 Paul Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 125-128. 98 Paul Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 7. 99 Paul Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 153. 51

Scotia’s oral tradition.”100 The videos depicted the children mentioned previously donned

in white costumes and interacting with Jonas’s signature props. Their figures move around

a scrim while video is projected on top of them adding to the haunting effect of the ghost

stories and sounds. Each of these rooms also includes a painted wooden stage with

projection screen and assorted props, a crystal shaped wooden bench painted yellow, works

on paper relevant to the theme, and a vitrine displaying objects and props from Jonas’s

personal collection of ephemera from travels or natural history which relate to the theme,

process, or her internal dialogue.101 The rotunda space entitled Mirrors (2015) functions as a pause from the other rooms and a moment to reflect on Jonas’s past works and progression as an artist. There are two high-definition videos projected in the space as in the other rooms along with twenty-eight mirrors mounted on wooden panels and a

chandelier-like iron framework laden with roughly 100 lead-glass crystals, reminiscent of

the crystals used in her earlier sculpture created for Reanimation.102 One of the HD videos can be traced to Beautiful Dog (2014), a single-channel video altered with a “vertical roll” effect reminiscent of her earliest moving-image work. The other video can be seen projected through the chandelier onto one of the doors. It plays part of a video previously

present in My New Theater III: In the Shadow a Shadow (1999), “showing Jonas shrouded

under a white sheet while drawing her body’s contours on its surface by trace and feel to

create what appears to be a full-length skeleton.”103 The courtyard space holds a sculpture

100 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 512. 101 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 512-513. 102 Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 153. 103 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 513. 52

called Nine Trees which consists of nine tree trunks taken from Isola della Certosa on

Venice that were then wrapped with copper wire (Fig. 1.12).104

Figure 1.10: Joan Jonas. They Come to Us Without a Word (Wind), 2015, Installation, US Pavilion, Venice, Italy. Photo Credit: Google Arts & Culture

Figure 1.11: Joan Jonas. They Come to Us Without a Word (Bees), 2015, Installation, US Pavilion, Venice, Italy. Photo Credit: Google Arts & Culture

104 Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 153. 53

Figure 1.12: Joan Jonas. They Come to Us Without a Word (Nine Trees), 2015, Installation, US Pavilion, Venice, Italy. Photo Credit: Google Arts & Culture

While the experience of They Come to Us Without a Word can be dissected down into these individual rooms and experiences, it is truly the combination of these stories threaded together by the viewer walking through and activating the piece that produces a comprehensive view and understanding of the work. It cohesively fills its architectural space and permits the audience to realize environmental problems thrust upon upcoming generations fully. As viewers complete the visual circuit and move through the various spaces, the props and physical objects on display serve to supplement the theme of the room and the overall theme of the installation.105 Their presence combines with other

elements in the space to serve as a tangible point of reference. Instead of viewing a

performance, the viewers, in a sense, perform the piece by moving through the different

spaces as the objects help guide and trigger the different experiences for the viewers.

105 Frances Richard ed. Joan Jonas Is on Our Mind. San Francisco (CA: CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 2017), 51. 54

Overall, this work is heavily focused on exploring nature and how we as its

inhabitants are affecting and causing our home to deteriorate. As the critic Barry

Schwabsky has argued, the work does not present as direct “preaching about climate

change, but the recurrent … circling back to images of birds, tress, bees, and the land in

general takes on an elegiac tone, as if these life forms, which we need much more than they

need us, were in the process of taking leave of their connection to the world of humans.”106

Jonas was interested in generating a slight disturbance in her audience rather than complete

shock; she wanted something that would change the tone for the individual and highlight

these shifts in nature which often go unnoticed or ignored. 107 The installation provokes

something akin to an inverted existential dream/nightmare where there is not a specific

immediate crisis but rather a mounting sense of dread and awareness.108 In her preparatory research for this work, Jonas has looked at two key works: John Berger’s Why Look at

Animals? (1980) and Giogrio Agamben’s The Open:Man and Animal (2004) which referenced Uexküll’s concept of worlds of animal perception. Both of these works heavily focused on human interactions with animals and how these relationships have grown strained and broken over time.109 Jonas also referenced Laxness’s novel Under the Glacier

which she had previously utilized in Reanimation. These texts in conjunction with the fragmented spoken ghost stories weave facts and poetic strands together to produce an experience that resists direct understanding and clear linearity while still giving the viewer

106 Schwabsky, “Seeing Through a Glass.” 107 Paul Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 129. 108 Lucy Bowditch, "They Come to Us without a Word: Joan Jonas 2015," Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 43, no. 4 (2016): 14. 109 Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 128. 55

enough clues to glean necessary information from the texts at hand.110 Collectively, this

installation balances current loss with hopefulness amidst a narrative that produces a

heightened awareness of climate crises without didactic propositions.111

As the most recent piece of Jonas’s that is discussed here, They Come to Us Without

a Word shows the collective efforts of all her past pieces and influences. Since she is still

producing pieces and operates in a practice that is constantly changing different elements

from different works, this is not the complete conclusion to her artistic development. As

art historian Ann Reynolds has rightly put it, her works are “never exclusively realistic,

rarely static, and never distanced to the point of nostalgia, they function as events and as

signals of how we have shared and continue to need to share the box that contains us.”112

They also resist perfect categorization — they are partially performance, partially sculpture, partially installation, and partially archive. Her interests in weaving multiple disciplines manifests itself in final products which can be influenced by multiple storylines and modes of thought but ultimately resist cohering to a stable narrative idea or culminating in a final, finished work. The works can exist in dual roles (performance and installation) at the artist’s request and can pull from her entire artistic career to regenerate and construct a new idea.

Overall, it is clear that Joan Jonas’s practice is not constrained to one specific medium or style of presentation. Her pieces are rarely direct or easy for the viewer to interpret; this is further complicated by the various iterations and presentations of the works. Of course, she acknowledges their somewhat confusing nature and has even stated,

110 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 517. 111 Bowditch, “They Come to Us without a Word: Joan Jonas 2015,” 16. 112 Ha et. al., Joan Jonas: They Come to Us Without a Word, 29. 56

“Don’t try to understand my work, just experience it.”113 Throughout her career, Jonas has developed ideas across her multi-disciplinary practice to cultivate transformations amidst central motifs as they are layered between two-dimensional and three-dimensional modes of representation in addition to the various temporal repetitions.114 Her process is best summarized as interdisciplinary. She infuses many different artistic mediums

(performance, film, sculpture, drawing, video, installation, etc.) and different iterations of her past works to create layered new pieces charged by the variety of mediums, perspectives, and information gathered throughout her career. Jonas has referenced her process as creating “translations” or “transmissions” by abstracting key gestures from her

performances for independent videos, drawings, sculptures, and installations so that the

performative qualities — the anima of a live presentation — live on as correlates even

when the original performance itself does not.115 Because of this, it is also pertinent to re-

iterate that Jonas often does not completely identify as a performance artist. She states,

“One of the difficulties in talking about my work is that I am referred to as a performance artist, and I don’t think it’s the right descriptive term. Because nobody understands what a performance is today. There are so many definitions out there that performance has become a meaningless word in relation to what I do and what other people do.”116

While the artist does not define herself solely as a “performance artist,” the

performative elements in the work demonstrate how it is within reason to compare the

development of her practice and her collective work to the broader history of diverse

113 Bowditch, “They Come to Us without a Word: Joan Jonas 2015,” 12. 114 Williams, “A Mode of Translation: Joan Jonas’s Performance Installations.” 115 Joan Jonas and Joan Simon, In the Shadow a Shadow, 14. 116 Joan Jonas, interview by Liam Gillick. 57

performance art practices from the 1960s to the present that resist direct commodification.

Jonas’s work emblematizes ideas proposed by the art historian Rosalind Krauss regarding

notions of post-medium and recursive mediums. Recursive in the sense that there is a

system made or constructed by the artist, rather than pre-given, which creates a complex,

layered relationship between what is seen (final product) and the process and techniques

that go into creating what is seen (anything not grasped by just looking). Krauss’s useful

formulation stems from engagement with the Surrealist use of “automatism” as a natural

reflexive action. Automatism foregrounds the notion of improvisation in light of a medium

that is no longer tied down to artistic tradition via philosophical definitions regarding

medium, production, and commodity. This concept of medium-promiscuity inherent to the

“post-medium condition” articulated by Krauss has complicated conventional notions of

medium specificity and aesthetic quality discussed by, for example, art critic Clement

Greenburg in respect to the traditional art historical canon as created by art critics, curators,

and historians. Krauss refers to appropriative mediums that lack a singular support (e.g.,

Conceptual art and installation) to claim that the concept of claiming media-specificity is

not sufficient or productive when discussing contemporary artistic practices. Differential

specificity in respect to medium will permit for re-invention or re-articulation rather than

stagnation, as seen with previously accepted, rigid understandings of materiality.117

Through this understanding, Jonas’s recursive, self-documentary works can be better

understood and appreciated as offering a pathway out of the aesthetic dead-ends that a rigid

notion of medium specificity has presented for contemporary art and artists.

