Rhetorics of time, performance and some strategies for a capitalization of the ephemeral

Abstract

In recent years, a large number of art institutions strive to translate temporary artistic sensibilities into new cultural experiences. The growing interest in adapting the exhibition programs to present both, new and old performance art pieces, is pointing out towards this direction. Immateriality, temporality and direct interaction with the public, articulates new mechanisms in the cultural production. In this context, if performance-art emerged in the second half of the 20th century as a subversive artistic tool, trying to query the market and cultural institutions, the absorption and transformation of performance into new products for cultural consumption, generates a series of problems that affect its own essence. In this article we try to analyze certain changes in the ontological values ​​from which the rhetoric of performance is constructed. The delicate relationship between the ephemeral art and its documentation, fuels a debate about the capacity of performance artists to defend an anti-capitalist discourse. In this sense, we analyze certain methodological strategies based on the use of a durational temporality in the museum. This aspect leads us to propose an objectualizationof the performer’s body, since it becomes a living document. These approaches are integrated into a cultural strategy that we could define as a capitalization of the ephemeral.