Opinions...

Modern recording and archiving means that all performing arts can be or are plastic arts, art forms that are not only substantial but can be manipulated by their medium, for example remixing in music.

Performing arts thrive on directly provoking thoughts and emotions in any viewer/listener etc. They are more on the nose. These thoughts and emotions are very strongly timestamped as well as attached to place. We change but recorded performance doesn't.

Digital technology means infinite replication. It is equally easy to call up any work from any period. The past no longer recedes as it used to.

This creates a problem for performing art. There is no need for it anymore. We have enough already. Most successful new works set out to very deliberately remind us of past works, an obvious example is film is now dominated by zombie franchises.

Is the way round this, as Walter Benjamin once described Franz Kafka, to think in eons instead of epochs, refer less to time and place, use fewer specifics and more archetypes, less art of recognition more of alienation?

Who effin knows, eh?

Picture from here..