Performance Research Volume 7 Issue 4

On Archives & Archiving

Issue editors: Richard Gough & Heike Roms

ISBN: 978-0-415-28943

Performance is widely regarded as that which cannot be archived – its presentness at odds with the archive’s quest for permanence, its disappearing acts resisting the desire to label, stack and store. Yet, at the same time as performance has asserted its radical ephemerality, the demand for documenting and archiving its practices on behalf of performance research and historiography has grown. What then is performance’s relationship with the archive? The issue contains contributions that explore this relationship in all its facets, including the role of performance in the culture of the archive and the role of the archive in conceptualizations of performance; the cultural histories and ideologies of archival practices; the future of performance and the archive in the digital age; performance as an archive of its own history; performative interventions into archival culture; the role of forgeries, rumours and lies in the development of performance history; the role of the document in performance research; the practices of performance archives; and performers’ archives. On Archives and Archiving will continue the discussion on archiving and performance begun in earlier issues of Performance Research (On Memory and On Maps and Mapping). Responses to previous contributions on the theme are especially welcome.

Editorial

Heike Roms, Richard Gough

pp. 1 - 2

Historical Archives, Events and Facts: History writing as fragmentary performance

Michal Kobialka

pp. 3 - 11

Questionnaire 1

Richard Foreman

pp. 12 - 13

Gina Pane's Witnesses: The audience and photography

Jennifer Blessing

pp. 14 - 26

Foot-notes [artist's pages]

Nicolas Whybrow

pp. 27 - 37

The Lorentzweiler Archive [artist's pages]

Jerome Fletcher

pp. 38 - 41

Two Parrots and an Answering Machine: Some problems with knowledge and memory

Nicholas Ridout

pp. 42 - 47

Questionnaire 2

Arnold Dreyblatt

pp. 48 - 49

Anti-theatrical Prejudice and the Persistence of Performance: Some problems with knowledge and memory

Nicholas Ridout

pp. 50 - 58

Dusting Ourselves Down

Helen Iball

pp. 59 - 63

Performing the Archive: Following in the footsteps [artist's pages]

Deirdre (Dee) Heddon

pp. 64 - 77

Feminist Performance as Archive: Bobby Baker's 'Daily Life' and Box Story

Elaine Aston

pp. 78 - 85

Questionnaire 3

Kirsten Dehlholm

pp. 86 - 87

uncertain bodies: fragments

Fiona Wright

pp. 88 - 91

Unwinding Kindergarten

Matthew Goulish

pp. 92 - 107

Stilling Bodies/Animating Texts: Isadora Duncan and the archive

Joanne Pearson

pp. 108 - 115

They Never Raided Minsky's: Popular memory and the performance of history

Kirsten Pullen

pp. 116 - 120

The Academic Laboratory of Fake - a Proposal

Sibylle Peters

pp. 121 - 125

Questionnaire 4

Hans-Peter Litscher

pp. 126 - 127

Archive Review: Learning Performance by Doing Archiving Performance

Linda Cassens Stoian

pp. 128 - 134

Performance Review: An Organism on the Run

Joe Kelleher

pp. 135 - 140

Notes on Contributors

pp. 141 - 142