In the age of mechanical and especially digital reproduction, the factual and material presence of the artwork is very relative. It is no longer truly necessary to be close to the real work in order to study it, interpret it or aesthetically appreciate it. Every act of theatre seems to form an exception to this instance. Of course, the theatrical performance can be reproduced in film (or in words or images), but everyone will agree that watching these documents will never be a true match to the experience of sitting in the theatre. Exactly this architectural domain of the theatre is of importance here, even more so than the formal characteristics of the medium of the theatre.

The importance of the place where the artwork is revealed and for which it is made can be shown by comparing the theatre with its two derivatives: the installation and the performance. Both installation and performance art have nothing to do with the theatre. They are made for, and in reaction to, the museum. The inevitably spatial installation ‘installs’ a space in a space: it establishes and settles itself as a new space in the already existing space of the museum. Even when the installation is made for the public space, and not for the museum as an enclosed building in stricto sensu, the installation reproduces a much smaller version of the already existing – and nowadays nearly global – sphere of art. The same goes for the performance: an artist decides to make a work of art with his own body. He or she moves and behaves temporarily as a ‘normal’ person could move. But the artist is not a normal person, since he or she works inside the museum – or rather, the Museum, understood as the art world.