On the Matter of Memory in the Ontology of Performance: Performance and Its Afterlife in Jérôme Bel’s Cour d’honneur (2013)

This study explores the ontology of performance through the lens of disappearance, proposing that performance exists as an entity within memory. It argues that understanding performance as a form of disappearance does not render it void or meaningless; instead, it suggests that performance virtually persists as an image of a present/absent object within an atemporal unconscious, manifesting as an alternate present. To substantiate this claim, the study draws on Peggy Phelan’s theory in Unmarked, which frames performance as an effort to value the non-productive and non-metaphorical, grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-structuralist deconstructivist thought. It then examines André Lepecki’s perspective on Phelan’s performance ontology, which emphasizes the concept of the potential present of performance as shaped by memory. Additionally, it engages with the Bergsonian understanding of memory as a virtual state that supplements the real. This duality of memory as having fidelity to the past and shaping the present is applied to the concept of representation in theater and performance, highlighting the parallels between performance and memory. Anchored in this theoretical framework, the study examines Jérôme Bel’s audience-participatory metatheatrical performance, Cour d’honneur (2013). This study examines how the notion that performance exists as memory is explored in a meta-theatrical manner in this work, thereby situating the discourse on performance as memory within contemporary art and establishing a foundation for future research on the ontology of performance.