The recent retrospective of the work of Marina Abramovic at MOMA in New York brought to wide public attention the phenomenon of what she called the "reperformance" of her earlier work, which had only existed until then as one-time events recorded on film.  Bringing this ephemeral performance work into the museum space as a live artifact raised consciousness of a broader trend currently taking place in contemporary dance, theatre, film, video and performance art.  Reenactment raises questions of the differences between reconstruction, revival, adaptation, reinvention, quotation, amplification, and the kinds of temporalities these strategies to recover past performance signify. But beyond the terminological questions, issues of artist identity, authenticity, and history emerge in direct relationship with performative documentary activity. The question of the event and the document become dramatically foregrounded. The question of trauma and catharsis in relation to reenactment is salient as became clear in our first seminar with Chip Lord and Magaret Morse.

 

Reenactment of the work of one artist by another has been a form of contemporary creativity in theatre, film, dance, and performance for some time, but has been gaining momentum as a major trend of artistic production and research.  Clearly, it evokes the connections of historiography and interpretation to art making that documents the past in a non-literal or even paradoxical yet exacting and rigorous way that evades certain mimetic conventions.  It is time to ask what sorts of temporality are deployed in reenactments, and how new sorts of temporality reframe notions of documentation, reconstruction/reinvention, citation/quotation, and amplification of an earlier work or event in the contemporary moment.

 

This year-long speaker series will present artists and scholars specializing in this area of contemporary creativity.

 

 

Wednesday, October 26 at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

The Eternal Frame: An Artist's Reenactment of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A Screening and Conversation

Chip Lord, Emeritus, Film and Digital Media, UCSC

Margaret Morse, Film and Digital Media, UCSC

 

Wednesday, November 9 at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

Re-Enactment and Site-Specific Performance

Martin Puchner, Drama, English, Comparative Literature, Harvard University

 

Thursday, January 19th at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

Memory and Mass Performance

Kimberly Jannarone, Theater Arts, Digital Arts and New Media, History of Consciousness, UCSC

 

Thursday, February 2nd at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

Reenacting the Dances of Mary Wigman

Fabian Barba: Independent artist, Belgium

A recording of this talk can be found at:

http://vimeo.com/36949100

 

A Lecture Demonstration (Studio A-105, Theater Arts Center)

Friday, February 3rd at 2pm

 

Thursday, February 9th at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

(Un)Covering Artistic Thought Unfolding

Maaike Bleeker, Theatre Studies, Utrecht University

A recording of this talk can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTthKPxIShY&feature=youtu.be

 

Thursday, February 23 at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

Not as Before, but Again: Reenactments and "Transcreation"

Andre Lepecki, Performance Studies, New York University

A recording of this talk can be found at:

http://vimeo.com/38192180

 

Wednesday, April 18 at 5:30pm in the Cowell Conference Room

Documentary Reenactment

Jonathan Kahaha and Irene Luzstig, Film and Digital Media, UCSC

 

Events of Related Interest

 

VPS Director Mark Franko will be speaking at the Art Research Center's conference "Making Time":

 

Making Time

April 19 to 21, 2012
Berkeley Art Museum Theater
2625 Durant Avenue, Berkeley
Free and open to the public

Exploring the paradoxes of the term "time-based art," the Arts Research Center presents Making Time, a cross-disciplinary arts symposium that extends the theme of last year's symposium, Curating People. Scholars, artists, presenters, and curators will come together to think about what it means to make, curate, and evaluate hybrid art practices. What does it mean to install a dance in a museum? What does it mean to place an installation in a theatre? How does the experience of duration in the gallery differ from that of the cinema? What does it mean to "curate" experience? What does it mean to "collect" performance? What skills are visual artists learning from performance? How are performers using the skills of visual art? What new skills do critics and curators need to support the expanded practices of artists?

The symposium will organize panels and roundtables that broadly examine the terms invoked or resisted in defining these art practices, the way such work challenges the divisions of labor within and between different types of institutions, and the traditional and new conventions of authorship, collecting, documentation, and evaluation that they require.

