The symposium Re-Constructing Performance Art: Processes and Practices of Historicisation, Documentation, and Representation (1960s–1970s) will take place on 30 November and 1 December 2018 at the Freie Universität Berlin. In three sections and one roundtable, international scholars will explore the practices of historicisation, documentation, exhibition, and archiving of performance art. The aim is not to evaluate specific techniques and methods for the preservation of this art form, but to examine how these practices construct its epistemic and aesthetic space. Thus, the question is not if or how performance art can be conserved but how different strategies of conservation and transmission shape its reception according to different agendas and strategies.

Participants: Philip Auslander, Barbara Büscher, Barbara Clausen, Sabine Gebhardt Fink, Gabriella Giannachi, Tancredi Gusman, Adrian Heathfield, Doris Kolesch, Jan Lazardzig, Annette Jael Lehmann, Michael Lüthy, Lorenzo Mango, Heike Roms, and Sylvia Sasse.

Further information on the speakers, the programme, and the venues is available here.

The symposium is part of the research project "Between Evidence and Representation: History of Performance Art Documentation from 1970 to 1977". The research is conducted by Tancredi Gusman as principal investigator at the Institute of Theatre Studies of the Freie Universität in Berlin, and supervised by Erika Fischer-Lichte. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 747881.