A Live

What is ‘Live’ in the context of art and performance? I would posit that for an experience to be considered ‘live’ it involves a simultaneous shared space and time between an action and a spectator.

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Peggy Phelan states that the life of a performance is only ‘in the present.’[1] And argues that liveness is defined by its ephemerality, its quality of disappearance and non-reproductivity. Even when a staged theatre production is repeated multiple times over many weeks or months, the elements of the performance itself will inevitably be different at each showing.

A quality of Liveness relies on semiotic and phenomenological individual interpretation, and could be defined as a limited and liminal experience, evoking an individualised reaction, and considering how we relate to the body in simultaneous space and time.

Phelan writes that Liveness ‘hinges absolutely on the sense of seeing oneself and of being seen as Other.’[2] Which, for me, reflects previous discussions on performativity and theatricality: Liveness is the experiential interpretation of filling the space between self and other.

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However, to trouble this quality of Liveness, Philip Auslander discusses whether a mediatized ‘live’ still qualifies, if the reflection of Phelan’s ‘gaze’ is a critical quality for Liveness. Interestingly he notes that Live performance is a very recent concept: Live is only understood in opposition to media or recorded experience. Auslander writes that ‘the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest examples of the word “live” in reference to performance come from the mid-1930’s…’[3]

If Liveness is a sense of a simultaneity, then even televised work such as The Great British Bake Off could be considered in conjunction with this quality of Liveness, in that it is an event experienced concurrently across a community, who are connected, not by proximity, but through the immediate interventions provided by other forms of media, such as Twitter.

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#GBBO is a trending hashtag on Twitter during the broadcast.

Where, then, is the Live located? Liveness may be considered to reside not in the ‘object’ but in the ‘subject’ – therefore is Live a matter of subject position? Can a ‘live’ experience be the experience of an individual in an art gallery, sitting in front of a piece of sculpture?

Phelan writes that ‘Performance implicates the real through the presence of living bodies.’[4] If, as Phelan’s argument goes, Liveness is defined by shared proximity, shared space, and shared time, then Auslander’s claim that ‘television’s essential properties as a medium are immediacy and intimacy.’[5] throws this position into doubt since even live television provides a sense of closeness and connection with the performer: a nearness that would not be possible for attendees at the given space of performance. However if Liveness relies on a reciprocal gaze then can even live television really be considered Live, since there is no conversation between performer and audience taking place?

Both writers agree that ‘Live performance now often incorporates mediatization such that the live event itself is a product of media technologies.’[6] Theatre has always made use of current media and technological practises in an attempt to enhance, not mask, the Live occurrence. This experience might be, in Auslander’s opinion, subsumed into the recorded, but without the Live, the record cannot exist. In a negative view, however the use of media in the Live creates a sort of ‘hyper-reality’ wherein the Live and recorded work in tandem to create an event which is more like a mediatized production than a Live one. Phelan writes that ‘institutions must invent an economy not based on preservation but one which is answerable to the consequences of disappearance.’[7] The difficulty in this, though, lies in the concept of cultural capital: theatre and performance relies on reproduction in order to be quantified in a commercialised economy. In a materialistic culture, is the Live is merely a package for future record and mediatisation?

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Liveness foregrounds the I/Eye: I feel that it is a state of reaction, emotion and individual interpretation. It is phenomenological rather than theoretical: happening in the ‘here and now’. However, if the present can only be experienced as a series of disappearing moments, can anything be ever happening in the ‘now’ since the ‘now’ as we assimilate it is always in the past? Liveness is an attempt to display this possibility and capture the impossible by moving through a disappearing moment. To experience the Live in a constant Now.

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[1] Peggy Phelan, ‘The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction’, in UnMarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.146.

[2] Peggy Phelan, ‘The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction’, in UnMarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.161.

[3] Philip Auslander, ‘Live Performance in a Mediatized Culture’, in Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.53.

[4] Peggy Phelan, ‘The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction’, in UnMarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.148.

[5] Philip Auslander, ‘Live Performance in a Mediatized Culture’, in Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.15.

[6] Philip Auslander, ‘Live Performance in a Mediatized Culture’, in Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.24.

[7] Peggy Phelan, ‘The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction’, in UnMarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.165.