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Archiving the ephemeral?
Performing arts archive as process-bound
information
Exploring the primary functions of records at
the Dutch National Opera and Ballet and in the case
of five independent theatre artists
Henrik Lillin
Societal transformations and the rapid technological
developments of the past decades have not only redefined the
ways people create, use and retrieve information, but also put
archival science to new challenges. Especially when it comes to
digital environments and in the domains of more participatory
and grassroots practices of recordkeeping. Accordingly,
recent post-custodial approaches argue that in order to better
understand the objectives and motivations of archiving in
contemporary society, it is necessary to explore non-pragmatic
motives of recordkeeping as well as to shift the predominant
focus from the record itself to a record as process-bound
information, including also the analysis of private and personal
archives in a variety of societal and cultural domains.
In line with this perspective, this essay aims to address
questions of archival practices by focusing on recordkeeping
within the performance art field. Performance is often considered
something transitory and ephemeral, which challenges archiving.
Performance, hence Rebecca Schneider's argument, tends to
survive differently than other artefacts, often in immaterial form,
which cannot be preserved or collected. In this sense, traditional
archival approaches are generally being devaluated when it
comes to this specific cultural field: for instance, Matthew Reason
does not consider the archival institutions as appropriate places
Stage-manager Marie-José Litjens with her 'bible', foto Frank Leverand
for performance archive, and for Jones, Abbott and Ross the
traditional approach, where the authenticity of the records are
assured by freezing them in the state in which they enter the
archive, is deemed unsuitable. It is therefore not surprising that
existing research into performance archives is primarily
preoccupied with the transitory nature of the unrepeatable
performance, even if performing art is much more than just
performance. Making theatre productions is a complex process
which, next to the arrangement of the necessary financial and
spatial conditions to perform, entails also a long creative work,
including writing, documenting and rehearsing. Furthermore,
as Jan Lazardzig already recognized, the network and project
culture turned archiving an inevitable necessity, as it provides
visibility for individual artists and alternative theatre groups.
Accordingly, archival scholars have recently started to go
beyond the 'ephemerality' discourse. Current works attempt to
describe the possible approaches to arranging performing arts
archives after their acquisition or try to map the diversity of
interests and approaches of theatre research and the role of
archivists and librarians in this context. Still, a systematic
exploration of what recordkeeping and archiving actually means
for the theatres, theatre makers and performance artists is scarce:
holistic research into the 'real' nature of theatre archives is a
missing link between all the above mentioned perspectives. With
this comparative essay, I attempt to explore the motives and
objectives of record creation, use and management at the
Dutch National Opera and Ballet (DNO) and in the cases of five
performing arts artists. Acknowledging that theatre institutions,
performing art artists and collections may have different reasons
to keep their records, and therefore records and archives may
have different meanings in different settings, the core question