117 Rosalind Krauss, “A Voyage on the North Sea”: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 1999), 5-7. 58

In the next section, I will begin to branch further out and look at performance art overall. This preceding discussion offered a close look at a specific artist; having discussed

that, a broader understanding of performance artists, their works, and their reliance on

objects will develop a stronger, more nuanced understanding of what these individual

pieces and physical remnants mean in relation to a work. The next section will cover

definitions of performance art, a timeline of various pieces relevant to performance art

(primarily focused on the United States), and different theories and methodologies

typically associated with discourse surrounding performance-based art pieces. While Jonas

refers to herself generally as an artist rather than specifically a performance artist, her

standing as both a pioneer in performance art and video art as well as the performative element in many of her works cannot be ignored. The following discussion will provide context to this aspect of her career and give additional inspiration to understand her work both in its original iteration as well as from the viewpoint of a researcher looking back on a past event.

CHAPTER 2: PERFORMANCE ART AND THE OBJECT

Jonas’s work fits into a larger historical development that is examined in the field

of performance studies. The pieces in this genre have changed significantly over time, much like Jonas’s work. Collectively, performance art and body art pieces entail a chain of supplements — the work itself, the spoken narrative, video and other visual material used in the piece, video and film documentation, as well as text documenting it for posterity— which work to produce a vision of the very thing they defer: a figment of the original, unaltered action.118 Reducing any work down to any singular component limits the

perspective one can have on a piece. Due to circumstances outside of their control, one has

to accept and accommodate their viewpoint to the available limited materials. Throughout this chapter, I will offer a broad definition of performance art alongside a brief timeline of this genre’s development before moving on to discourse and theory surrounding the object, body, and image as it relates to pieces dealing with performance.

The Terminology and History of Performance Art

While rigid, simple definitions are helpful, they can also prove frustrating because there will always be those pieces and artists which resist definition (intentionally or unintentionally) thereby complicating what does and does not fit under the umbrella of a given terminology. I will briefly provide a definition of performance art within the larger scope of the art historical canon, noting, however, that this is a working definition, and adjustments, contradictions, and imperfections will be present. As RoseLee Goldberg states, “By its very nature, performance, defies precise or easy definition beyond the simple declaration that it is live by artists. Any stricter definition would immediately negate the

118 Jones, Body Art: Performing the Subject, 107. 60

possibility of performance itself. For it draws freely on any number of disciplines and

media for material — literature, poetry, theatre, music, dance, architecture, and painting,

as well as video, film, slides and narrative — deploying them in any combination.”119 I foreground this not to weaken the legitimacy of the definition offered here but instead to free the pieces being discussed from having to fit perfectly within some rigid standard.

There are similar elements between the pieces for sure; be that as it may, a Joan Jonas performance such as Reanimation that is filled with layers of music, singing, video projection, and other choreographed elements will appear different from say Allan

Kaprow’s happening-like environment entitled Yard (1961) which consisted solely of scattered tires and audience participation via climbing over said tires. Both pieces are regarded as performance-based works, yet clearly their scales, methods, participants, and ultimate goals, among other things, were distinct.

To broadly define “performance art” is almost as troublesome as trying to preserve it in a museum setting which is collectively home to a variety of contrasting contexts, periods, and mediums in one setting. It is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. An entire sensorial, temporal experience can hardly be reduced to a few words on a page.

Performance-based works have, in the words of Laurie Anderson, “typically been defined as motivated by a ‘redemptive belief in the capacity of art to transform human life,’ as a vehicle for social change, and as a radical merging of life and art.”120 The term

“performance art” first came into broad use circa 1970 to give name to the ephemeral,

119 RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, 3rd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2011), 9. 120 Anderson, “A Note on Documentation: The Orange Dog,” Stories from the Nerve Bible, 109, quoted in Jones. Body Art: Performing the Subject. 13. 61

temporal, and procedural works which conceptual and feminist artists were experimenting

with at the time.121 Scholars have also pointed to the emergence of performance art as

signaling a shift between modernism and postmodernism. Performance was noted as

replacing the traditional modernist idea of a work existing as a specific, formal material

object with a new open-ended view of art that views it more as an interaction between

artist, viewer, and object. This element of performance and interactivity changes and, in

some ways, complicates how one interacts and views a piece in both its original iteration

as well as in analyzing it from a historical perspective. In the 1960s and onward, these

works sought to break the boundaries between art and life. By doing this via introducing

materials and behavior associated with daily life into the context of art, they succeeded in

complicating art’s relationship with the institution.122 The methods utilized to achieve this

effect are dependent on the artist’s choice, but all of them have some aspect of introducing

bodies and actions directly into the artistic sphere.

Performance art in the United States has taken root in a myriad of different spaces

due to its interdisciplinary nature (e.g., incorporating drawing, painting, sculpture, choreographed movements, theater, poetry, video, music, singing, etc.). Various practices

that fall under this category draw from a multitude of different influences, including, as

Robyn Brentano has comprehensively articulated: “the European avant-garde (primarily the Futurists, Dadaists, Constructivists, and Surrealists), Abstract Expressionism, performance and art traditions of Native American and non-European cultures, feminism,

121 David S. Rubin, Marjorie Talalay, Gary Sangster, Stephen Trout, Olivia Georgia, and Robyn Brentano. Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object: a Survey History of Performance Art in the USA since 1950. (Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 1994), 32. 122 David S. Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 32-49. 62

new communications technologies, and popular forms such as cabaret, the music hall,

vaudeville, the circus, athletic events, puppetry, parades, and public spectacles.”123 Artists

associated with these cultures, movements, and places were keen on responding to the

restrictions of traditional mediums and methods of presentation while also reacting to the

tumultuous socio-political realities occurring between the late nineteenth century and post-

World War II.124 While it is nearly impossible to mark every instance that contributed towards the in-depth development of “performance art,” touching on key aspects that connect with Jonas’s work listed in the previous chapter can help provide more insight on

her practice.125

Before the onset of global wars which would render many urban centers across

Western Europe inhospitable to the experimental art scene, it was home to creative spaces

in the forms of cabarets which championed an eclectic mingling of artists, poets, and

musicians as well as burgeoning movements such as Futurism and Dada which pushed for

art to shed its traditional trappings and move forward into the conceptual encouraged by

rapidly developing technology. Violence and persecution seen during World War II would

subsequently push many European artists to flee to the United States thus bringing their

ideologies with them to mix with ongoing developments in the States.126

Art forms collectively seemed to gravitate towards performativity and began to resist the constraints which held them statically in place. The reception of Jackson

123 David S. Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 33. 124 David S. Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 86. 125 For a more comprehensive timeline associated with performance art, please see Rubin et. al. Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object; Schimmel and Stiles. Out of Actions: between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979; Goldberg Performance Art: From Futurism to Present. 126 Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 139-149. 63

Pollock’s practice in the 1950s is heavily cited as a moment that destroyed painting and

changed how one thought of traditional mediums.127 Pollock’s pieces were seen by an emerging generation of post-disciplinary artists as markers of an event rather than a planned product.128 In the same vein of gestural emphasis, Allan Kaprow, who authored

the famous essay “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” first utilized the term “Happenings”

in 1959 in reference to a new artform highly reliant on performance and ephemerality.129

They are generally identified as dissolving the divide between art and life.130 Kaprow stated, “I was certain the goal was to ‘do’ an art that was distinct from any known genre

(or any combination of genres). It seemed important to develop something that was not another type of painting, literature, music, dance, theater, opera.”131 Both Pollock and

Kaprow’s practices were signaling a shift in art spurned by the current methods’ inability

to convey life and action directly.

