Tra performance e documento: la dialettica del live al museo

From the 1970s to the early 2000s, performance art entered museum collections primarily through photographs, films, videos, and relics. These supplementary materials provided performance with a permanence and materiality it was perceived to lack, thus enabling its commodification, collection, and exhibition. The central role of documentation in the preservation of performance art sparked debate about the legitimacy of these representations and their ability to effectively record and convey an art form often understood as inherently ephemeral and embodied. Since the early 2000s, performance theorists such as Rebecca Schneider and Diana Taylor have argued that performance does not require documentation to endure. Instead, it can remain through body-to-body transmission and be reenacted. At the same time, leading international museums have begun collecting live performances and developing new models for preserving live art. This article explores a dialectic that shapes the transmission of live performance. The hypothesis is that a rigid separation between performance and documentation is neither tenable nor productive. Rather, live performance can mirror the dialectic of documentation, oscillating between the pursuit of authenticity and the ongoing transformation of the work.