Temporal Drag – Scores for Memory: Reflections on an Interview with Christina Kubisch

Abstract

Focused on Christina Kubisch’s performance art works in the1970s, the article gives an account of Kubisch’s interview with Clélia Barbut, recorded during the artist’s exhibition at the Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes, Échos magnétiques, in spring 2019. It also aims at questioning the intertwining of oral narratives and material mediums like scripts photographs, stating with Kubisch that “there is always a score”. Relying both on her memories and documentation of the works, three of Kubisch’s performative pieces from the 1970s are analysed: Emergency Solos (1974–75), Two and Two (1975–76), and “Écouter les murs” (1981–82). Several themes are characteristic in her approach, like flood or exhaustion, and the article questions how these resonate in art history, arguing that performance art entangled archives invite us to make use of “temporal drags”.