The neo-avant-garde art of the 1960s-‘70s (e.g., performance, installation art,

electronic media) introduced new transitional types of artworks which further pushed the

boundaries of how to create works, interact with them, and, later on, how to accurately

archive and conserve them.132 In the 1960s, around the time Jonas’s was developing her

127 The dominant voice at this time was Greenberg, who was advocating for Pollock’s paintings precisely because they were paintings. Kaprow moves this understanding of Pollock in a new direction of viewing these pieces as remnants from an event. It is important to note these tensions when recounting the reception of different art pieces historically. 128 Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Jeff Kelley, ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 19930, 2-5. 129 Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 1-9. 130 Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 153-154 131 Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 195. 132 Hanna Hölling. “Transitional Media: Duration, Recursion, and the Paradigm of Conservation.” Studies in Conservation 61, no. sup2 (2016): 79–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2016.1181929. 79. 64

skill set as an artist, George Maciunas began to develop Fluxus in 1961 as an organization

to help cultivate new work that was emerging worldwide. John Cage, Marcel Duchamp,

and Dada were noted as being key influences to this collective of artists. In the following

year, the Judson Dance Theater was created by several young choreographers who had

trained under Robert Dunn in his experimental workshops at Merce Cunningham’s studio

and were also influenced by San Francisco choreographer, Anna Halprin. They worked out

of New York City and Jonas had mentioned learning from or seeing some of the individuals

who were part of this group. In 1964, Yoko Ono published a collection of “instruction

pieces” under the title Grapefruit; these pieces which are seen as a set of directions dictate

both active performances as well as mental events thus adding another layer to the ongoing

development of performative works.133 In the 1970s, Chris Burden would create works that utilized his presence (like Five Day Locker Piece 1971) and then display a physical remnant from the act or event and title it “Relic from [insert name of piece here].” These pieces then represent an ephemeral work being transformed to a tangible and commodifiable form.134 Also in the 1970s, The Kitchen Center for Video and Music was founded as a place to combine contemporary arts including music, dance, performance, film, and literature in new and innovative ways.135 This was occurring while Joan Jonas

was experimenting with video technology and how film could play with perception and performance in pieces like Organic Honey’s Virtual Roll. The 1960s and 1970s collectively were filled with cultural and technological changes and transformations which resulted in

133 Rubin, et. al. Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object. 157-161. 134 Paul Schimmel and Kristine Stiles. Out of Actions: between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, 94-95. 135 Rubin, et. al., Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object, 177. 65

new forms of artistic expression that utilized technology-based mediums, conceptual

experimentation, and performance.136 While Jonas was not directly a part of the groups

previously mentioned, she was indirectly influenced by the new possibilities, technologies,

and methodologies introduced into the field of art and performance, and her work must be

understood within that larger context.

Relevant Literature and Discourse

The rise of performance art has impacted the study and collection of contemporary art because art pieces that fall under this category inherently resist being bound and tamed in easily observable formats. The language surrounding performance studies began developing in the middle of the 21st century with performance studies being established as

a field towards the latter end of the century. Art history and contemporary art museums

began to grapple with problems associated with how to accurately record, historicize,

theorize, curate, collect, and conserve these ephemeral, time-based art forms. As a result,

an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars from across art history, conservation, and the

recently founded discipline of performance studies have forwarded several theories for how

to deal with performance art. I will examine some of the most relevant accounts (including

ideas proposed by Amelia Jones, Hanna Hölling, Jon Erickson, Philip Auslander, and

Diana Taylor) in the focused literature review that follows.

To begin, we can direct our attention to the works of Amelia Jones, which will

focus on the act in relation to the body as well as the act’s standing in the art historical

narrative. Jones is an American art historian and theorist who has focused on various topics,

136 Hanna B. Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive: Time, Change, and Materiality in Media Art (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017), 93. 66

including feminist art, body art, performance art, and video art. She regards presence as the

state which relies on “the unmediated co-extensivity in time and place of what” one

perceives and themselves; “it promises a transparency to an observer of what ‘is’ at the

very moment at which it takes place.”137 This idea of presence is complicated when dealing with a past event since there is no way to accurately “package” this presence to be later studied and exhibited. Regardless of the difficulty, people have attempted to record these events via the various ways addressed in my introduction. In a discussion centered around body art, Jones discussed “the age-old desire to extend the body in space and time (through machinic, communicational, and biotechnological tools) and thus transcend it (to become

‘God’).138 When the work is so intrinsically tied to the human body and presence, there is

a want to create some form of tangible medium that can supplement the ideal representation

of the body; however, the context of time and experience which is so prevalent to the event

complicates this mode of thought. Regardless of the potential problems associated with

reperforming or documenting these works for show, Jones claims that pressure from the

art market has inspired a variety of methods to “secure the work its place in the markets of

objects and histories.”139 With this move, there is also room to err and take these remains

as “proof” or an independent art piece separated from the original work. By their nature,

body and performance art emphasize the contingency of the body/self in respect to the

individual on the receiving end of the communicative exchange (the audience or art history)

as well as the limitations on certain modes of (re)presentations.140 There is almost this

137 Jones, "‘The Artist Is Present,’” 18. 138 Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject, 205. 139 Jones, "‘The Artist Is Present,’” 20. 140 Jones, ""Presence" in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation," 17. 67

paradoxical want to fetishize a work that is closely tied to the ephemerality of the original

act.141 While there is a conscientious want to preserve the work for further study, it is also

pertinent to be wary of these remains and not let them supersede the original work which,

in a way, can never truly exist again.

Shifting the focus away from the event and the body, one can look at the individual objects present in the work through the writings of Jon Erickson, who was a performance artist, critic, and professor of English and Comparative Studies. The combination of his roles as a performance artist and as professor of English can provide a unique lens for analyzing works of this nature. Erickson references Dada as well as literary figures like T.

S. Eliot with this notion of opposing developing forces of rationalization as well as resisting the forms of consumption typically associated with these fields. Erickson claims that the main form of this resistance “is the creation of an object that proclaims and draws attention to its objecthood, that is, that resists rationalized language’s tendency to reduce it to a sign to be consumed.”142 In other words, the object represents nothing more than itself, which

complicates dealing with parts of works which are connected to something larger than their

independent selves. He later introduces the idea that the physical aspect of an object is not

nearly as important as the conceptual aspect which complicates the object’s value in

relation to the traditional valuation of art objects. Regarding performance art, this is

additionally peculiar because the body of the artist is somewhat objectified since process

and performance can be innately tied to the presence of the artist’s body.143 It does not quite seem fruitful to eliminate the material (i.e., the body) in this instance completely, but,

141 Jones, "‘The Artist Is Present,’” 31. 142 Erickson, The Fate of the Object, 4. 143 Erickson, The Fate of the Object, 126-129. 68

since conservation efforts cannot always account for a cast of live performers to recreate

the works, this does offer a way to view works that have been unintentionally stopped or

intentionally deactivated in Jonas’s case with her self-documentary installations.

Additionally, Erickson remarks, “Examine anything closely enough and it will disappear:

the public, history, sexuality, even the body itself” and, conclusively, “reality can only be

apprehended indirectly, through means of refection, just like an eclipse through a camera

obscura.”144 The ideology centered around the object of a work as a thing to be consumed

in conjunction with the ephemerality tied to both an act and a human body subsequently complicates the notion of letting an object stand in for a greater work. In certain

circumstances, it seems that selectively choosing to evade this complex notion would serve the work better rather than letting the work fade into conceptual and historical obscurity.

Erickson was viewing the object through a more conceptual, theoretical lens, but, to provide a more complete understanding of the object, one should look to understand the material remains as they exist physically. To do this, one can look at the writing of Hanna

Hölling for views centered around conservation, art history, museology, and material studies that largely references the example of Fluxus, specifically of Nam June Paik’s work with television and video. When trying to conserve a work, there is an initial, baseline understanding of trying to preserve the work as a static moment in time. In other works, a conservator is trying to prevent deterioration and keep the work in viable condition for as long as possible; however, these qualities are challenged when one introduces performative elements directly tied to ephemerality and temporality. In her discourse, Hölling references

Claes Oldenburg and his notion of the residual object (e.g., Jacket and Shirt Fragment

144 Erickson, The Fate of the Object, 133. 69

1961) and stating that “these residual previously ‘acted’ or ‘domesticated’ objects bear memory and a history that might unfold in the present.”145 There is a predicament when dealing with a work’s identity over time, but “the conservation narrative mediates the changeability of a multimedia artwork as integral to its identity by providing the rationale for certain actions- replacing elements of installations, conserving other elements in their material manifestation. It explains why some changes are allowed but some are not.”146

Flux must be accounted for because the work was never in a fixed or finished state even in its original conception. Artworks involving media installations, performance, and events change more quickly compared to traditional paintings and sculptures which respond slowly and passively over time; therefore, degradation and obsolescence appears more quickly in these eclectic creations.147 It is easier to conceptualize and manage the material aspects of the work rather than trying to tackle time, which, as an idea, is harder to define and mediate. Time is often perceived as linear; yet, this linear progression does not accurately capture its organic, layered continuity.148 This further complicates a conservator’s decisions in determining what change is permissible versus what is detrimental to the work. These problems are further compounded upon when only fragmented sections of a work remain. To be clear, these fragments or exhibition objects are incapable of becoming a surrogate for the complete work, but these pieces can demonstrate a more tangible connection which enables us to understand that what we can no longer see, which is something we can see executed in the previous mentions of Jonas’s

145 P. Brignone (2009) ‘So Specific objects,’ in E. Mignon (ed.), Not to Play with Dead Things, 61-73. Zurich: Ringier., in Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change.” 19. 146 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 133. 147 Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change,” 17. 148 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 101. 70

performances being transformed into installation pieces like with Reanimation.149

Ultimately, the quest for preserving performance is a fallacy because everything is

constantly moving along a trajectory dictated by the fleeting duration of that which is

impermanent.150 To phrase this differently, instead of trying to preserve the past, one’s

focus should be directed towards preserving the present, which is the only reality that can

be fully experienced and understood.151 This shifts the focus from trying to halt all change towards reducing the degree of changeability in a work thus enabling them to maintain qualities accrued over time. With this ideological shift, the problem is no longer one of ephemerality versus permanency. Because nothing lasts forever, the question shifts to one of “relative durations of the impermanent.”152 If these notions were applied to Jonas, key detail would be given to the way that she has already begun to self-document and orient her performances into installations. These installations create miniature environments or events that the viewer can move through and intimately experience. An integral piece of these iterations is to ensure the view would experience the cohesively-chaotic environments that Jonas’s floods with seemingly disjointed materials to formulate a cohesive yet indirect message.

