PERFORMING THE ARCHIVE: THE FUTURE OF THE PAST
This Great Western Research Project is hosted by the University of Bristol Theatre Collection’s Live Art Archives and Arnolfini Live’s archives and partnered with Exeter University Department of Drama. The project aims to develop the interrelationship and interactivity between the archives and communities of practitioners, scholars and audiences. Research will explore how academics and artists can use and re-use documents of past events, to inflect and inspire their own performance practice and their critical thinking or writing.
NEW PUBLICATION
Ephemera: Between Archival Objects and Events, by Paul Clarke and Julian Warren
Journal of the Society of Archivists, Volume 30, Issue 1 April 2009 , pages 45 - 66
Researchers can download a PDF from Informaworld
UPCOMING EVENTS
Next week Paul will be presenting
Untitled Performance Stills, with the
Performance Re-enactment Society and photographer Hugo Glendinning, as part of
The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow. The exhibition, durational performances and symposium are curated as a collaboration between Plymouth Arts Centre and Marina Abramovic.
The Performance Re-enactment Society and Hugo Glendinning gather together international practitioners, researchers, producers, curators, funders and audiences of performance art to form an archive of recollections of live art events. Each participant works with the Society to archive their memories of a past performance work that had a deep impact on them, recording their recollections and creating a still image that captures a memorable moment from the event. These playful re-enactments to camera place the audience in the frame and will be presented as new co-created works, alongside the memories participants have deposited in the collection.
Performance Re-enactment Society Facebook Group
Untitled Performance Stills
Thursday 21st, Friday 22 & Saturday 23 January
17.00 - 21.00
The Slaughterhouse, Royal William Yard, Plymouth
We invite you to donate your performance memories and create a performance photograph with us. Bring along any objects, costume or clothing you require to re-make this moment to camera.
Exhibition Tour of Remembered Works
Sunday 24 January
On the final day of the symposium and performances the Society will create a tour of The Slaughterhouse drawing on the works you remember, rather than those that are there.
Photographic Installation
26 January - 21 March
Invitation to join the PRS
PAST RESEARCH EVENTS
LIVE LABORATORY SYMPOSIUM
Part of
The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, Plymouth.
This presentation draws on Paul's work with the Performance Re-enactment Society and the Great Western Research project, 'Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past'. With reference to Marina Abramovic' 'Seven Easy Pieces', Eva and Franco Mattes, Lilibeth Cuenca and the work of Ian Forsythe and Jane Pollard, Paul will discuss the emergence of re-enactment as a creative strategy.
What role can re-enactment play, as a means by which past performances can be experienced by future generations, as an archival act or mode of conserving ephemeral artworks? Are these re-enactments of performances that have gone before, or enactments of documents, which use their traces as scores?
In a culture of remixing, open source, peer-to-peer, Creative Commons and copyleft there has been a significant generational turn towards what Lilibeth Cuenca called practices of 'recycling and sampling remains'. Paul discusses works that remediate, recontextualise and critically re-perform art-historical works in new contexts, rather than faithful attempts to return or reconstruct them.
Video of this panel, with Eva and Franco Mattes, chaired by Nick Kaye is streamed
here.
ARCHIVE/PRACTICE, Tanzarchiv Leipzig
Download PDF of this performance and lecture programme
INSIDE MOVEMENT KNOWLEDGE
Lab 3, DasArts, Amsterdam, 26-31 October 2009
Documentation of lab
DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION AND PERFORMANCE, 23 - 25th September
A 3-day series of seminars and workshops, funded by JISC
Traces the lifecycle of digital performance documentation from the creation of documentary resources to their delivery and use by researchers, artists and curators. Through the workshops we will collaboratively produce a Case Study of Paul Hurley’s Becoming-snail. For full
details.
NOTES ON A RETURN, 4 - 5th September
Paul Clarke presented at the symposium that concluded this innovative curatorial project around re-enactment, re-exhibition and intergenerational exchange. For further information
see.
ABANDONED PRACTICES: something out of the ordinary, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, 6 - 24 July
Visiting scholar at this new artist in residence performance institute, presented by Lin Hixson, Matthew Goulish and Mark Jeffery
For further information
Traditional and emerging formats of artists’ books: Where do we go from here?, UWE, Bristol, 9 - 10th July
The dialogue and slideshow by Julian Warren and Paul Clarke (as read by Clare Thornton of the Performance Re-enactment Society)
are available here.
