The Live Documentation Lab: The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow

A collaboration between Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth University, Falmouth University (incorporating Dartington College of Art) and artist Marina Abramović. The project launched the Marina Abramović Institute, then in its preliminal and opening phases. The project investigates performance reconfiguration and conservation through documentation in relation to collaborative encounters between audience and artist(s). The Live Documentation Lab was initiated and led by Gillian Wylde (Falmouth University), Tim Dollimore, Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley (Falmouth University), and Siobhan McKeown (University of Plymouth) to address explore future possibilities of performance art concerned with temporality and duration. LDL documented the ‘The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow’ performances by six international artists and collectives, which took place at The Slaughterhouse and Plymouth Art Gallery in Plymouth (January 2010).

This project questions the camera in relation to documentation, performativity and postproduction procedures. A context of immediacy and ‘liveness’ emphasised approaches to camerawork that involve close observation, representation and gradated objectivity. Much of the project involved events or conditions that could not be predetermined. This situation between the ‘known’ and the ‘unknown’ has been key in recent research projects; projects have favoured ‘in the moment’ approaches which question the necessary durations inclinations, hunches, accidents and mistakes.