On Remnants and Vestiges. Strategies of Remaing in the Performing Arts

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Susanne Foellmer
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 250564335

This interdisciplinary research project investigates the challenges inherent in remaining and preserving in the fields of dance, music theater and performance that usually operate under the primacy of presence. The project is divided into three subjects. In the first, strategies of remaining within and after the performance are analyzed with a focus on dance; they are then systematized in terminology. The second field of research deals with performance videos as a dynamic memory preservation that creates tension between the performance and its recorded remnants. The third part then investigates the object-based leftovers of 1970s performances and examines the challenges faced by performative approaches in between the process and the resulting artifacts on display. The focus is placed on reformulations of the ephemeral; it is now modified in new ways in the performing arts. What was once assembled as something that created presence, and thus even a critical event, is now subject to preservation performances that attempt to record (e.g., re-enactments). We see a shift away from performance's presence to (self-)archiving that also touches on aspects of artistic marketing. This also applies to issues of historiography inherent in a performance art that is characterized by the singular event, as well as to the related issues of authorship and attribution for past events.The project then uses the term vestiges to examine more closely what remains of dance, music theater and performance art projects. In addition to the well-researched representative formats of reconstruction and re-enactment, the objects of investigation are thus the procedure of remaining within performances themselves, as well as the remnants that emanate from the performances in the form of exhibition relicts from past events as well as artifacts from their recordings.The objective is to gain a new perspective on the experience of presence in the ethereal arts given the context of omnipresent preservation practices, and to then conceptually grasp these procedures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom