In 1997 Amelia Jones wrote her article ‘Presence’ in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation for Art Journal. This can be found on http://art.usf.edu/File_Uploads/Presence.pdf

While I agree with most of Jones’ points – particularly that immediacy is, precisely, a modernist (and also clearly avant-garde) dream within the cyber age, I cannot agree wholly with her belief that a live audience is a non essential factor, that the photograph is the necessary component to prove something has happened. Of course words like’ truth’ and ‘reality’ can no more liberally be thrown around within a live performance than when viewing a photograph of said performance, but live time does not cloud comprehension within histories/narratives/processes, it offers an alternative. Why should a live act trigger fewer associations than a document and what privileges something that can be packaged neatly into an art historical framework over something potentially breaking away? The camera was developed into a transportable device early in the twentieth century; it is a medium that will be tied to an era as a result, tied to the speed of its technological advancement. The live performance on the other hand has an endless future potential bound to but not reliant on a materiality.