St. Laurent's work re-enacts and also becomes a part of history. He feels his work "is a comment on contemporary situations for a brief period of time…and that most of [his] work [should be] either ephemeral or destroyed after exhibition."8 Documentation for St. Laurent is represented by evidence of the costume left behind. Works according to St. Laurent are documented out of the galleries necessity and need for an object, even though the documentation may have nothing to do with the original intent of the performed work. St. Laurent prefers his work reside within the specific space and time of its production. The notion of 'space-time' is taken from Doreen Massey's Space-time and the Politics of Location essay in which she claims that individuals "are always creating not just space, but a geography of our lives, a space-time for our lives."9 This idea is suggests only a specific space and time can sustain the work and its relevance since St. Laurent's works are site specific and are designed a specific time and place, he falls easily under Massey's concept. Within this paradigm through, St. Laurent's actions extend to specific communities and are imposed on a local community in an effort to question local and embedded histories as represented through a statue and/or other projected concepts present in the community.

Once the outside space-time of the production disappears, the work loss its immediate function. St. Laurent's Time 100 Pole (2003) drew from "a poll conducted in the United States asking people who they though the ten most influential leaders of the 20th century were". St. Laurent took this information and found corresponding signatures for each figure, creating large scale sculptures out of each10. These works were then hung on the gallery wall with some signatures being recognizable while others were more difficult to identify. Either way a discourse unfolded related to the viewer's memory of that individual. Time 100 Pole was geographically specific and as such functioned better in North America. Europeans were not familiar with certain names, such as Billy Graham, a strong religious voice in America and one of the signatures St. Laurent used

St. Laurent's performance works exists in a discourse created around the work and this may be similar to the historical passing of oral stories from one generation to the next. Story-telling once existed as a part of a shared experience. The stories told from generation to the next and did not rely on physical documentation to validate the truth of them. The storytelling process utilizes the oral document to relate the circumstances of a given event in the same way performance art relies on community to share their thoughts or experiences and does not rely on physical relics. St. Laurent and Morris' performance works both relate to the oral traditions of story-telling due to the lack of a physical object being produced to verify the story. Rather, the generation of discourse that surrounds the performance or story is what is secured and sought. This work is disseminated and activated through the viewers and not through the object left over from the performance, be that a video and/or a prop.

Jason St. Laurent's work initiates public discourse through the incorporation of concepts wherein he attempts to comment on ideas about politics, reasons behind histories and the criteria for public monument creation. St. Laurent's actions bring his subjects into the contemporary realm and re-activate these with layers of new meaning and/or social references. St. Laurent's practice attempts to use himself as an intermediary between the viewer, the work, and its associated meanings.. Thus the work opens up and becomes more accessible in a manner in which the viewer is forced to ask questions of themselves and of those around themselves. This process leads to an expanded discourse where the performance continues to de construct the traditions of performance art. The performance remains alive in the minds of the local community whereas it becomes an object or descriptive art object located in the gallery. St. Laurent's performance works stay resides in a unique binary where "art does not get more contemporary than the kind that lives in the moment."11

Footnotes:
7 Ibid
8 Ibid
9 Massey, Doreen. "Space-time and the Politics of Location." Architectural Design. 68 March/April 1998: 34
10 Busby
11 Email interview