Words from Sculpture and Performance

by Rachel Lois.

The Henry Moore Institute commissioned me to write a report on their recent Sculpture and Performance conference on 24-26 March. The report will make up part of the online archive of the conference on the HMI website. For more details see the conference programme at the end of this post.



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The nature of thingliness, the agency of objects and the ontology of performance were all at stake in this three day conference which brought international artists and academics to debate the significant overflow between two traditionally discrete practices: Sculpture and Performance.

A broad range of artists were touched upon in the presentations including Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus, Pablo Bronstein, Lucy Clout, Tim Etchells, Ian Breakwell, Bruce Mclean, Genesis P-Orridge, Christian Marclay, Franz West, Rebecca Warren, Tania Bruguera and Bruce Nauman. Theoretical and philosophical sources were equally varied; Heidegger was explored on thing-liness, recent work by Rikke Hansen was cited on the nature of objects in relational art, so too Peter Osborne on de-materialisation. The writings of William Forsythe were also put forward as re-thinking the (non human) object of choreography.

Over the course of the conference many of the objects under consideration were articulated as the material things which play a critical part in the before (instrument, score), during (set, tool, prop,) or after (remnant, relic, memento) of performance’s fleeting existence, its live moment, rather than the performance per se. As such, the traditional Twentieth Century ontology of performance – as ephemeral and bound to disappear - remained relatively un(re)marked. However, a distinctly contemporary outlook to this ‘cult of disappearance’ was displayed in all the presentations: material objects were not considered a wounding, anti-capitalistic or oppositional element within the performance/object, animate/inanimate or life/death equation. Instead, the relationship (although still arguably binaristic) was explored as dialectical, historically co-dependant and mutually generative. It was perhaps most neatly summed up by one of the presenters in the statement ‘performance is sculpture in time that at some point turned to sculpture to be performed.’

Perhaps it was the specific references to choreography, literally the writing of performance, that lead me to focus upon the language of Sculpture and Performance- particularly the use of words as object and performance in this context. Perhaps it was the speaker’s florid re-appropriation of existing terms or insistent neologisms. But I was struck by the words used to describe objects in and as performance:

Fluxable thing
Prop (partial)
prop (incidental)
prop( functional)
baffling device
score (action)
set (latent)
prompt
video performance action
sculpture-like activity
kinetic sculpture
animatronic object
automaton
appendage
de-centered object
appendage of an appendage
figure
body
remnant
relic of presence
scapegoat sculpture
crash test dummy
memento
sculptural choreography
resonant object
sacrificial object
inanimate object
icon
organ
puppet
agent
bodily remnant
touch relic
pregnant
sculptural fit
nostalgic material
relational form
readymade
crafted
re-enactment
theatrical sculpture
thingliness
the thingly
prosthetic
stick
bottle
pot
instrument
assemblage
agency
vehicle
tampon
play
knowledge object
virtuosic excess
uncertain object
wood
de-humanised performer
de-individualised human part
dance surface
body giver
alter ego
phallus
grid
garment
socialist sculpture
statue
pseudo sculpture
antagonistic object
inauthentic object
treacherous object
porous object
performance object
phenomenological object
tool
soft
apparatus
suture
writing object
promiscuous object
choreographic object
(A) happening
everyday construction
see saw
moo sound
body substitute
bio object
testimony beyond death


Reflecting back on this selection of words (these being only a few of the more legible ones extracted from my notes) it seems the speaker’s collective struggle to articulate a distinct field or terminology for performed sculpture/sculpture performances – even if this ‘field’ as such is a fall-out or excess between two arguably more defined practices - speaks as much about the variable status, role and meaning of objects in and as performance, and vice versa, as it does the lack of specific terminology and critical promiscuity of this area of practice. It is a promiscuity whose agency is for now located in its very movement between or para (the doxa of) Performance and Sculpture.


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Rachel Lois Clapham is Co-Director of Open Dialogues; a UK based collaboration producing critical writing on and as performance. www.opendialogues.com

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Sculpture and Performance