Performance som närvaro och begrepp - en estetisk-filsofisk analys

The aim of this study is to get closer to the complex cultural expression of performance art through its relation to the body and the phenomenon of presence. The investigation is based upon two analysis of performance artworks such as the virtual performance installation Telematic Dreaming (1992) by Paul Sermon, and the live performance The Artist is Present (2010) by Marina Abramovic, which is a reperformance of her and Ulays earlier performance Nightsea Crossing (1981-87). The theoretical frame of the investigation is a philosophicalaesthetic approach where philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, among others, are taking into practice. The investigation shows, among other things, that performance is understood as Being, highly existential and through the body, as action. The body' action leads towards an understanding of performance as perfomative. We should understand performance through what it does and not what it is, through the relational and social situation that it produces. As a site-specific and body-specific platform the artform craves presence to exist. It is about being in the now, thus the now is a product of human presence, it disappears. The investigation further shows how the fleshly body in relation to the virtual body, in Telematic Dreaming, communicate through movement and that the encounter between these two bodies could be seen as a process of becoming. Thus presence is a process of movement which disappears while it emerges, performance art could, in its relation to the new phenonemen of reperformance, be understood in terms of presence, in that which continues to be born, in constant movement and transformation.