Let’s apply this to a large-scale public "happening"—a music festival with 50,000 attendees.
To "fix" the event is to preserve its memory, but it often erases the actual "feeling" of the event. The photograph of a riot is not the riot; the recording of a concert is not the acoustic vibration of the room. The Viewer’s Role: index of the happening fixed
is a sign that cannot exist without the presence of the thing it signifies. If we consider history as a series of happenings, the "index of the happening fixed" refers to the artifacts and narratives we use to pin down the past. In philosophy Let’s apply this to a large-scale public "happening"—a