August 05, 2004
On Categorization (herein)
Networked Performance Categories
For those of you who read Sara Diamond’s “Hello, Hello! A short history of networked performance art” in issue 13 of HorizonZero, Bruce Barber's definition of performance will be familiar. It’s inclusive, perhaps some will think too inclusive.
Barber "proposes performance as an engaged and committed task of acting on culture. ‘The task’ he says ‘ becomes restorative and critical’. "
As we struggle to set up categories for the works included on this blog, (hoping to make it easier for people to find works that interest them), we find ourselves struggling without much conviction. Networked performance--an area where borders are porous, dividing lines broken or to be broken, and territories redrawn or to be redrawn. All in process. Why categories then?
In this state of ongoing transformations, Barber’s proposal is welcome.
The categories on this blog evolved from the following thoughts -- to create categories that reflect:
1) how artists label their own work
2) a continuum with existing labels and practice
3) an intent to focus on the space in-between established practice.
With the latter, this also determined that entries would be catalogued in one or more applicable categories.
Now that a volume of content is amassing , the questions becomes one of utility. Are the intentions of the structural methodology overrun by the manifestation of similarities between categories and made confusing and/or meaningless? Or conversely, does the multiplicity of cataloguing enrich the cross-listing/cross-referencing?
We would like your response.
Posted by newradio at August 5, 2004 08:40 PM
