Abstract

This chapter is about a performance art work that I remixed using video footage from the 1970s to generate a dialog with my former self. In Two Minds began straightforwardly enough in the winter of 1978 when I first performed it at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. At that time I had no intention of presenting it again over 30 years later. In its current form in 2014 its claim to a place within remix culture rests on the extent to which the live performance reframes the work’s original meanings and intentions into a new and convincing whole. Unlike many of my previous performance pieces from the Seventies, this one was documented (Figure 41.1). Previously I had rigidly adhered to the tenets of performance art, which driven by its bid to distinguish itself from theater, had two key rules. The first was that there should be no repeat performance; the second was that there must be no documentation, or, as I realize now looking at the grainy black and white negatives from that night in 1978, at least no decent documentation.