Performing while documenting or how to enhance the narrative agency of a camera

Abstract

This article proposes a methodological approach to site-oriented and expanded performance documentation practice. Taking a performance laboratory work that was carried out in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as an example, it discloses how a specific place can be mapped, sensed, and recorded, especially through a mode of performing while documenting. By emphasizing the narrative qualities and/or layers of a recorded material, this mode seeks to develop the narrative agency of a camera. On the one hand, by exploring the tensions and/or boundaries between the documentary and fictional and on the other, by experimenting with the ways in which a recorded material can be described, portrayed and especially, be rewritten through an editing and archival process. In so doing, this article employs both writing and audio-visuality to not only trace a series of exercises and actions undertaken by a group of performing and/or documenting bodies at a public square in Rio de Janeiro. It also offers an insight into the design of a documentation process in which the camera operates both as a documentary and creative source.