Conservation accounts for the material remains of an art work but must be guided by artist’s intention and how well the art work represents said artist and the greater art historical context the work is connected. To aid in this understanding we can shift attention

149 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 92. 150 Hölling, “Transitional Media,” 83. 151 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 105. 152 Brisley, S. (2008) For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles. Boston and London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd., in Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change,” 18. 71

to ideas centered around determining who the main audience of a performance is, both in

original execution and after the work transitions to a remembered piece. We can look at

Dr. Philip Auslander who has received degrees centered around art history, theatre, and

film and focuses on areas including media studies, performance art, performance

documentation, music as performance, and robotic performance. Because of the theatrical

component, his discourse touches on the audience aspect of the performance in addition to

the documentation aspect previously discussed. Auslander approaches documentation by

analyzing a couple of different works; the most intriguing one is Yves Klein’s Leap into

the Void (1960), which pictures an act (jumping out the window) that did not actually occur.

This work plays with the ontological linear progression which typically results in

documentation following action. Klein’s piece functions as a remnant of an event which

never occurred while also conjuring that event at the same time; this plays with one’s

traditional understanding of documentary and pushes the photographic act more into a

theatrical realm integrating the act of remembering with the performative aspect of the

work.153 In addition to the document's connection to the original event (real or fabricated), one could also view performance art documentation as producing works in the artistic sense

rather than capturing events as is more commonly seen with ethnographic practices. This

notion of event versus work places the direct, in-person audience in a less essential role.

Auslander proposed that “the presence of the initial audience has no real importance to the performance as an entity whose continued life is through its documentation because our usual concern as consumers of such documentation is with recreating the artist’s work, not

153 Philip Auslander. "The Performativity of Performance Documentation." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 3 (2006): 1-10. Accessed April 29, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4140006. 1. 72

the total interaction.”154 This is not intended to completely ignore the performative aspect

but rather to claim that the initial audience was incidental rather than necessary to the

original performance. Since some works that fall under the label of performative did not have an initial, in-person audience (ex. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills), what defines the work as performance is not the immediate audience but instead the act of viewing the act as performance and documenting it as such. The crux of the performance and its life

after inception resides with the performance and performers/artists and relegates the

audience to a less crucial or stable presence to the work. This places an even greater

emphasis on the process and intangible executions of the work which can be further

addressed regarding the idea of the “repertoire.”

In Taylor’s formulation, performance as a cultural phenomenon occupies a dualistic

existence between the categories of the “archive” and the “repertoire.”155 The archive

consists of enduring materials and things of a tangible, more survivable nature whereas the

repertoire accounts for the aspects of performance which are more ephemeral in nature (ex.

language, gestures, dance).156 Instead of arguing for one type of information categorization,

Taylor argues for the need to integrate the two to produce the most fruitful understanding

of a past gesture. She claims, “The telling is as important as the writing, the doing as central

as the recording, the memory passed down through bodies and mnemonic practices.

154 Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” 6-7. 155 It is important to note that Taylor opted to use “repertoire” instead of “repertory” since the dictionary definition of latter connotes with more archival based materials while the former refers specifically to collections of drama or music pieces that dictate a performance. 156 Diana Taylor. “Act of Transfer.” In The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, 1-52 (London: Duke University Press, 2003), 19. 73

Memory paths and documented records might retain what the other ‘forgot.’”157 Both acts

of practicing and recording mutually produce the other and are needed to supplement the

other. This notion of record-keeping is commonly relegated to just the archive; however,

performance studies’ incorporation of the repertoire enables the archive to be expanded and account for factors associated with the theatrical and ephemeral side of performance that physical remnants simply cannot account for on their own. Taylor drew parallels between this notion of preservation and salvage ethnography seen in the early 1900s that noted certain forms would vanish entirely if not for standardized intervention and documentation.158 This notion pushed for the repertoire to move into the realm of the

archive via written and recorded documentation. The concept of knowledge or memory being validated via written form is typical to Western epistemology but can prove problematic by forcing the living elements of performance that are transient by nature to

be rendered static and “safe” in the archive.159 It is because of this that Taylor pushes for a

re-evaluation of standard methods of analyses and hierarchies of legitimation to better

account for the problems associated with working on living, bodied works and practices.

In regards to practices like Jonas’s, this might entail the more detail recording of her

performances and the notation of her thought process regarding less straightforward aspects

of the performances including what changes she makes, things she decides to omit over

time, and places she prefers to execute her performances or display her installation pieces.

157 Taylor, “Act of Transfer,” 35. 158 This notion was prompted by the ongoing efforts by The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to protect, document, and foster forms of expression tied to the oral or intangible aspects of humanity and cultural practices. Reference Taylor. “Act of Transfer.” for more information. 159 Taylor, “Act of Transfer,” 23-24. 74

The diverse and robust accounts of performance, ephemerality, documentation, and

objecthood can be combined to provide further insight not only on understanding Jonas’s

work but also on curating and conserving her pieces after the original performances and

installations are completed. Her work functions on many levels as multi-media

performance and recursive self-documentation. For works that begin as an event, one can

turn to Amelia Jones and Philip Auslander for guidance. Jones advocates for the

preservation of the event while cautioning against completely destroying the piece’s

temporal, unstable nature by rendering it as a singular object. She acknowledges the

necessity of the body and presence necessary for the completion of the work as well as the

current mode of commodification done by entities such as the art market and museum field

which favor a tangible, ownable thing. Auslander approaches gestural works from the

vantage point of the audience and claims that the audience is more incidental and subject

to change rather than a concrete, stable portion of the artwork. This fits nicely with Jonas’s

practice since her pieces are done and re-done in several iterations and adapt themselves to

a variety of different spectators in many different spaces.

Regarding the objects in the piece, Hölling’s and Erickson’s accounts provide the most insight while still aligning with notions of ephemerality and instability touched on by

Jones and Auslander. Erickson mentions the unique idea of having to apprehend realities indirectly, such as referencing tangible material to grasp more indescribable, intangible concepts, because straightforward analysis will cause one to lose focus on whatever is being discussed. The object can permit one to complete this indirect analysis since it was connected to the work while no directly being the work incarnate. Erickson does note problems with objects and their objecthood because of their inability to completely serve

as a sign for simple recognition and consumption. From the standpoint of conservation,

Hölling also notes problems associated with a residual, domesticated (documented) object and points out that works with performative, interactive, or multi-media elements should strive for a natural fluctuating identity rather than complete static permanence. Like

Erickson, she notes that the object cannot function completely as an easily recognizable sign since it lacks the greater context, but Hölling does note that the instability of the object

can actually serve as an adequate representation of the ever-changing, time-based concept

of the original work as it shifts from activated performance to semi-arrested remnant in

storage.

Finally, with this notion of capturing the performance for record, Taylor’s notion

of the archive and repertoire can build on Hölling’s understanding of physical materials to

capture the anima of the work. Physical objects can provide invaluable information about

a piece; yet, without the theatrical gestures and feelings contained in the repertoire, the

archival material will always fall short. The more context and information provided to

supplement the object fragment in question will elevate it to serve as a more reliable

representation of the piece. Jonas’s self-documentary installations clearly depict this since

she combines props and drawings from the project alongside video documentation of the

performance in action, music recordings, and video projections utilized during the event to

recreate the performative experience retroactively.

