Messages in bottles: documented performance and performative photography in Romanian art during late socialism

This text analyses specific type of Romanian performances that were produced in order to be looked at and to be circulated as photographs during the 1970s and 80s. Contrary to the live and ephemeral character of performance art, after 1971, harsh political, economic and cultural conditions forced performance art into the private sphere, again entailing the necessity of self-historicization and self-promotion. A context like this transformed photography from a documentary evidence into a conceptual medium that could circulate as an object. The author proposes several categories according to which photography functioned as an iconic supplement of the missing action, and an attempt to reveal and question on how photographic images re-enact the past event for the contemporary observer. However, the text argues that, despite the important influence of social and institutional conditions of production, these artworks focused primarily on the artistic process and its aesthetic autonomy, and less on a political agenda beyond them.