First published
Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund. “Objektwerdung audiovisueller Live-Performances,” in: Guido Kempter, Horst O. Mayer, Karl-Heinz Weidmann (eds.). design2product. Beiträge zur empirischen Designforschung, Band 2. Hohenems: Bucher, 2012, pp. 129–137.
Quote as
Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund. “Live Event to Object: The Study of a Transformation as Put to Practice by the Artist Collective Transforma,” in: Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund (eds.). Lund Audiovisual Writings, 2017, http://www.lundaudiovisualwritings.org/live-event
Abstract
At least since the 1960s, artists and audiences have engaged with the question how temporary events, such as concerts and performances, could be transformed into permanent objects, into products that might be transported and distributed. At least, for example, since flamboyant audiovisual presentations of the time started accompanying rock concerts, while performance art usually focused on (social) process and eschewed the work as a (capitalist) product in favor of the passing event. Still, even in performance art there is a constant need to convert the ephemeral moment of the live event into something more durable. Only then can the event become part of a common discourse, or the event’s possible contribution to that same discourse from which it has arisen is lost forever.
Problematically, each of the three measures against loss—documentation, conservation of traces, transformation—is still recognizable as merely a crutch. The audiovisual collective Transforma has developed new strategies to cope with the situation. Be it the integration of documentary elements into the live event as well as the expansion of the documentation through live elements—both these approaches show how today, not least due to digital real-time technology, live event, postproduction, and documentation can be interwoven.
