Presented at ‘Performing (In)Visibility’
Midwest Interdisciplinary Conference
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
February 23-24, 2007
“My America. Without apology or prejudice. One flag, over all.” [1]
– Andres Serrano
“The performance is in the work.” [2]
– Hannah Arendt
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In starting with Arendt’s claim, her stating that ‘the performance is in the work,’ I’m setting up what follows for a quite task. After all, by making the claim that a performance is located in something is to agree to its physical presence or that the performance is somehow recorded. But doesn’t this go against the grain of performance’s ontology, that is, it disappears and doesn’t remain?