After laying out the information surrounding the definition and development of

performance-based works, we can glean a brief glimpse of ongoing discourse surrounding

the object, the body, and image in reference to performative works. The following chapters

will narrow in scope and focus more closely on objects and props utilized in the works

rather than the other mediums discussed for documentation. Object in this sense refers to both the materiality and “thingliness” of the physical object as well as its opposition to complete diffusion into abstraction and conceptualization.160 This choice was based on

performance works often being viewed as object-like despite their inescapable connection

to time.161 While these elements of the total performance are not intended to supersede the work overall, the collective work of Joan Jonas, which serves as my key focus, is heavily

object-based and relies on physical fragmentation and blending of material aspects of the

work, which renders the object as a necessary and crucial aspect for discussion.

The scholars discussed above provide an understanding of current scholarship

surrounding performance studies and pieces dealing with elements of time, interaction,

documentation, and theatricality. While these scholars have provided a baseline for

understanding these works, both conceptually as a work that no longer exists and physically

in reference to remaining documentation and material fragments, Taylor makes a key point

in noting that there are limitations towards some of the art historical and museological

practices which cannot always grasp the performativity of a work that has already passed.

Certain methodologies in these fields were created around more traditional works which

exist comfortably in their objecthood. As the variety of artwork being produced diversifies

in its materiality and usage of temporary components, new ideas are needed in order to

view these works in as complete a sense as possible post-execution. To reach this alternate

view and achieve what Taylor proposed directly and what other scholars had mentioned

indirectly (e.g., noting the limitations of a singular object/prop), I propose to bring in an

160 Harren, Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network, 116. 161 Harren, Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network, 126. 77 interpretive archeological lens to account for the acts of the work that are not as easily documentable. By introducing a new way of viewing objects and their use through the lens of archaeology, the previously performed aspects of the work will be realized and then provide more material for the eventual display and archival containment of the original iteration(s) of the work.

CHAPTER 3: INTERPRETIVE ARCHAEOLOGY

In practice, interpretive archaeology seeks to understand the processes centered

around material remnants and enables the person working said material to creatively

interpret the events that surround the event(s) being analyzed. This shift will enable the

performance to be viewed as a segmented process, rather than singular artwork. The objects

that remain after the event can be what is leftover from this process and can permit an

individual to look at the pieces and try to look backwards at events leading up to the current

state of the fragmented work. As mentioned earlier, Nick Kaye, Professor of Performance

Studies, will provide a basis for this section due to his own incorporation of archeology to

comprehend performance and installation pieces. Archeology is defined as “the scientific study of material remains (such as tools, pottery, jewelry, stone walls, and monuments) of past human life and activities.”162 Kaye, along with performance studies scholar Gabriella

Giannachi and archaeologist Michael Shanks, remarks that “archaeology is increasingly understood less as the discovery of the past and more in terms of different relationships with what is left of the past” which has placed ideas of performance, memory, narrative, archives, and documentation at the forefront of ideological concerns.163 This field constantly relies on remains to look back and try to reconstruct past occurrences and

communities that are no longer present. One could clearly see a parallel here with

performance studies between the ephemerality of the performance and the use of the

archive to understand the remains we accumulate and the specific material traces we choose

162 “Archaeology.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/archaeology. 163 Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks, eds. Archeologies of Presence: Art, Performance, and the Persistence of Being (New York: Routledge, 2012) 2. 79

to recognize.164 Through using methodology specific to this field of archaeology, I hope to gain a new perspective to view these objects, props, and other remnants from performative events and hopefully add to the memorative powers of which these fragments are capable.

Interpretive archaeology combines typical archaeological theory with social science to shift focus on the relationship between the material remains of past subjects and the contemporary scholars working with them. Kaye brings this particular term to light through the writings of Ian Hodder, Lindsay Der, and Francesca Gernandini. Hodder proposed a shift towards looking at the entanglement between humans and things, noting how both are relationally linked via process.165 Der and Gernandini build upon this idea of

“entanglement” as “a model for analyzing the cultural construction of historical trajectories, past and anticipated, in ‘human-thing relations and the way they develop through time.’”166 Audience participation and interactions between each other and the

related objects span over millennia from tribal rituals and communal dances typically

associated with archaeology and anthropology to modern and contemporary performance

practices of the 20th century (e.g., Fluxus) which may rely on direct interaction from

audiences to complete the process.167

This mode of interpretive archaeology heavily plays with the understanding of the

object’s current status and its past lives since these positions are connected closely via memory and presentation; these thoughts can be physically manifested through material

164 Rebecca Schneider. Performance Remains, Performance Research, 6:2, 100-108, 2001, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2001.10871792. 100. 165 Nick Kaye. “On Objects.” Performance Research 23, no. 4-5 (October 29, 2018): 273–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1514776. 274. 166 Kaye, “On Objects,” 274. 167 Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. 673. 80

remains and other non-physical, lingering remnants from the event that would be

represented in a repertoire. Introducing a new way of viewing and documenting the past

helps center the viewer’s relationship amidst the things which remain after the

reconstruction of previous events or the transparency of medium and context that was able

to be retained. The material remainders from said events evoke deeper consideration on the

persistence of a present moment, but, as Jon Erickson has noted, the experience of presence

is more closely aligned with the performance of temporality itself (something not as easily

conceived and remarkably less tangible than material fragments). Presence, collectively, is

a peculiar phenomenon. It is simultaneously never resolved yet always ongoing and being

enacted upon and remembered.168 With such a fleeting moment in time, it is only human to want to craft some form of physical anchor in which to never forget the past and be able to call upon it at any time.

While this does not appear directly connected to the practice of art history, it is not uncommon for different academic practices to “borrow” different metaphorical lenses through which to view their own areas of study. I chose this specific idea of “interpretive archaeology” to serve as a parallel for what I believe the remaining objects from performance pieces can do for understanding the entirety of an event that is no longer in existence. Since all art at some level requires a connection between a viewer and the work itself, all works can be viewed as interactive because a dialogue is prompted between the beholder and the beheld.169 As noted previously, archaeology (specifically interpretive

168 Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks, eds, Archeologies of Presence: Art, Performance, and the Persistence of Being, 7 - 24. 169 Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation, 673. 81

archaeology) looks to utilize both material fragments as well as context from different

fields within the humanities to construct a better understanding of previous events. As Kaye

remarks, performance art (or any act which relies on time, the body, and action) “is

frequently entangled in objects of performance — just as early conceptual/performance

was often sustained in material forms ‘charged’ and qualified by ‘live’ acts that were never

fully available or operated at the periphery of attention, gathering import and identity over

time and in their remains.”170 This connection between the material forms and the live acts is key to the claims being made in this argument.

To complicate things, our experience of the present can be thought of as palimpsest

of past events continuously being layered by constantly emerging futures.171 One can directly connect this to works of art because of the ongoing need to conserve, display, and archive pieces so they are around for future audiences. Some critiques have referred to this push as a misguided attempt to go back to a time that is physically impossible to reach.172

Meanwhile, some artists, like Joan Jonas, have experimented with this chronological

conundrum and played with the connection between the initial event and its various

afterlives through layering and juxtaposing different narrative threads and past events into

later performances and installations of her works.173 When discussing her works, Douglas

Crimp notes, “Jonas’s performances can never exist in the integrity of their scripts and descriptions, just as the notion of art that we take away from these works is that it can now

170 Kaye, “On Objects,” 279. 171 Schwabsky, “Seeing Through a Glass.” 172 Sorkin, “Mythology and the Remake: The Culture of Re-Performance and Strategies of Simulation.” 173 Gabriella Giannachi, and Jonah Westerman, eds. Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices (New York, NY, 2018), 159. 82

exist only in the process of its enactment, not in its integrity of an object.”174 In a way, viewing the exhibition as both a medium and location of production lets one view it as a site that frames the work as procedural rather than a singular act. This results in both the collapse and re-iteration of timelines relevant to the work.175

For example, Joan Jonas’s Reanimation has been performed multiple times and has

been executed as an installation in different spaces. No singular version of the event holds

more prestige over a different iteration, and solely acknowledging the installations without

the performances would greatly disservice Jonas’s work. De-synchronization, via

fragmentation and repetition, enables Jonas’s works to thrive in different iterations and

mediums.176 Each stage of production, each fragment remaining, and each instance of a repeated gesture is essential towards understanding the work in its entirety. When utilizing interpretive archeology and collecting material fragments from sites to better understand what occurred, professionals do not immediately assume these pieces had a singular moment in time or a singular event to which they are directly connected. This mode of thinking would significantly limit the pieces and potential knowledge able to be gleaned from said objects. Instead, archeologists are open to viewing the entire life of whatever remains they are investigating to understand what happened before, during, and after usage and noting different contexts which would define when, how, and where an object would be used. Referring this back to Reanimation, the material remains each have their independent lives, so to speak, and connections to the work at its various stages. Through

174 Douglas Crimp, ed., Joan Jonas Scripts and Descriptions 1968-1982 (Berkeley: University Art Museum, University of California, 1983), 10. 175 Giannachi and Westerman. Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices. 157. 176 Crimp, Joan Jonas Scripts and Descriptions 1968-1982, 8. 83

understanding these components and seeing them layered together in a singular setting, one

can better catalog the development of the work and see how it exists in its present form

according to Jonas’s current practice. It is important to remember, especially regarding

Jonas’s work, her piece’s refusal to cohere to a fixed entity. While this complicates a

simplified, straightforward study of the work, it lets her different works hang on to some semblance of performativity and ritual that is often lost when translated to an installation or rendered in documentation material.

