Performance art’s reputation rests on documentation rather than the event itself

Evidence

As Eye Body was a solo performance meant to be photographed, Meat Joy endures thanks to its documentation. Much of its orgiastic reputation rests on Peter Moore’s ring-side photographs—the minimalist painter Dorothea Rockburne, body slick, eyes closed in ecstasy as she slides into the cuddle-puddle, a raw chicken tucked under her arm, or pressed against Schneemann, both women screaming with the excited delight of kids on a rollercoaster. Schneemann had the foresight to have a performance documented at a New York TV studio by the French filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau (who had won an Oscar for his 1961 documentary of a French expedition to New Guinea, The Sky Above, The Mud Below). The existence of documentation permits further analysis. The art historian Elise Archias observed that, “though the performers seem to have relished the direction to handle each other’s bodies without inhibition, they also seem self-conscious. The incessant smiles convey both pleasure and a sense of vulnerability or embarrassment.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1917

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attending to a work can itself constitute an artistic act — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 437