‘The Performance Re-enactment Society’

The Darkside 03: Tom Marshman and Clare Thornton. Sunday 2nd December, 4 – 9pm, Arnolfini Theatre, FREE.

‘The Performance Re-enactment Society’

Tom Marshman and Clare Thornton have a mission - to breathe new life into performance archives through an evening of re-enactment and ‘tableau vivant’. Marshman and Thornton want to hear from ticket rippers, ushers, back-stage crew, box office staff - all those who help to create the magic on stage (and that includes the audience)! We salute the unsung heroes. We ask you to step out from the darkness and join in the fun of recreating a memorable performance moment - a moment that you have witnessed on stage, at Arnolfini or any other performance and music venue. We invite participants to remember or invent a favourite moment and to recreate it for a photograph. These images will be collated at the end of the event and added to the Arnolfini Archive.

We are dedicated to rendering your performance memories live once more. All welcome, come with your memories and we will provide the rest.


Things To Do With Books: A Do-It-Yourself Exhibition

Done any good books lately? As part of the show The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey, the Performance Re-enactment Society (PRS) invites you to take part in a series of enactments in response to the book works in the exhibition. Over five occasions they will carry out a selection of instruction-based works with you, realising other people’s art and creating original versions. Drop in or sign-up for this series of free events.

The Performance Re-enactment Society is an occasional collective of artists, archivists and researchers, who use documents and memories to revive past art experiences and create them anew. Their collaborative performance re-enactments are acts of conservation and transform past works into new events.

In its current constellation the PRS are Paul Clarke, Clare Thornton, Tom Marshman (all Arnolfini We Live Here Associate Artists), with participants and guests.

The Performance Re-enactment Society invites you to donate your performance memories - a specific moment from a live artwork that moved or inspired you as a spectator, made a deep impact on your practice, your thinking, your view of the world. The Society will draw on your memories to create a photographic installation and performance.

For The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow we are initiating a work that necessitates the participation and physical contribution of delegates and the public. This symposium will gather together a regional, national and international body of practitioners, researchers, producers, curators, funders and audiences of performance art. Every delegate carries within them memories of performances experienced in days, months, years gone by. We want to make this embodied “archive” of performance memories publicly accessible. We will attempt to “capture and conserve” your memories and explore new ways in which to revive, document and collect personal recollections of live art events.

We would like you to focus in on a particular moment or image from a memorable performance. We’d like you to think about a physical object, article of clothing or prop that might help in the recreation of that moment, and where possible bring that element with you to the symposium.

Please email us in advance and tell us the name of the performance work, the artist, and the key physical element(s) that you will bring with you to the symposium. On your arrival at the symposium you will be invited to deposit this physical element with us and book in your performance memory appointment.

During the symposium we will attempt to re-stage with you tableaux of the high points from performance art history, held in our collective memory, and produce a series of new works to camera, original performance photographs. Your performance memory will be accessioned and donated to the Performance Re-enactment Society collection, from which the photographic exhibition Untitled Performance Stills and a responsive Exhibition Tour of Remembered Performances will be curated. We invite you to take the place of the performer, perhaps the performer you have admired or always wanted to be.

Email us at: performance.re.enactment.society@googlemail.com
Places are limited and booking is essential. We look forward to hearing from you.

Clare Thornton, Tom Marshman, Paul Clarke
Performance Re-enactment Society
Here is our facebook group you can join


OPA 0.2 (on performance art) Re-Think/ Re-use/ Re-make: Propositions and Possibilities on contemporary performance art
Art-Athina, Athens, Thurs 21 May 2009
PRS will perform a score, a collage of pre-existing, pre-selected instructional actions. Drawing on seminal fluxus and fluxus inspired texts and scores we are interested in playful disruption, activation and participation through performance re-enactment.
“Books are not for repeated reading but should be used to do other things” Gilles Deleuze
On 7 March 2009 Juliet and Romeo will be performed by Tom Marshman and Clare Thornton, co-founders of the Performance Reenactment Society at the South London Gallery.