Unlike other pieces that emphasize the end product over the process or performance

(e.g., a Baroque sculpture in which the drama of the display is encapsulated and frozen in stone for everyone to witness again and again years after its conception), performance-

based works cannot be re-lived and re-experienced in the form of its original iteration. They rely on that instantaneous act (either scripted or by chance) which is not always able to be captured and archived by means of film or photography because the artist is more likely performing for an immediate audience rather than directly for a camera for documentary purposes. That is not to say that these instances of performance for documentation never occur because they certainly do, as seen in Jonas’s works when she distances herself from the audience by performing directly for the camera and then recycling these recorded scenes in later works; however, this is more to point out and reiterate the idea that once the original act is completed it is in a sense gone as a whole but potentially remains in fragments.177 These fragments are the ones listed back in chapter one (e.g., memory, photography/videography, props, and objects). Each piece represents a part of the performance and can lead a viewer to understand the entire piece better, but the original

177 Richard ed., Joan Jonas Is on Our Mind, 14. 84

piece, in a sense, is forever lost. To state a different way, the remaining pieces are not just proof that the event occurred, but also constitute the skill in comprehending the image as an index of its potential forms as image, trace, and/or object.178 The pieces can fill in for

the work’s absence as a tangible and referential thing, but it is important to note that these

fragments are not trying to replace or completely stand-in for the work as much as provide

a touchstone for reference. The “stable object” can be seen as a both a relic and remnant

that continuously collects relevant data and creates a layered stratigraphy consisting of its

making, existence, all past interventions via conservation and cleaning, and, in Jonas’s

case, the various artworks in which they are incorporated.179 This notion touches on the archival potentiality of the artwork and the archive’s impact on the work to inform change and growth in the ongoing life of the material fragment.

Since we have established the object’s power in acting as a small anchor point to help unravel an entire chain of events that it was linked to in the past, we can use this to contemplate the life of an institutionalized or commodified object. While museumification is not the only destiny for a work, it can be regarded as a common destination for pieces and their adjacent ephemera. The material aspects of works being examined (i.e., objects)

permit performances to enter the museum space. Dixon stated, “Performances and artistic

artifacts become plastic toys: of no real significance in themselves, but objects existing

primarily for the pleasure of philosophical play and intellectual interaction.”180 By

understanding a performance as something that disappears or is lost to time, we can begin

178 Giannachi and Westerman, Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, 162. 179 Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change,” 18-20. 180 Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation, 195. 85

to understand art historical and curatorial concerns surrounding these works and their

innate abilities both in challenging object status and in not permitting the archive to cling

to the privileged original.181 The following chapter will discuss museums and potentials for display through touching on curatorial, archival, conservational, and other museum- based problems, with the goal of providing an understanding for how remnants from ephemeral, performative works can exist in the museum space while representing their artist’s original intent to the fullest of their abilities.

181 Schneider, Performance Remains, Performance Research, 66. 86

CHAPTER 4: MUSEUMS AND POTENTIALS FOR DISPLAY

To add another layer to the discussion (much like Jonas does in her works) and take

what had been discussed in previous chapters regarding the theory surrounding

performance art and the application of interpretive archeology to material fragments from

such pieces, I propose to investigate what the previous chapters have discussed and relate

that to the context of a museum space. The museum presents itself as a space that is simultaneously connected yet disconnected from the outside world. As Hölling states,

“Museums appear to incubate their objects in a slowed-down temporal flux that

distinguishes itself from time ‘lived’ outside its walls.”182 This is not necessarily a

completely negative situation since it essentially functions as a time capsule enabling people to experience objects and pieces from various periods, styles, and places in a singular location. The museum exists as a heterotopic site where spectators and artists are offered a place where one can reassess contemporary relationships between the public, the present, and the agency of the archive.183 As an institution of education, scholarship, and

public outreach, it contributes greatly both to academia and the general public. Of course,

it is not a flawless institution and constantly must adapt itself to changing artistic practices,

research methodologies, and conservation needs to provide the best care for the contents

and knowledge (physical and conceptual) contained within its archives and display halls.

When an individual goes to a museum, they want to see the authentic object. This

is a simple task for the sculptures and paintings which can mostly be accessed through a

visual experience (i.e., the act of looking provides sufficient information for beginning to

182 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 130. 183 Giannachi and Westerman, Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, 169. 87

grasp the work). For works that rely on interactions with the public or on the artist’s

presence (any factor which heightens elements of time already intrinsic to a work), this feat

becomes more complicated. Performance pieces or those with complex interactive or

moving elements rely on textual, oral, and/or visual documentation to survive; without

these materials, these works would simply not be able to exist discursively and

historically.184 Aligning with typical Western thinking, matter is seen as passive in the

notion that it has little to no agency of its own. It must be acted upon by an outside force

to undertake a dynamic existence.185 While one could argue this standpoint regarding

materials and their intrinsic qualities, most works or things identified as “art” have been

given some agency (either conceptually stating this is a work or by physically manipulating

the matter itself) on behalf of the artist.

Even in the earlier discussion with archaeology and anthropology, material culture was primarily focused on that which was human-made or directly connected to human practice or ritual. Material can be understood, in this sense, as a physical medium or an information carrier which in turn imbues it with certain immaterial qualities. It no longer needs to be viewed solely as a detachable messenger simply conveying a specific form or idea; this role is something that is just part of the overall work interwoven into its physical form. 186 With this mode of thought, documents and other remains from a performance can

be regarded as a site of performance’s ongoing legibility preventing the act from

completely disappearing into the ether.187 This integrates the experiential aspect of the

184 Jones, Body Art/ Performing the Subject, 84. 185 Tillman, “Toward a New Materialism: Matter as Dynamic,” 32. 186 Lange-Berndt, Materiality, 13-27. 187 Schneider, Performance Remains, Performance Research, 105. 88

work into a specific object (or set of objects) that can then be used for archival or display

purposes, theoretically. It not only permits for people’s various experiences to be processed

and integrated into the work but also activates their ability to comprehend different aspects

presented by the media in front of them.188 While these material fragments cannot stand in for the work in its entirety, they can serve as a touchstone for both conceptualizing the work and recalling memories pertinent to the initial iteration of the piece. The importance placed on these physical remnants then calls into question conservation efforts, the archive, and curation techniques regarding how to best care for and interact with the works in their post-performance state.

To account for the object’s existence both materially and conceptually, steps need

to be taken towards creating adequate conservation plans; however, conservation practices

are less direct when dealing with works like Jonas’s which not only have multiple iterations

but also have a performance/experiential element directly tied to their essence. According

to Hölling, the goal of the conservator is “to scrutinize the artworks with which he or she

is engaged and weigh the dependencies of the medium and the message in and according

to the present cultural context” based on information taken from archives and other

supplementary material.189 A complicating issue is that conservators’ and curators’

professional careers and lives, in general, are too brief to completely grasp the passage of

time associated with artworks. Works are cared for to ensure that they may last “forever,”

but this notion is not able to be conceived concretely within the fleeting human

experience.190 These professionals are working with concepts and materials which existed

188 Lange-Berndt, Materiality, 125. 189 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 168. 190 Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change,” 17. 89

long before they began their career paths, so there is always an element of playing “catch

up” while simultaneously trying to keep up with new materials and methodologies. These

works can present in a variety of different instantiations and versions which then ushers in

the question: Which stage of the work or which iteration is the best at representing the artwork collectively across time? In a way, complicated works such as Jonas’s transcend

typical epistemologies seen in Western museology and conservation regarding the work’s

identity. This forces these areas of object care to shift protocol and view the works as a continuation rather than a completely static or “dead” object.191 Conservation has most

commonly been understood as introducing stoppages or interruptions and attempting to

revert the effects of time (i.e., through activities of restoration); however, this ongoing quest for permanency is futile since the basic nature of things lies in impermanence and change over time.192 Current conservation discourse does account for the ongoing change

of materials and pushes for reversible interventions that can be undone or clearly seen by the working conservators, but as works slowly break away from the format of the singular, maintainable objects current practices do not fully account for the new facets of these works. The practice then must evolve from understanding works as having a singular instance to the notion that a work can contain multiples of itself as created from its nonlinear, ever-changing temporal existence.193 Past iterations and versions of the work are just as imperative to its overall understanding as is the present iteration of said work.

