Performance Art Response- Zoe

My favorite excerpt from the reading is the final section that addresses arts relationship to community and festival. The passage acknowledges festivals and art both, “unite us through its communicative function.” Essentially, art and festivals create proximity between voices and excite topics to bring about discourse and connection. I’d like to add to this similarity between performance art and festivals by addressing their similar relationship to time. In class we’ve discussed the idea of playback culture in relation to post media. Our ability to record events and distribute them to larger audiences has both heightened their overall impact and dulled the significance of the initial performance. Yet, for this argument I will address only the initial performance, and assume that there is a difference when experiencing live art and recorded art. 

Festivals and performance art both escape playback culture. Post media escapes by altering how the art is experience every time, and performance art and festivals do the same. Festivals for example happen annually, biennially, semiannually, quarterly, but no matter how many times the same festival is repeated it is never the same. The people who attend are different, the tents are different, the bands are different and therefore the atmosphere and experience is different. Similarly, performance art can never be repeated the same way twice. 

While the performance itself may be stunning or gory or thought-provoking, there also something very beautiful about this ephemeralness. Because the piece is short lived, their is a community created by those who experienced it and an out group for those who did not. As the author describes, “art is a power to enact an experience of a community in solidarity.” But, in the time based scenario the solidarity is not based upon reaction to the art, but whether or not it was seen at all.