 

Please visit http://arts.berkeley.edu/events.html#3 for full schedule and more information.

 

Athens Institute for Education and Research-ATINER (www.atiner.gr)

Call for Papers and Participation 

3rd Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, 4-7 June 2012, Athens, Greece

  

Dr. Gregory T. Papanikos (President of the Athens Institute for Education and Research & Visiting Professor, University of Strathclyde, U.K.) and Dr. Stephen Andrew Arbury, Academic Member of ATINER and Professor, Radford University, USA would like to invite you to submit a proposal for presentation at the 3rd Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, 4-7 June 2012 organized by the Arts and Science Research Division of the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER).

The registration fee is €300 (euro), covering access to all sessions, two lunches, coffee breaks and conference material. Special arrangements will be made with a local luxury hotel for a limited number of rooms at a special conference rate. In addition, a number of social events will be organized: A Greek night of entertainment with dinner, a special one-day cruise in the Greek islands, an archaeological tour of Athens and a one-day visit to Delphi. Details of the social program are available at http://www.atiner.gr/soc/2012SOC-ART.htm

Papers (in English) from all areas of from all areas of Visual Arts (such as Animation, Architecture, Art History, Art Education, Book Arts, Ceramics, Community Arts, Fashion Design, Fiber, Furniture/Woodworking, Glass, Graphic Design, Illustration, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Jewellery/Metal Arts, Media Arts, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Fiber Arts, Visual Studies, Writing and Literature, etc) and Performing Arts (such as music, drama, dance, etc). Panel organizers are encouraged to submit their proposals by inviting other scholars that do research in the area. You may participate as panel organizer, presenter of one paper, chair a session or observer. For programs of previous conferences and other information visit the conference website www.atiner.gr/arts.htm. Selected papers will be published in a Special Volume of the Conference Proceedings or Edited Books as part of ATINER's philosophy book series. For Books and Proceedings of previous conferences you may visit http://www.atiner.gr/docs/BOOK_PUBLICATIONS.htm for table of contents and order forms.

Please submit a 300-word abstract by 16 April 2012, by email, atiner@atiner.gr to: Dr. Stephen Andrew Arbury, Academic Member of ATINER and Professor, Radford University, USA. Please include: Title of Paper, Full Name (s), Current Position, Institutional Affiliation, an email address and at least 3 keywords that best describe the subject of your submission. Please use the abstract submitting form available at http://www.atiner.gr/docs/2012FORM-ART.doc. Announcement of the decision is made within 4 weeks after submission, which includes information on registration deadlines and paper submission requirements.  If you want to participate without presenting a paper, i.e. chair a session, evaluate papers to be included in the conference proceedings or books, contribute to the editing of a book, or any other contribution, please send an email to Dr. Gregory T. Papanikos (gtp@atiner.gr), President, ATINER.  

The Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER) was established in 1995 as an independent academic organization with the mission to become a forum, where academics and researchers - from all over the world - could meet in Athens and exchange ideas on their research and discuss the future developments of their discipline. Since 1995, ATINER has organized about 150 international conferences and has published over 100 books. Academically, the Institute consists of four research divisions and twenty research units. Each research unit organizes at least an annual conference and undertakes various small and large research projects.

If you do not wish to receive emails from the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), please reply to this email with the subject "UNSUBSCRIBE". Currently, ATINER is upgrading its system of mailing list. Please let us know if you want to receive emails from us. We will not send you more than 4 email alerts per year.

 

VPS Director Mark Franko's KZSC 88.1 radio interview with Nada Milijkovic

On January 9th, UCSC Professor of Dance in the Theatre Art and Director of the Center for Visual and Performance Studies Mark Franko came onto Artist on Art to talk about the current speaker series, Temporalities of Reenactment happening the entire 2011 to 2012 school year.

Mark's interview in full is available for viewing at:  http://www.artistsonart.net/category/artist-interviews/