Martha Wilson
From Presenter To Preserver: 30 Years At Franklin Furnace
Arnolfini, Wed 21 Jan, 6.30pm
Performance artist Martha Wilson is founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive Inc., a museum she established in her New York loft in 1976, which presents, preserves and champions temporal forms: performance art, temporary installation and artists' books. Martha Wilson will discuss the dilemmas of documenting performance and preserving time-based art, including works by Laurie Anderson, Gina Pane, William Pope.L, Karen Finley, Tehching Hsieh, Jenny Holzer and William Wegman. £6.00 / £4.00 concs. Further details
here.
re.act.feminism – performance art of the 1960s and 70s today
exhibition, video archive, live performances and conference
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Sun 25 Jan.
A paper on 'Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past', will be presented at the conference with which this exhibition closes. As part of a day with the theme, 'Performance, copyright and the archive'. Listen to the talk
here.
Cupola Bobber Discuss Their Work While Looking at Goat Island's Archive
Lecture Room, Dept of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol
Thursday 13 November 5.15pm
Cupola Bobber curated a selection of extracts from Goat Island works that resonate with, or have influenced their performance practice. Stephen Fiehn and Tyler Myers showed related clips from their own collaborative work and spoke around formal relationships, similarities or divergences of interest. This provided an opportunity to discuss ways in which performance practices or knowledges are passed-on, and transformed, through intergenerational exchange. This Department of Drama Research Event took place the day before Chicago's Cupola Bobber performed,
The Man Who Pictured Space from his Apartment, at Arnolfini. The text took the form of a correspondence, an ongoing letter-writing project, and is available here:
Cupola Bobber Discuss Their Work While Looking at Goat Island's Archive
Workshop:
Conserving and archiving ephemeral artworks
Ephemera:
Between Archival Objects and Events
An online conversation between Julian Warren (Arnolfini Archivist) and Paul Clarke (GWR Fellow on
Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past).
Archive Archive Archive II by Julie Bacon
Works Past To Present Dialogues
University of Exeter, Centre for Performance Histories
Research Fellowship
PAST PERFORMANCES, WORKS AND TEXTS
OVERLAP
BAC, London / BOV, Bristol, Burst / Mayfest, 16 May
A remote collaboration with
Tassos Stevens, performed simultaneously via a video link between BOV and BAC.
The instructions for this participatory re-make of West Side Story, between two locations, are available here:
OVERLAP. We invite you to carry out these instructions and do this work again elsewhere.
OPA 0.2 (on performance art) Re-Think/ Re-use/ Re-make: Propositions and Possibilities on contemporary performance art
Art-Athina, Athens, Thurs 21 May 2009
1. Performance: Ghosting OPA
An impossible group exhibition takes place in the gallery at Art Athina, simply through speaking, which will be collaboratively installed and displayed in each listener’s imagination. The gallery becomes a palimpsest, layered with fading traces of past exhibitions, cited from different times and places and re-contextualised here and now. This speech act is a collective autobiography of the artists showing at OPA 0.2, curated from their recollections of others’ art works. Participating artists have been invited to contribute a description of beholding another’s work, an art experience that meant something, moved or influenced them. The original artworks are filtered, re-made and transformed through time, through memory and the listener’s creative invention. This collection of recollections is an ephemeral memorial to the exhibitions we’ve all seen, which conjures up the ghosts of past works and disappears as it is spoken. The text is available by clicking on
Ghosting OPA.
2. Participatory event with Performance Re-enactment Society: A Do-It-Yourself Exhibition
A montage of enactments based on historical instruction-based artworks, revised and re-contextualised for Art Athina contemporary art fair, with Tom Marshman.
3. A paper presentation: Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past, Fri 22 May
This presentation sets up a play of oppositions, in order to dispute ontological distinctions between the performance archive, the documents contained within, and the events that are its objects. The paper asks: How do documents perform and how are the archives that hold them performative? Can the production, circulation and reception of performance documents be included within the timeframe of the works themselves? How do performances remain and produce residues that can be retained? What is the place of ephemeral traces, held in individual or collective memory, distributed word-of-mouth as rumours or oral accounts? Practical modes and motifs are passed-on experientially, in-and-through performance practice and spectating, reappearing transformed in new generations of works. Art-historical collections are resources for creative reuse and reinvention, inspiring future moves in the performance scene. What role can enactments and reenactments play, as means by which performance affects might return, ways of doing art history and acts of conservation?
OPA Festival info
GHOST PROGRAMME / SAT 7 10AM - SUN 8 6PM / THROUGHOUT THE BUILDING / FOR THE DURATION OF ARNOLFINI'S LIVE ART WEEKENDER
An alternative schedule of imagined works curated from contributions by Associate Artists and artist friends, which will shadow the real We Live Here programme. Listen out for these fictional pieces that are to be staged in your mind.
