and performance art and in the dematerialization of the visual arts which arose
out of the convergence of art media, forms, and practices. Then the art of life is
the question. In turn, the expansion of notions of performance indicated by the
adoption of the performative induces a number of problems. For example, there
is the question of ‘liveness’ (Auslander 1999) in an age of mass media. Some
authors, for example, have argued that the immediacy of performance is dulled
by its re-presentation in the media which is, quite literally, a means of distancing
the event.
performances form an elongated chain.... They travel over a greater distance.
Performances from the past, captured in some recording medium, can be
replaced in the present. At the same time, performance is not spatially
restricted but can be received well away from the context of the original event.
As a result, it becomes less clear what set of processes constitute the perfor-
mance, which is stretched out, for example, from the recording studio at one
end to the playing of a record in the home, which is itself a performance of a
kind, if a secondary one, at the other.
(Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998: 62)At the same time, re-presented performances gradually adopt their own styles and
conventions which differ from immediate performance. For example in film
and television, acting styles, production conventions and audience responses have
all changed as a ‘constituted aesthetic’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998) has
taken over from the ‘immediate aesthetic’ of the theatre. In turn, the signs and
cues of the new aesthetic have made their way into immediate performance.
But equally many authors argue that this does not necessarily mean that
performance events somehow lose their edge; even a mediated performance cannot
be exactly restated:
The uniqueness of a given performance derives from the combination of forces
that gather the various assemblages that will constitute the performance. These
forces combine and bring together audience, performers, text, revenues,
management, scenic space, costumes, and scenic objects, deriving them out
of larger fields – the population of a city, the pool of actors, the money spent
elsewhere – in which people had otherwise showed no such immediate
connection. This process of gathering or mobilisation is, for any given
performance event, momentary and nonrepeatable. Even if the occasions
recur, what gathers (at) the scene is a determinate particularisation of what
transpires between performers and public. The interface between performers
and public can be restated on another occasion, but even that restatement
must be collected all over again by means of rites and pathways that meet on
the field of play.
(Martin 199 7 : 188)Yet what seems clear is that many of those working in performance studies have
wanted to keep to a definition of performance which emphasizes the special
134 Part II