The Future of Documents: documenting performance

Interdisciplinary Symposium: Monday 31st October 2016, City, University of London

Organisers: Lyn Robinson & Joseph Dunne

Website: https://documentingperformance.com

Twitter: #docperform #citylis

This interdisciplinary, one-day event will bring together scholars, practitioners and artists from the fields of Library & Information Science and Theatre & Performing Arts to start a conversation, and to share ideas and theories around documentation, preservation and access.

Subjects for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

• What is / what is not a document.
• What are the definitive characteristics of performance? Can these be recorded?
• Does the process of documentation represent the performance, or it is a surrogate/new document
• Who owns the document, the artist or the documenter?
• Projects documenting performing arts
• Use of technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality or mixed reality to embody the essence of performance as a document
• Body memory
• Online performance platforms. What opportunities does the Web afford artists wishing to reach new audiences? How can performing arts and LIS professionals collaborate?
• Experiments with documenting and archiving strategies has lead many artists and scholars to see these practices as creative activities in their own right. What new art forms might arise out of them? Conversely, do LIS professionals consider their practice as artistic?
• Lexicon of practices. Is there a language barrier between the performing arts and the LIS fields? How can this be overcome? What forums can be initiated to build dialogues between the two fields? What opportunities might arise out of this collaborative effort
  

Background

One of the major concerns of library and information science (LIS) is the collection and preservation of the record of humankind. In order to preserve something for future access we need to understand what it is we are saving. LIS considers preservation and access from the viewpoint of the document. This has prompted the question: ‘what is a document?’ The answer is far from straightforward, and has been debated since the end of the 19th century, when Otlet suggested that images, works of art and sculptures could be regarded in the same way as books, journals and papers, and later, in the 1950s, Briet suggested that even an animal might be considered as a document. The question has subsequently attracted the attention of other scholars too, including Buckland, Lund, Latham, Frohman, Gorichanaz and Robinson.

It would seem the question might be ‘what is not a document?’

Technological advances have given us digitization, which has added more complexity to the issue. Physical/analogue documents can be rendered in digital format, and the digital surrogates regarded as documents in their own right.

Further, the rapidly expanding and evolving trend towards digitization has led to a convergence of GLAM sector institutions, so that the work of galleries, libraries, archives and museums, in creating digital ‘documents’ has overlapped for some years now. This, irrespective of whether one considers an original painting or object in a museum, in any sense, a document.

This symposium goes beyond coalescence within the GLAM sector, to consider documentation and preservation of performance.

Today all types of performance can simply be broadcast and made accessible to millions of people through their mediatization – be it theatre and performance art; rock concerts; political performances such as party conventions or the inauguration of the U.S. president; ritual performances such as funerals (e.g. Princess Diana’s) or papal blessings urbi et orbi; or sporting events such as the Olympic Games. A new dichotomy has emerged between live performance constituted by the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators and the autopoietic feedback loop and mediatized performance which sever the co-existence of production and reception. Mediatized performance invalidates the feedback loop.

Erika Fischer-Lichte, 2008

At some level, the event simply happens; at the same time, it cannot be defined merely as what occurs

Jill Bennett, 2012

Much work in this area has been undertaken, but often outside the LIS domain, and in separate strands of the performing arts. Work in defining and documenting dance, performance, performance art and theatre has progressed in parallel, yet disparate projects, although the goals of documentation appear consistent.

This informal symposium aims to provide a forum for exchange of ideas, knowledge and understanding between academics, practitioners, professionals, performers, artists and anyone interested in documentation, preservation and access of performance and complex documents.

All welcome.

Organisers:

Lyn Robinson is head of Library & Information Science at City University London. She is well known as course director for the library school #citylis. Lyn has a longstanding interest in documents and documentation.

e: lyn@city.ac.uk

t: @lynrobinson

Joseph Dunne is Research Associate at Rose Bruford College. His PhD research investigated how archiving and documentation strategies can become the genesis of site-based performance practice. Joseph’s specialisms include audience participation, performance re-enactments, cultural memory, and theatre legacies.

e: Joseph.Dunne@bruford.ac.uk

t: @memorydetritus

Ludi Price is a research student at #citylis. Her PhD research investigates the information behaviour of cult-media fans. Ludi is a writer and an artist, and Far Eastern cataloguer at SOAS Library.

e: ludi.price@gmail.com

t: @ludiprice

Sponsors: We are seeking sponsorship for our event. If you are able to contribute to costs for a sandwich lunch or drinks reception, please contact Lyn Robinson, lyn@city.ac.uk