At the last Paris Fashion Week, See by Chloé created a stir with its invitation-only online catwalk show. No more front row politics here. Buyers and fashion editors watched the fashion house's latest creations on their computers and smartphones, while the production itself was taking place, audience-free, in a Parisian studio. It might seem like a cost-cutting, slightly geeky experiment, but initiatives of this kind might genuinely transform the idea of the "live" experience. Unlike a live television broadcast, web streaming allows for a sophisticated relationship between the show providers and their public, who can not only be invited, but also respond to what they see, share it with like-minded contacts, and even interact directly with the various actors involved. Paradoxically, performers and audience might become closer when physically separated.
Last night Tate jumped on the online live performance bandwagon with the first show in their new series BMW Tate Live. French choreographer and dancer Jérôme Bel performed an adapted version of his 1997 "Shirtology" piece in a locked room at Tate Modern. The door policy was more democratic than at Chloé's, and all web users were invited to enter the "performance room" online. Spectators, at the gallery like anywhere else in the world, watched the performance on a screen. "I did wonder at the beginning whether the artists would think this is a very weird idea," Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance Catherine Wood told ARTINFO UK. "But as soon as we talked to Jérôme, he said: 'It's perfect! I've been rehearsing my dances by Skype.' For him it felt like a natural extension." Over the next three years, BMW Tate Live will commission five performances a year. Pablo Bronstein, Harrell Fletcher, Joan Jonas, and Emily Roysdon are soon to follow Bel in the performance room.
While the web enables endless formatting options, the performances at Tate will be filmed with just one camera, putting the focus on the action rather than on the technology. "How do you graft the purest, concrete space of the white cube to the network through the simplest means?" asked Wood. "It was the idea of the fourth wall of the white cube turned into a camera, and giving it this interface onto the screen. The set up is kind of like some kids performing in their bedroom for their webcam meets Bruce Nauman in the 1960s and 1970s performing for the camera in the studio."
After last night's performance, Bel answered questions on Twitter and Facebook. "The development of technology has transformed people’s approach to art," said Tate director Chris Dercon. "Audiences today expect more interaction, participation, and personalization than ever before. BMW Tate Live will answer this need." It will also, crucially, continue to develop Tate as a global brand with a worldwide audience (that BMW is clearly keen to impress). Many Tate "users" have never set foot in Britain. The figures speak for themselves: last year, while 7,450,000 people visited one of the four Tate galleries, 19,427,000 logged onto the website, and that number is likely to continue to grow with the launch of a new website next year. Watching performers on a screen might not be as rewarding as being able to feel their presence in the room, and, some will argue, can't superseded it, but online live art can be shared by thousands rather than hundreds.
The challenge is to not sacrifice quality for quantity. Does Wood fear that, with this new format, something of the live experience might be lost? "I was more interested in what we would gain, " she answered. "The question of live versus recorded, and the whole thing about how much performance documentation is the work and how much it is a record of the work, is already part of the debate about performance. Those things were already quite blurred with the aesthetic of narcissism in the 1960s. But it's getting so much more blurred now by the way people use their iPhone, and Skype. Live-ness is inherently mediated by technology in the world we live in now. There will always be a place for just a person in a room and a live audience, but I think this is part of the evolution of performance art that we can't ignore."
A version of this article first appeared on ARTINFO UK.