Exhibited, Recorded, Collected: Performance Art and Documentation in documenta 5 and 6

Abstract

Using case studies of documenta 5 (1972) and documenta 6 (1977) in Kassel, this article investigates the role of documentation (photographs, videotapes, films, and relics) in introducing performance art at large international exhibitions during the 1970s. The analysis, conducted by scrutinizing archival sources at the documenta archive, examines the roles of documentation as a medium of performance re-presentation, as a means of distribution and dissemination of this art form, and as a vehicle for marketing and collecting works of performance art. On the basis of this analysis, the article argues that, regardless of the various ways in which artists conceive the relationship between live act and its subsequent re-presentations, documentation has emerged, since the early 1970s, as a constitutive element for the establishment and acknowledgment of performance art as an autonomous genre within the field of visual arts.