Performance after performance

Abstract

What is the material legacy of performance artworks? What are the possibilities for those legacies, and how much of that depends on the artist's involvement in the historicisation and institutionalisation of their own works? This paper will reflect on the legacies of performance art and its memories and on the ways the museum and the artist work in the co-production of their material manifestations. It will explore this theme through two complementary perspectives – one of a curator, and one of a conservator, also bringing together the agencies of artists, institutions, and objects themselves. In bridging the workings of the exhibition and the museum’s backstage, we aim to provide an integral approach to the material lives of performance artworks and to the manifold of material manifestations of their legacies.