Image as Icon: Recognising the Enigma’ by Tracey Warr

Image as Icon Recognising the Enigma by Tracey WarrIn Tracey Warrs essay, Image as Icon Recognising the Enigma, she identifies and discusses quaternary discourses of act picture takingthe memorandum, the exposure, the simulacrum and the consist actand what is at stake in these discourses is the the true.What she describes as contradictory and contentious in the midst of the discourses, I guess what she has shown is the different ways in which picture taking is utilised and read as a medium for documenting and presenting a live performance. Although these photographs may offer themselves as an accurate record of the all the samet, or the complete faithfulness, Warr shows how incomplete, though necessary, photography is in characterisation the experience of the live performance.Adrian George offers a loose explanation of live performance art as primarily consisting of a brio human presencea body (or bodies) in space and at a specific moment, or for a definite period. Wha t is baffling about performance art is that just about people expect to turn over art in a traditional sense, which is an art object. Performances do non have a fixed referential basis, some(prenominal) akin Robert Smithsons earthwork, whorl Jetty 1970, whose spiral formation no yearner exists physically due to erosion by the sea. Because performances and works like Spiral Jetty continue to exist only through an accumulation of authentication and discourse documenting these works change by reversal very meaning(a) in placing them in a historical context.In Warrs discourses of performance photography as the document and the simulacra, we have what appear to be two polarising discoursesthe existing certainty and the simulation however, her development of both discourses arrives at similar conclusions about truth telling. Warr defines the discourse of the document as the image performing the role of materialist evidence and verificationshowing us exactly what happened so w e open fire know it trance the discourse of the simulacra explores fakery, the performative and representation. According to Susan Sontag, unlike writing or even paintings and drawings which are perceived as interpretations, the photograph is perceived not so much as statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. However, both Warr and Sontag let on the myth that the photograph is objective or factual. The performance is filtered through the photographer and television tv camera through the attend of framing, cropping and composing the photograph.Then there is the process of choosing the best photographs to represent the entire performance, which Warr points out are usually the most composed photographs. In addition to this process of reduction, the experience of sound, time, space, and often the reference are missing from the photograph. The photograph as document is exposed, so to speak, as being like the simulacra , a mere representation or a simulationthe document is a construction. In reference to Hans Namuths photographs depicting capital of Mississippi Pollock painting, Fred Orton and Griselda Pollocks pose the question how far does the photographer document what happened and how far does he or she create the documented phenomenon?Although Namuths photographs can be read as historical documents of the painter, Warr points out that these images are real Namuth and Pollock staging Pollock. Another question that could be asked is how much does the artist perform for the audience and how much does the artist perform for the camera? Many performances during the 60s and 70s are crossbreed performance photography which were performed especially for the camera as opposed to a live audience.This kind of performance photography subverts the function of the photograph as an objective, unobtrusive document as the hybrid performance photography blatantly uses the camera as an accomplice to point it s performance.Hybrid performance photography also subverts the central idea in the discourse of the live act. In this discourse, documentation is relegated to a mere subordinate status while the live performance itself is primary, cathartic, witnessed and ontological. Here, documentation is supposititious to be as unobtrusive as possible because the most important aspect is the interaction between the performer and the audience, an aspect that comes from the traditions of the theatre.However, trying to induce the experience of the interaction between the performer and the audience is problematic as not only is the photograph incomplete as a truth teller as mentioned already moreover the sweetheart of the photograph cannot come in with the performance. During the live performance, there is an opportunity for the audience to react with a material response but when viewing the performance through a photograph, the viewer is already in interpretation mode. Trying to decipher wheth er or not the photograph of Chris Burdens nail-scarred hands in Trans-fixed 1999 is real or staged is an example of being in the interpretation mode.Because the live performance lacks a fixed referent, the performance photograph itself is liable to become an picture. Here, the photograph functions beyond just a mere document or a staged image. In this discourse of performance photography, the icon presents us with a manifestation of the unknowable and an encounter with that manifestation in a state of belief. Warr points out that the role of the photograph as an icon is riddled with contradictions and compromise. The icon is both indexical and documentary, presenting itself as evident evidence but in doing so it also compromises it status as a manifestation of an unknowable to be believedconjuring up issues of fakery. The icon is a paradox because the iconic must be universally beaten(prenominal) and enigmatic, or the known and the unknowable. In the world of art, the photographs of Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuysimages of two famous and well-known artistsare as much icons as are their artwork.Warrs exploration of the four discourses presents contradictions between the discourses but at times they also complement each other. However, all four discourses point to the conclusion that even performance photography, like the art object, has no fixed meaning nor is there a fixed relationship between photography and performance. As Warr has shown us, it is a relationship that is highly complex.