Invitation to contribute Ghost programme Front of House staff script
üBERSONG
Curated by Yvonne Buchheim as part of her ongoing Song Archive project. A Format event at Plan 9, Bristol, Saturday 21 February 2009.
Two Song Actions.
ubersong&catid=2:past-&Itemid=12.
Performance Re-enactment Society
Things To Do With Books: A Do-It-Yourself Exhibition
29 Nov, 13 Dec, 3 & 10 Jan, 2pm
Done any good books lately? As part of the show The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey, the Performance Re-enactment Society (PRS) invites you to take part in a series of enactments in response to the book works in the exhibition. Over five occasions they will carry out a selection of instruction-based works with you, realising other people’s art and creating original versions. Drop in or sign-up for this series of free events.
The Performance Re-enactment Society is an occasional collective of artists, archivists and researchers, who use documents and memories to revive past art experiences and create them anew. Their collaborative performance re-enactments are acts of conservation and transform past works into new events. In its current constellation the PRS are Paul Clarke, Clare Thornton, Tom Marshman (all Arnolfini We Live Here Associate Artists), with participants and guests. The Society's Facebook page is accessible
here.
For further details see:
Arnolfini Live/Events page
Documentation of the previous Performance Re-enactment Society event, on which Paul Clarke also collaborated, is available
here. Michael Pinchbeck has written interestingly about his experience, on New Work Network's site,
here.
The Lastmaker When Will The September Roses Bloom? Last Night Was Only A Comedy It’s An Earthquake In My Heart The Sea And The Poison How Dear To Me The Hour When Daylight Dies It’s Shifting, Hank Can’t Take Johnny To The Funeral We Got A Date
A performance text for the 'There Will Be Fireworks' event, a "recollection" to mark Goat Island’s last performance together at Arnolfini. Text included in Goat Island’s web-writing collaboration with
Judd Morrisey, which was installed at Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Available
here.
Ghosting Gallery SC or Ghosting Sprout
Speech act for opening event of the artists’ residency
Under Construction, which developed the ‘There Will Be Fireworks’ practical enquiry. A group autobiography of the artists’ collective SpRoUt and their Zagreb collaborators, curated from their individual recollections of significant art works. The text is
available here.
Paul Clarke’s version of Paul Rooney's 'Dedication', for Arnolfini
As part of Things To Do With Books, The Performance Re-enactment Society's series of Saturday events, Paul Clarke has made an Arnolfini-specific version of Paul Rooney's Dedication (2002). Dedications from Arnolfini staff were spoken by local radio DJ Mark Le-Leivre and recorded in the BCfm studio. This radio dedications show was not broadcast, but was played locally, in Arnolfini Bar, on Saturday 19th November. You can also listen to the
here.
PUBLICATIONS
Arkive City
An essay on ‘Performing the Archive’ research, entitled 'Archival Events and Eventful Archives', is published in
Arkive City (2008). The book is edited by Julie Bacon, published by Interface, University of Ulster and Locus+. This collection of essays and transcriptions of discussions explores the possibilities, questions and shifts in interests that have arisen from the changes to the art, science and management of archiving in recent years. It offers views from practitioners and thinkers who are contributing to this changing “cityscape”: including artists, archivists, curators and academics. Julian Warren, Arnolfini’s archivist is also included. A launch event took place at Arnolfini, Tuesday 7th October. The Arkive City website is accessible
here.
The project is cited here.
DOCUMENTATION CASE STUDIES
(1) Richard Layzell, I Never Done Enough Weird Stuff
(2) Rosie Dennis, Fraudulent Behaviour
Rosie Dennis is currently in residency at Arnolfini researching and developing a new work,
Fraudulent Behaviour. Throughout the making of this performance, both in the UK and Australia, she will explore creative approaches to documenting her process, archiving selections from her rehearsal notes and production journal online. In this way, as the artist, she will have agency over how both the process and performance event are represented for future users of Arnolfini Archive. She will be running a workshop on Monday 19th. A work-in-progress showing of Rosie's new piece can be seen in a double bill with
Love Song Dedication, as part of Mayfest, at Arnolfini on Sun 18th May, 7.30pm.
BOOKMARKS
PROJECT LINKS
Uninvited Guests website
Uninvited Guests facebook
Performance Re-enactment Society online
Live Art Archives
Arnolfini Archive &
Online Archiving
Wiki Tutorial
Formatting Rules.
