Artists in the Archive Creative and Curatorial Engagements with Documents of Art and Performance

Artists in the Archive explores the agency and materiality of the archival document through a stunning collection of critical writings and original artworks. It examines the politics and philosophy behind re-using remains, historicising this artistic practice and considering the breadth of ways in which archival materials inform, inflect and influence new works. Taking a fresh look at the relationships between insider know-how and outsider knowledge, Artists in the Archive opens a vital dialogue between a global range of artists and scholars. It seeks to trouble the distinction between artistic practice and scholarly research, offering disciplinary perspectives from experimental theatre, performance art, choreography and dance, to visual art making, archiving and curating.

1. Paul Clarke, Simon Jones, Nick Kaye and Johanna Linsley, Introduction: Inside and Outside the Archive 2. Nick Kaye, Liveness and the entanglement with things 3. REMAKE 3a Janez Janša, Monument G as a call for reconstruction. 3b Tim Etchells, Untitled (After Violent Incident) 3c Robin Deacon, Hamlet: A Careful Misreading 3d Rosemary Butcher and Stefanie Sachsenmaier, After Kaprow: Rosemary Butcher encounters 18 happenings in 6 parts 3e Zhang Huan, Six Questions. 4. Adrian Heathfield, The Ghost Time of Transformation. 5. RETURN 5a Blast Theory, Jog Shuttler 5b Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish, Our 18 Beginnings 5c Paul Clarke/Performance Re-enactment Society, Performing art history: non-linear, synchronous and syncopated times in Performance Re-enactment Society’s Group Show (2012) 5d Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Re-enacting the Archive: untimely meditations on the use and abuse of repetition 6. Amelia Jones, Archive, repertoire and Embodied History in Não Bustamente’s Performative Practice 7. Andrew Quick, The Patina of Performance: Documentary practice and the search for origins in The Wooster Group’s Fish Story 8. REVIEW 8a Mike Pearson, The Lesson of Anatomy 8b Fiona Templeton, Authority, Authorship and Authoring in the Theatre of Mistakes 8c Bodies in Flight, Do the Wild Thing! Redux 8d Felix Gmelin, Understanding Negative Dialectics 9. Johanna Linsley, 9 beginnings: sonic theatrical possibilities in the Live Art Archives 10. Maaike Bleeker, Resistance to Representation and the Fabrication of Truth: performance as thought-apparatus 11. ARCHIVE 11a Giles Bailey, Talker Catalogue 11b Terry O’Connor, Nothing Goes to Waste 11c Koh Nguang How, The Singapore Art Archive Project 11d Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly, Playing with Shadows and Speaking in Echoes 11e Claire MacDonald, Performing with Ghosts: a talk remembered 12. Simon Jones, The Future Perfect of the Archive: re-thinking performance in the age of third nature.

Paul Clarke is an artist, theatre director, and Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at the University of Bristol. Simon Jones is Professor of Performance at the University of Bristol, a writer and scholar, and founder and co-director of physical theatre company Bodies in Flight. Nick Kaye is Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Exeter. Johanna Linsley is an artist, researcher and producer, a founder of the performance/producing collective I’m With You, and a founding partner of documentary arts centre UnionDocs, Brooklyn, NY.