Archives explicitly for performance are rare; in Switzerland there are none. Nevertheless, a number of collections or accumulations of artefacts can be found. These archives can be seen to fall into two groups, distinguished by their arrangement and institutional affiliation and the consistency with which they pursue archival concepts. The first group consists of personal collections of artefacts, characterised by a broad range of artefact types and idiosyncratic selections and focuses. The second group comprises festival or institutional archives where the storage of artefacts is determined by notions of self-legitimisation and a sense of a historical responsibility. Despite these initiatives, broad access to performance artefacts remains to be provided, and this is reflected in gaps in research. As long as artefact archives remain in obscurity, their financial (and administrative) situation will not improve. Without the funds or staff to properly maintain and process artefacts, the study of performance art remains locked in a permanent cycle of catching up and updating, gaining recognition and being marginalised. This state of affairs has repercussions for the reception of performances of the period from the 1970s to the 1990s. Even today, canonised performances dating from previous decades are the predominant focus of research. We are concerned with facilitating the future availability and utilisation of the wealth of performative works and with challenging and changing the preconditions for writing performance history.
The way we deal with archives and artefacts is shaped by our expectations and pre-conceived notions. We often forget that behind every document, and every archive, there are authors whose subjective standards and attitudes affect their selection and composition, content and form. Human perception is selective and fragmenting and so are the technological recording media of video, photography and audio. These are still attributed a certain importance, although the claim to ‘realism’ and complete representation associated with them are relativised. With the exhibition and mediation project archiv performativ: a model we opened up a space in which ways of performatively transcribing an archive and its artefacts could be explored under trial conditions. It was a central concern to us to include artistic research in the reactivation of performance art on an equal footing with theoretical practices. In the process, we were able to give examples of how the transmission and transcription of a regional and national performance scene can gain new impetus from archive material (in this case, from the Kaskadenkontor in Basel). In view of this, the project’s findings are intended to support our proposal to found a Swiss performance archive.
Recommendations:
· Archives, collections and accumulations of performance artefacts must be made accessible and visible to the public, otherwise they do not perform their function.
· A (performance) archive must reflect its inherently contrived nature and make its selection procedures transparent.
· A performance archive should not be a passive collection but the result of performative procedure and actions.
· One possible strategy for keeping archives vital and visible could be to use them retrospectively and prospectively, in a project-oriented and collaborative way.
· The fragmented and disparate nature of the ‘artefact pool’ in archives can be viewed as a positive quality, prompting theoretical and artistic transcriptions, i.e. leading to new forms of performance history writing. Like all accounts, the transcription is also made up of omissions, facts and subjective recollection or forgetting.
· A certain combination or variety of different performance artefacts is imperative for making historical appraisals.
· Artefacts should be made available as sources for continued, inter-active, artistic, curatorial, academic and archival use.
· A comprehensive document pool containing several types of artefact which is accessible to the public forms a basis for the transcription and representation of performance art. In this way, the likelihood of a performance concept being transmitted and engendering histories is increased.
· A variety of artefacts implies a variety of voices, or views, offering a more profound approach to a performance.
· Individual artefacts or incomplete material are enough to prompt artistic transcriptions, since artists can be inspired by details.
· When dealing with subjective and artistic transcriptions in the form of textual or technologically recorded artefacts, one must be aware that effects of immediacy can be created and emotions roused by means of authentication strategies.