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Performativity
For many the prevalent dimension of performativity is time. The genre is associated with duration or temporal specificity, which is often so dominant it is as if this were its defining characteristic. Time and space, however, are notoriously inseparable in our post-Einsteinian universe so that, theoretically, place cannot play a secondary role at all. The immediacy of live action is utterly tied to its location in more pragmatic and divisive ways too. The primacy of the body is an immutable pre-requisite that establishes the artwork in the here and now. An action or event cannot be stored or transferred elsewhere – it is the ultimate site-specific artwork. Unlike a painting, which is essentially relocatable, performative work tends to privilege its physical state, the fact of itself, over its representational qualities. Instead of picturing something that might be elsewhere, an action cannot exist at any other time or place1. Historically, this has been the muscle of performativity, what gives it its political clout, but also its downfall – the reason the market has overlooked the genre. How can one sell a memory or a ghost? Fin-de-siècle Europe, post-war America,...
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