Archives should be places of transformation and translation, not just sites of accumulation, where bits of ephemera – notes, books, diaries, photos, videos – gather dust.
We’ve started our Year 2 of our Dancing Sydney project and Critical Path has invited artists Dean Walsh and Rakini Devi to consider their own archive/ing as part of an open research project. They will work with our Project partners Erin Brannigan (UNSW), Julie-Anne Long (Macquarie and Amanda Card (USYD) ,
This research project seeks to address ephemerality – its potentials and its problems – by finding, creating and reinvigorating old and new, public and private dance archives: not only the kind that exist in ephemera, text and objects, but also those that are produced and maintained within/through the body dancing.
There is a contemporary fascination with the role of the performance archive and the role of the archive in performance. Our project engages in a contemporary dialogue within this current trend by asking: how do we not only preserve but also disseminate and invigorate the past in the present, and the present for the future of dance in Sydney? Our answers will place the performing artist and their mode of interpretation and process, their interests in research and innovation, at the centre of this enquiry.
Photo credit: Laura Osweiler