Performance art temporalities: relationships between Museum, University, and Theatre

This article addresses the places performance art occupies and how the variable futures of this art form are influenced by different practices of preservation. The temporal inscription of performance artworks has repercussions in the relationship this art form has with the physical and conceptual spaces it occupies, and in the management of art collections that include them. Analysis of performance art's temporalities will lead to a discussion of the spaces this genre has been occupying in artistic institutions. This article explores the values held by these spaces, and proposes new ways of understanding them, especially in the relationship between university, museum, and theatre. This triad discussed by Jan Nederveen Pieterse in 1997 will serve as an analogy to reflect upon issues related to presenting and preserving performance art. In this context, performance art pieces, artistic projects, and curatorial programmes from the Portuguese panorama will be presented as example.