PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Cologni: Elena | UK

Dr Elena Cologni

Area of interest: Performance Art/Film/TV

University of the Arts London,  Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

FRUITION: perceptual time ‘gap’ as location for knowledge-Mnemonic Present Un-folding #4

        MNEMONIC PRESENT, UN-FOLDING #4 is part of a body of work on the notions of deferral, fruition, mnemonic present and immediacy of interchange in liveness touring to Europe, America and Australia. This is developed as part of ‘Present Memory and Liveness in delivery and reception of video documentation during performance art events’, which has received an AHRC Small Grant For The Creative And Performing Arts - November 2004-January 2006.

         This project is based on an hypothesis that notions of liveness and presence can be questioned by allowing the documentation in the live event to be the performance's opening stage rather than its point of closure thus generating a form of mnemonic present. The practical work will partially draw on Derrida's notion of 'supplement'; a collaboration with Psychologist Thomas Suddendorf; and is to be placed within the debate on liveness and media led by Ausslander and Cubitt. The collaboration for this project with psychologist Dr Suddendorf aims at understanding the implications involved in the perception of ourselves in the world around us, through media. In this climate of, so called 'reality TV’ we as spectators overlap concepts of presence, immediacy and reality with video representation.

         In my 'Video Live Installation' (VLI as described in ‘documenting performative practice’, http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/cologni.htm), the 'live-recording' and 'pre-recording' projected during the performative event has opened up questions regarding the involvement of the audience and their perception of what is present and represented. VLI, including its own simultaneous documentation can be regarded itself as a form of manifestation of 'memory in the present' of the event, as perceived by the audience. In the new body of work I attempt to create a 'real time distancing' from the event as part of its delivery at the time of its perception, to draw a parallel between the production of the performance's documentation and methods of memory archiving. In this context, the video documentation of the event is a 'supplement' to the performing body/self, which can itself become a 'supplement' to the event. The implicit continuous temporal and spatial shift of the event's meaning is thus created together with the temporary presentation and representation of the performer's self in relationship to the spectators - participating in the creative process through the fruition/interchange that takes place during its production. This process of constructing and recording of the documentation as 'supplement' (part) of the live event results in the paradox of its status as documentation, no longer just proof of the live event.

          The methodology I use in developing my practice/research allowed me to analyse the interchange that takes place between audience and performer/artwork and audience from within the paradigm. My own art practice is grounded in a theoretical position where Merleau-Pontì’s concept of chiasm and intertwining is read in Anti-Ocularcentric terms by Martin Jay. I would like to refer to Amelia Jones account of the same notions to then identify a conceptual distance from Jones’s, which is constituted by considering time travel in artist-audience interchange taking place during mediatised performative events, here addressed in these terms for the first time as fruitionstage. At this stage, the conceptual process of exchange takes place although no immediacy occurs in the above inter-subjective exchange. What are the implications of this for the concept of performative self?

        I will try to understand the implications and significance of the perceptual gap between audience and performer’s interchange in the moment of fruition during delivery-reception of VLI.

Biography

Dr. Elena Cologni studied at the Academy of Art Brera in Milan, Leeds University (Bretton Hall), and has a PhD from the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, with the thesis: The Artist’s Performative Practice within the Anti-Ocularcentric Discourse. She is at the moment working on a research project Present Memory and Liveness in delivery and reception of video documentation during performance art events’, which received an AHRC Small Grant For The Creative And Performing Arts - November 2004-January 2006, and on a publication investigating notions of performativity at the same Institution. Spanning from photography, video installation, but mostly live art, Cologni’s work has been addressing a number of issues amongst them: the relationship artist-self/audience/environment (the interchange); the problem of documentation of the live event as part of its delivery and notions of displacement through language. Her artistic carrier has been supported by a number of Institutions and her work has been exhibited in both academic and artistic international venues including: Artists Space New York, Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery, Gallery 291, London, Watershed Media Centre, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia, Galleria Neon, Bologna, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway.

www.elenacologni.com/memory

Correspondence in reference to my paper should be sent to Dr Elena Cologni, Central Saint Martins College, Research Office, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP, elenacologni@hotmail.com, or e.cologni@csm.arts.ac.uk

Connection between theory-performance/practice: these are intertwined throughout. The Derridean concept of supplement as document in performance, is inspirational for the production of the work. The latter focuses on the concept of present memory (my own definition of my process of memorising and recollecting memories) and time delay, which I may find through this project, to be a paradox in the contemporary debate on liveness

The term fruition© 2003 is used to signify the verb of perceiving and becoming part of the work. This concept was expressed in my PhD thesis ‘The Artists Performative Practice Within The Anti-Ocularcentric Discourse’;  in the PARIP context, at this time of my research this concept takes a much greater role in a wider theoretical framework.