Talk - Collecting Performance: The Material Afterlives of Live Works

Art historian Pierre Saurisse explores how performance art lives on through objects, and how these physical works have entered collections.
About this Event

How does performance generate physical works? And how do these works have entered collections, whether public or private? This talk follows the surprising afterlives of live art through photographs and videos, but also relics, drawings, reconstructions and objects. From Chris Burden, Gina Pane and Marina Abramović to Regina José Galindo and other artists, we will trace the development of artistic practices and markets around works arising from performance. Taking on lives of their own, these objects may serve as reminders of a live event, sometimes in multiple forms. But they also extend it, adding new meanings and dimensions through their material presence.

This event is free to attend but you must register for a ticket.

Pierre Saurisse is Senior Lecturer on the MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. He has written extensively on contemporary art and presented his research at international conferences. He is the author of La Mécanique de l’imprévisible [Mechanics of the Unpredictable], a study of art and chance in the 1960s. His latest book, Performance in the Museum (Lund Humphries, 2025), traces the key stages in the incorporation of performance into museums from the 1960s to the present day.

Image credit: Alice Anderson