By thinking of works in such a manner, time and its effects on the piece are no longer

191 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 75 -81. 192 Hölling, “Transitional Media,” 83. 193 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 108. 90

viewed as negative effects which must always be stopped but rather another component in

the work’s ongoing life.

Following the practice of object conservation, one can consider the most

appropriate space for a work in question, such as Jonas’s Reanimation. Is the work capable

of being displayed or restaged in a manner not detracting from its original iteration or is it

better suited for the archive, existing as fragmentary pieces of a work that once was?

Regarding art that is more conceptual in nature, the work's physical presence is underscored

by its conceptual value, which then challenges traditional notions on valuing art and its

meaning. Erickson notes that what truly defines the work (or what sets limits for potential

definition) is not solely the artist but the economic and social powers that give the art material context.194 The social constructs and the museum’s ability to provide adequate context to the display of a piece can make or break the public’s perception of the work.

The archive is intrinsically tied to the idea of giving “flesh” to that which slips away.195

Both curation and conservation can be regarded as temporal interventions for the artworks.

They work in tandem, placing the artwork in an ongoing dialogue between the archive

(regarding rules and limits on what can be done to the work) and curation practices

(regarding how the work is displayed in the musicological context).196 Unfortunately, while curation and conservation impact the preservation of the collective work, preserving the historical experience of said work is more difficult because it relies on the constant use and activation of physical remnants, which could damage what remaining material might

194 Erickson, The Fate of the Object: from Modern Object to Postmodern Sign in Performance, Art and Poetry, 126. 195 Giannachi, Nick Kaye, and Michael Shanks. Archaeologies of Presence: Art, Performance, and the Persistence of Being, 69. 196 Hölling, “The Aesthetics of Change,” 22. 91

remain. This then renders what once involved process and activation into a static artifact

or fetish to be commodified and stored away. Objects can change identity between “object

used in performance” to “object as relic” depending on how they are stored and utilized

within the portion of their life that exists within the museum’s collection.197 Regardless of

the performance object’s final resting place being in a display or stored in an archive, it is

never quite going to achieve the same state that it had when it was originally activated by

the work or performance. This is purely by the nature of the museum and its effect

(intentionally or unintentionally) of arresting objects in a static position in time.

Looking broadly at museum professional’s ideas and how they grapple with

performance art as a transitory, often interactive medium.,there arises a variety of problems

regarding how to care for and display the works (as touched on previously) as well as

questions of ownership and reproduction. RoseLee Goldberg, the founding director and curator at Performa, states, “The person who is likely to buy a performance, or the ephemera from a performance, is no doubt inspired by what the ‘matter represents, the cultural references, and other associations of the work.”198 The matter is important because

it acts as a message carrier or material reminder/remainder of the work overall. In addition

to this aspect of collecting, Glenn Phillips, Principal Project Specialist/Consulting Curator

in the Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art at the Getty Research Institute,

notes that some artists have strong feelings regarding how to document their work properly

and which remnants are regarded as valuable enough to become artworks whereas others

embrace the ephemeral nature of performance and are willing to let their work succumb to

197 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 75-85. 198 RoseLee Goldber, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 92

change over time.199 Marilyn Arsem, performance artist and founder of Mobius,Inc. (an interdisciplinary group of artists focused on creating live performance, video, intermedia, and installation works), states blankly, “You cannot possess the original action of the artist.”200 Al Paldrok, alias Anonymous Boh, another performance artist and member of the Non Grata Group, agrees by stating that while objects form the work can be collected

and refer back to the original message there are so many other levels of performance

(“verbal disturbances to direct physical attack by the audience, unexpected spatial configurations, interference by the police, fire brigade, ambulance, etc.”) that simply cannot be reproduced despite valiant effort on behalf of the artists, curators, and conservators.201 The role of the archive, institutionally speaking, is a bit awkward and not

clearly defined since it pushes for an even greater distance between the performances/their

related works and the audiences who could view them. Cases could be made for places

these materials in the permanent collection as a sculptural object, housed in a special

collections archive, or in a rare books room of the library depending on their material

nature. Rigid categories such as this force the works to sacrifice aspects of their identity to

fit neatly under easy-to-note terms.202 Unanimously, it seems there is an agreement

199 Glenn Phillips, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 200 Marilyn Arsem, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 201 Al Paldrok, alias Anonymous Boh, In Ortiz. “Can Performance Art be Collected…and Still Maintain its Original Message…?” 202 Abigail Sebaly and Megan Metcalf offer further explanation regarding the acquisition of material and immaterial remains by an institution and how the respective objects, costumes, set pieces, choreographed routines, etc. were handled during the assessment, cataloguing, conservation, and display processes. For more information, please reference Megan Gwen Metcalf. “In the New Body: Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions (1960-61) and their Acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2018.; Abigail Sebaly “Cold Storage and New Brightness: The 93

regarding the ability to archive and capture material fragments while also understanding

the complete experience of the original performative iteration will not be able to be

recaptured.

Peculiarities become apparent when tying this discourse back to Jonas’s work. The artist does not see her things as sacred objects that can be isolated from the context of the overall work. While she can move and shift different pieces to fit new narratives and works, they are ultimately layered into a larger narrative from which they cannot be dissected.

Now there are some pieces, like the My New Theater series, which were originally

conceived as works that could stand alone in a space. Other works of hers, like

Reanimation, originated as a performance and were then converted into an installation.

While this was also done by the artist’s hand rather than a curator or conservator, it seems

as if this act of reinterpretation via respecting the temporality of the artwork helps ensure

that the continuation of the work presents as a legitimate version of itself.203 Jonas utilizes

installations or exhibitions as “a medium through which the anachronistic relationship of

historical documentation of performance art to the present can be negotiated” thus

producing a work which is more honest to the performative nature of the original work.204

The following works will produce a differing experience from the first work, of course.

Cunningam Acquisition Moves in at the Walker.” Sightlines. July 29, 2011. https://walkerart.org/magazine/cold-storage-and-new-brightness-the-cunningham- acquisition-moves-in-at-the-walker; Abigail Sebaly. “Cold Storage and New Brightness: The Merce Cunningham Acquistion at the Walker Art Center.” The Brooklyn Rail. December 11, 2011/January 12, 2012. https://brooklynrail.org/2011/12/danc.e/ cold- storage-and-new-brightness-the-merce-cunningham-acquisition-at-the-walker-art-center; Abigail Sebaly. “Opening the Road Box.” Sightlines. October 3, 2013 . https://walkerart.org/magazine/cunningham-archive 203 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 120. 204 Giannachi and Westerman, Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, 169. 94

That is something which must be accepted, since the audience that encounters the works

solely through performance documentation and material remains were not complicit in

viewing or interacting with the original piece. Jonas’s works, however, play with this idea

of direct recall and counter-spectacularity because her works, while self-documenting, almost resist certain aspects associated with external documentation (e.g., creation of an

iconic image) because her work is so heavily layered, repetitive, and self-referential.205 She

has created a scenario that combines the experience of witnessing a performance and the

experience of viewing said piece posthumously via documentation. This temporal and

physical collapse can, in a sense, permit the event to recreate itself as a renewed version of

the original event thus asserting the work’s contingency on ongoing processes.206 Since her

practice is currently active and she is continuously working on her pieces, it is difficult to

say what affect this will have on the future collection of her works and if she has completely

resolved problems associated with collection of performance art; however, I believe that

her practices offers a crucial case study for determining how the experience of a

performance can be remediated into an installation for easy viewing and access for the

general public.

Finally, it is appropriate to touch on both the successes and shortcomings through

using a singular object/prop or a collection of related items to produce a better

understanding of an event rooted in temporality. When an artist such as Jonas creates works

in the manner in which she does (i.e., works that have the capability to store physical

205 Jonas. Joan Jonas. 20; Carrie Lambert-Beatty. Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s (Cambridge: MIT Press/October Books, 2011) 206 Giannachi and Westerman, Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, 182. 95

variants of various iterations which came before as well as maintain the original thread of

context and inspiration), she produces, as Hölling describes in her writings on Nam June

Paik’s work, a piece that “becomes an archive of its own changeability, an evolving

container of information with a guarantee of future extension.”207 It maintains crucial parts of the artwork connected by a singular thread of content and information. This is an immense task when trying desperately to cling to any fragments before they disappear. The

shortcomings lie in those fragments which are lost, damaged, or cannot be grasped due to

their conceptual rather than material existence. The collection of objects serves an

important purpose in recording the work and referencing back to the original event, but this

purpose can never recall the work back to its level of completeness in its original iteration.

