Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Performative is not a word made up by the champagne-drinking folk at some cocktail party for some flash-in-the-pan sensation by a well-healed Los Angeles art gallery with caviar served on silver trays by Peterosian! But it does signify work in which the acts of creation and technique are as much part of the celebration and oration of the work as what we can appreciate with our vision, alone.
per·for·ma·tive [per-fawr-muh-tiv]
adjective Philosophy, Linguistics
(of an expression or statement) performing an act by the very fact of being uttered, as with the expression “I promise,” that performs the act of promising.
noun
a performative utterance. Compare constative.
Origin: 1950–55; perform + -ative
So when did you first find this word? It's used in our discussion of Gillian Wearing. Who else's photography is performative? We don't see it in Edward Weston's shells, even though the balancing of the shells was painstakingly achieved with no less effort than the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceilings!
Edward Weston: Shell, 1927 IS
Silver Gelatin Photograph
"The hour is late, the light is failing, I
could not expose another film. So there
stands my camera focused, trained like
a gun, commanding the shells not to
move a hair's breath. And death to anyone
who jars out of place what I know shall be
a very important negative."
Edward Weston - The Daybooks
The beauty of Weston's compositions and mastery of the photographic medium dismiss even the slightest notion of what went into the print. Actually, there's more performance built into every aspect of this simple photograph that almost any other photographer, one can name. Weston spent weeks, consumed all day, balancing shells. He terrorized his family with insistence that everyone creep around less his compositions shift as he waited for the right window light! But all that is ante image-making. The performance nature of the image is utterly imperceptible. We experience just joy and awe in the finely crafted silver gelatin print! So can I say of Weston's work, it's not observable as performative, just superb! Perhaps technically brilliant photography cannot be "performative", but no doubt someone can find examples to the contrary!
Asher
per·for·ma·tive [per-fawr-muh-tiv]
adjective Philosophy, Linguistics
(of an expression or statement) performing an act by the very fact of being uttered, as with the expression “I promise,” that performs the act of promising.
noun
a performative utterance. Compare constative.
Origin: 1950–55; perform + -ative
So when did you first find this word? It's used in our discussion of Gillian Wearing. Who else's photography is performative? We don't see it in Edward Weston's shells, even though the balancing of the shells was painstakingly achieved with no less effort than the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceilings!
Edward Weston: Shell, 1927 IS
Silver Gelatin Photograph
"The hour is late, the light is failing, I
could not expose another film. So there
stands my camera focused, trained like
a gun, commanding the shells not to
move a hair's breath. And death to anyone
who jars out of place what I know shall be
a very important negative."
Edward Weston - The Daybooks
The beauty of Weston's compositions and mastery of the photographic medium dismiss even the slightest notion of what went into the print. Actually, there's more performance built into every aspect of this simple photograph that almost any other photographer, one can name. Weston spent weeks, consumed all day, balancing shells. He terrorized his family with insistence that everyone creep around less his compositions shift as he waited for the right window light! But all that is ante image-making. The performance nature of the image is utterly imperceptible. We experience just joy and awe in the finely crafted silver gelatin print! So can I say of Weston's work, it's not observable as performative, just superb! Perhaps technically brilliant photography cannot be "performative", but no doubt someone can find examples to the contrary!
Asher