Saving the "Live"? Re-performance and Intangible Cultural Heritage

In this essay, Diana Taylor revisits her distinction between archive and performance. She analyses the weaknesses of attempts to keep performances alive when they risk becoming canonical, hence contradicting an essential feature of the repertoire. Retracing the rhetorical entanglements surrounding the emergence of UNESCO s concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage, she exposes the political and economic ramifications behind the institutional framing. She also acknowledges the power of disruption of economic forces in contexts where the aesthetic and cultural dimensions seem to prevail, turning performance into a product. She exposes the marketing ploys in Marina Abramović s re-performances and MoMA installation "The Artist is Present," arriving at an artistic result far removed from its claims to authenticity and presence.