No abstract

Over the past two years, Tate's approach to the conservation of performance-based artworks has been evolving. This development has been propelled by the increasing presence of performance and performance-based artworks in Tate's collection and Tate's participation in various research projects. Our current approach considers the altering views in performance studies around the relationship between performance and documentation, and recent considerations around the impact of performance on the systems and structures of the museum. One of the results of the development of our approach is the Strategy for the Documentation and Conservation of Performance. The Strategy takes into account advances in conservation theory around time-based media and performance across departments at Tate, aiming at ensuring the continued activation of performance-based collection works from our collection. This paper explores the process of developing this Strategy, including the defining of terminology and the creation of the three documentation strands which fall under it: the Performance Specification, Activation Report, and the Networks of Interactions map.

This article addresses one of the leading challenging areas for those studying performance art today: its temporal dynamic, linked to the present, to the here and now. This temporal inscription is effectively at the core of the ontology of these pieces, which has repercussions in the relationship this art form has with the physical and conceptual spaces it occupies, and in the management of art collections that include them. Analysis of performance art temporalities will lead to a discussion of the spaces this genre has been occupying in artistic institutions. The values held by these spaces will be explored, and new ways of understanding them, especially in the relationship between university, museum and theatre will be proposed. This is the triad discussed by Jan Naderveen Pieterse in 1997 will serve as an analogy to reflect upon these issues. In this context, performance art pieces, artistic projects, and curatorial programmes from the Portuguese panorama will be presented as examples.