Dear Delegate,

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