One For Violin

The re-performance is a copy in action. Its character is somewhere between competent understudy and reanimation. How it is executed moves it further away from or back into its author’s hands. It can be a summoned ghost for authenticity’s sake, an impression to align oneself with canonical familiarity, a deconstruction for the sake of expanding art’s potential, a remix, a cut and paste collage, and an ongoing skirmish between faithfulness and liberties.
The re-performance is a stranger wading in familiarity; a knock off rhinestone suit or an Ulay possession, ranked and filed with possibilities for advancement (and occasional surpassing). The re-performance comes from the written score, documentation, history, canon, archive, command, demand, and capital. The performance, once liberated from the score, exists only for the collective memory of those present for it, an invisible archive that acts in contradiction with art’s typical immutability. The re-performance, in its visible ontology, is therefore a betrayal with mostly good intentions.
The re-performance supplants the visible written score with the invisible archive or the photograph. Its genealogy is the audience. Its audience is thus aware of its audience. It is passed on to potentially be passed on again

The first time I performed Nam June Paik's "One For Violin," (1962), I realized I had done so without ever reading the score, only via images from books and the internet. This began an ongoing investigation into how performance works changed based on documentation over scoring or writings.

First performed: Cincinnati Public Library, Main Branch, 2015



REUNIONS

or:

Our Beloved Ghosts of the Past, Right Now, Have They Created the Illusion that the Masses are in Control?

This short film re-enacts the famous “Reunion” collaborative performance from 1968 of a chess match between John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. One actor plays both roles, alternating between the “white knight” (Duchamp) and the “dark horse” (Cage). This is accomplished by a “costume change” in between each chess move. The score of the match has been updated to feature songs from the film “Fantasia,” a signifier of modernity into postmodernity, representative of the move from Duchamp to Cage. This film attempts to consider the position of being someone else, particularly from the position of a woman, and the slipperiness of citation and valorization.

With Lauren Sudbrink

Originally made for "Begin Anywhere," a screening of films considering the legacy of John Cage, at the Carnegie, Covington, KY in 2016.

Drip Music

The third exercise in field research on the re-performance and the effect of the archive. I performed George Brecht's "Drip Music" in three iterations: live, audio (cassette and LP), and on pre-recorded film. Archival photographs of historic performances of the piece were hung in the gallery space as was a large reproduction of Brecht's score. Audience members were invited to perform the piece and respond to a questionnaire on how their interpretation was influenced: archival photo documentation, my documentation, or the Brecht's original score.

Performed at Skylab Gallery for the exhibition "Up in the Air" 2016

http://theotherchrisreeves.com/files/gimgs/th-48_47_12990856_10102881528455748_1288215705777685219_n-1_v2.jpg
http://theotherchrisreeves.com/files/gimgs/th-48_47_rsz_2-4_v2.jpg
http://theotherchrisreeves.com/files/gimgs/th-48_47_12383659_1604817986506588_100278642_n_v2.jpg