Documentation and Disappearance

Abstract

The cultural meaning of performance resides not only within the thing itself, but is also and significantly constituted through attempts to describe and define what performance is as a phenomenon. It is with this perspective that this chapter explores two prominent and ongoing conversations about performance: the first of disappearance and transience; the second of documentation and retention. These discourses occur primarily within the academy and performance studies, but also filter out into more generalised dialogues within the cultural industry, amongst audiences and in the arts media.