AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The artist Yve Laris Cohen installed and performed his work, Studio/Theater, at the Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 2022. Using the charred and twisted remains of the Doris Duke Theatre, destroyed during a devastating fire at the dance center Jacob’s Pillow, Laris Cohen created a kinetic sculpture and architectural installation for the museum’s performance studio. In a series of alternating performances, Preservation and Conservation, the artist set the sculpture in motion while conversing with performers in a series of interviews. The Preservation cast included the Jacob’s Pillow archivist, a former director of the center, and the architect of the burned building. Preservation explored how choreography and dance performance are recorded and transmitted, and the role of place within history and stewardship. The Conservation cast included the conservators and co-authors Zycherman, Marincola, and Kroll Hassebroek; a theater consultant who had worked on the MoMA studio; and a gastroenterologist. Their conversations consisted of sequential individual interviews that were unique to each performance; Laris Cohen rarely repeated his questions over the course of the twelve performances, and never in the same way. Cast members were not privy to conversations other than their own and were asked not to discuss their responses with other members of the cast during the run of the show to avoid cross “contamination” of answers. The unexpected became the norm: the artist and other performers were constantly surprised by what one asked and the other answered, and (in retrospect) by the common themes that nevertheless emerged between interviews and across performances.

The artist organized a detailed plan for preservation of the work that reinforced and intertwined with its central themes. The plan included a court reporter recording every performance on an antique stenography machine, transcriptions generated from those steno notes, and the stewardship of the sculptural materials themselves: over one ton of metal and wood theater fragments. Laris Cohen’s careful plans, however, were upended by an unfortunate series of events. This talk will present Studio/Theater as considered a year later by its creator and some of its actants. We will address: what is the relation between documentation - in this case, still photography and a single video recording of the dress rehearsal - and preservation of the work? Can a conservator act as collaborator and component in a work of art, and also function as a conservator of the work? How did the novel role of performer impact the conservators’ professional perspectives, particularly when encountering the unexpected? and how does the artist now regard the preservation and conservation of his fragile and complex work of art?