‘We do not ask, ‘But is this Performance?’ because we are too busy asking, ‘So what is Performance if it includes this?’ … Emergency Index is useless to the circulation of commodities, whether in networks of performance-as-product, or artist-as-professional. The professional community that Index is answerable to, and made for, is the community of people who create, think about, and study performance.’
Emergency Index is an annual compendium of performance documentation submitted by artists (in this case, a self-selected term). The Index operates with a policy of radical inclusion, and the editorial voice lies in the standardised format for submission (one image, a limited text aimed at description and not evaluation, details such as date, location and duration, etc.). The project was directly inspired by High Performance’s ‘Artist’s Chronicle’ section, and it pays serious attention to histories of performance while also seriously questioning any claim to singular authority.
Emergency Index site
http://www.emergencyindex.com/
Emergency Index page on publishers Ugly Duckling Presse’s site
http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/?pubID=307
Something Other 