Interperformance

Abstract

The affective power of live display is a key aspect of the nineteenth-century performative genre known as tableaux vivants, literally, “living pictures.” Typically, performances would involve enacting masterpieces of sculpture and painting or the staging of moral and literary themes. Although the popularity of tableaux vivants waned in the early twentieth century, there are vital continuities and parallels with contemporary performance works. What persists in recent tableau performances are specific dimensions of living display as vehicles of affect, aspiration, and sensorial engagement. Yet there are significant distinctions as well. While the aesthetic staging of traditional tableaux vivants involved the unidirectional communication of symbolic representations, the contemporary tableau performances discussed here constitute zones of interperformance by which the terrain of fixed representation is transformed.

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