In respect to Jonas’s work and performance art in general, a clear distinction should be

made between what remains and what does not. In addition to the physical remains being

placed on display, enough supplemental information should be given to accurately display

the artist’s intent. This can either be done directly by the artist in the case of Jonas’s

installations or through a more indirect route by utilizing any documents, writings, or

interviews they had given on their respective art pieces.

As MoMA MPA department head Comer has stated, “there is no one model for

collecting performance —it really is case-by-case.”208 If an individual ensures that the

physical remnants will not take precedence over the original work, museums should be

able to display the fragments as a lasting reference of an experimental, ephemeral piece. It

207 Hölling, Paik's Virtual Archive, 163. 208 Nancy Lim, “MoMA Collects: Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions,” Inside Out (MoMA), January 27, 2016. http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/01/27/moma-collectssimone-fortis-dance- constructions, quoted in Metcalf “In the New Body.” 150. 96

is pertinent to note some instances of museums continuing to adapt their facilities to handle time-based and performance-based works adequately. The way these institutions have

adapted to exhibiting performance art has changed over time from simply exhibiting

photographic documentation of past events to actively building spaces to accommodate

such works. Mainstream museums, such as MoMA and Whitney in New York and Tate

Modern in London, have experimented with building physical spaces in their museums to

be suitable places to house and execute performance-based works.209 For example, Tate

Modern opened the Tanks in 2012, consisting of three circular spaces dedicated to installation and performance pieces. This addition/renovation was part of the Herzog and de Meuron expansions to increase available display space. Unfortunately, according to

Claire Bishop, the space has had an erratic schedule due to funding issues, yet the space is still active and ready to use for the museum’s permanent collection, live performances, film viewings, and general education of the public.210 Swagato Chakravorty references Jay

David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s concept of “remediation” (one medium’s representation

in another medium) when trying to exhibit the elusive “stuff” of performance; this is crucial

209 For more information regarding different museum’s developments of spaces for performance based works and other live iterations of art, please reference: Museum websites: MoMA.“Media and Performance.” Curatorial Departments. 2021. https://www.moma.org/collection/about/curatorial-departments/media-performance., Tate. “The Tanks.” 2021. https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/tanks. , Whitney Museum of American Art. “History of Performance at the Whitney.” Performance. 2021. https://whitney.org/exhibitions/performance; Claire Bishop. “The Perils and Possibilities of Dance in the Museum: Tate, MoMA, and Whitney.” Dance Research Journal, 46, no. 3 (2014): 63-76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43966143;Appendix A in Metcalf, Megan Gwen. “In the New Body: Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions (1960-61) and their Acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).” 210 Bishop, “The Perils and Possibilities of Dance in the Museum: Tate, MoMA, and Whitney,” 68-69. 97

for understanding problems associated with creating a suitable space for performance art

and permitting what is left after a performance to exist within the museological practice

and setting.211 As performance slowly finds more solid footing in museum spaces, some, according to Robin Pogrebin, worry that performance and time-based art will be overtaken by the institutions and lose the radical, defiant spirit that enabled it to push and break artistic norms.212 While this is a concern, others have confidence that the underground,

undiscovered scene will continue to break boundaries and force museum and gallery spaces

to adapt to new, unconventional mediums and pieces. Collectively, for any museum

wanting to display art which deviates from static, standalone pieces, museum professionals

and the physical spaces will need to constantly adapt and re-evaluate their respective

limitations to more appropriately house works that, consciously or unconsciously,

challenge current museum protocol and experience.

211 Swagato Chakravorty. “Remediating the Body: Performnace, Photography, and the Dance Archives at MoMA,” in Modern in the Making: MoMA and the Modern Experiment, 1929-1949, eds. by Austin Porter and Sandra Zalman, (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020), 183-188. 212 Robin Pogrebin, “Once on Fringe, Performance Art Is Embraced,” The New York Times, October 26, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/arts/artsspecial/ performance-art-is-increasingly-a-mainstream-museum-staple.html. 98

CONCLUSION

Collectively, this thesis has presented an overview of Joan Jonas’s artistic practice

within the larger context of performance-based works in order to better understand ways of preserving and documenting these works through their various fragmentary stages for

the purposes of display, archival work, and aiding the understanding of an event. While

touching on some fragmented aspects of the work, the bulk of the preceding argument

centered around props and objects and their relation to the work both during the piece and

after the work has been completed. After consulting various sources, historical references,

and interviews of various professionals, one can come to the conclusion that the object has

specific qualities which make it a key player in recording, remembering, and even

reconstructing ephemeral acts. It has a direct tie-in to the original gesture because it was

chosen directly by the artist and integrated into the performance itself. For curators,

conservators, and archivists, these object fragments do not, by themselves, reconstruct an

entire work, but they are valuable in that they embody key aspects that could not be relayed

via photography or memory, which can distort and omit certain aspects of the work just by

nature of their medium. Lastly, for museum viewers, the objects permit them to see a “real”

piece of a work which would otherwise only exist in textual, photo, or film format that can

often feel disconnected to an individual with no physical item to directly reference. I say

this not to claim objects as the ultimate form of performance documentation but instead to

show how certain aspects of having an object can prove helpful on a variety of levels for

recollection, study, and display.

This thesis has attempted to tackle the object as the locus of reference for an

ephemeral work. As stated previously, objects can only formulate a part of the

99 performance’s aftermath. Combined with, video and picture documentation, scores and sketches, and the memories of the participants and viewers, one can construct a more complete view of the work at large. While the original work will never be fully re-realized, the act of layering information and contextual evidence could, in a sense, enable an individual to conceptually reconfigure the performance. It is also crucial to note that the works of Joan Jonas which were a key focus to this paper greatly contributed to the focus on object usage and re-cycling in later iterations and installations. Because her practice is centered around this perpetual recycling of objects, concepts, and film reels, it illuminates particularly well the power that the objects of performance can hold for the artist, the viewer, and the archive.

Throughout the research and writing process, I conducted my work while navigating the unprecedented restraints and stressors associated with the current pandemic; however, due to limitations placed on travel, research capabilities, and adjusting to a new

“normal,” certain aspects of this argument have been hampered. For example, the summer in-between semesters would typically have been spent traveling to archives or museums to see objects in person as well as communicate with professionals for information directly connected to my topic. This would have been ideal for my previous chapter centered around museum practice, but I had to engage with museums from a remote position and navigate through another mediating layer between myself and these works which are already so difficult to completely grasp in the present. As a result and by necessity, my arguments have leaned heavily on written and photographic documentation of Jonas’s work, her critical reception, and on theoretical discourses around performance art and the object.

100

It is also important to acknowledge that a large portion of this research has centered around European-American performance art and largely focuses on the works of a white

American female artist. Performance art in other areas of the world or from different cultures present in the United States were not discussed, but, with more time and ability to analyze Jonas’s influences and artistic connections throughout her career, especially her engagement with Indigenous communities and environmentalist activism and philosophy, these parallels could have become more prominent. As scholarship in this area develops, it is hopeful that the performance art canon will continue to shift in ways that bring more diverse groups to the forefront as well as highlight upcoming artists who can show how the canon is developing, thus adding to another layer in the lineage of performance art.

While this work covered a particular artist’s practice and related that to questions regarding ephemerality, conceptuality, display, and conservation, there are potential areas that could have been addressed in more depth and others that exceeded the scope of my immediate argument. This project focused intensively on performance and its relation to the object both as a prop during the piece as well as a remnant that still maintains part of the performance long after the original event is completed. This choice eschewed video and pictorial remnants to tackle a particular line of thought but should not be regarded as a negative critique of these equally compelling elements for documenting and preserving performance art. All information able to be gleaned on a particular work or subject is pertinent to the continuation of material and conceptual knowledge. Future research could investigate the other fragments I did not touch on as distinctly or could investigate how the internet or digital archives contribute towards the further fragmentation and assemblage of these ephemeral, scattered works.

101

Overall, this project has touched on the need for, as Giannachi and Westerman describe, “historical revisionism capable of confronting entrenched modes of parsing, evaluating, and supporting artworks that inhere in every level of the museums’

functioning.”213 As new works, mediums, and styles develop, museums, professionals, and

general scholarship must advance to match the necessary demands of the growing field.

There is always a need to reassess scholarship to hold ourselves accountable and make a more beneficial space for all parties involved. The information discussed throughout this thesis might not be enough to usher change on its own, but I hope that it might provide a compelling argument for considering and perhaps even centering the objects of performance when considering the historical, curatorial, and conservation demands of performance-based works, their material fragments, and the interests of their artists.

213 Giannachi and Westerman, Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, 19. 102

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