syllabus

Week 1:  Introduction and Reflection on "A Body of Document"
To document or not to document? In this session, participants will formulate personal questions on documentation relevant to their artistic practices. Through discussion and artistic examples we will highlight assumptions and expectations, explore motivations for documenting performance, and examine the tension between memory and forgetting. Participants’ documentation examples from their practice will be shared based on the given preparation task.

Artists: Maisara Baroud, Cassils, Grada Kilomba, and participants’ choices 
Assignment #1: Excavating memory: Record, Play, Delete.

Week 2: JOINTS: Cross-disciplinary Methods of Documentation
How to imagine otherwise? Participants will engage in cross-disciplinary methods that move beyond mainstream visual modes to capture ephemeral works and look at examples such as creative writing, poetry, chromatography, automatic drawing, embroidery, oral practices and more. By examining tensions between fixity and fluidity, presence and absence, we will explore how documentation allows motion and negotiates the spaces between performance and archive, as well which is the role of collaboration in documentation practices.

Artists: Tara Fatehi Irani, M. Nourbese Philip, DARC collective, Joana Cifre Cerda, Aya Haidar, Varunica Saraf.
Assignment #2: Flexing the Archive: Alternative Modes of Capturing Ephemerality

Week 3: SKIN:  Archiving and Porosity.
What lingers under the skin? This session explores approaches to documentation as an ever-evolving, living surface. Participants will examine the interplay between documentation and embodiment, considering documentation as performance, performance as documentation, and re-enactment. We will reflect on transitional states—what happens before and after performance—and explore the layers of meaning that documentation, like skin, absorbs and sheds over time. 

Artists: Wafaa Bilal, Julie Tolentino, Lynn Hershmann Leeson, Mariya Hoyin.
Assignment #3: Embodying the Archive – Exploring Layers and Surfaces

Week 4: FLUIDS: The Afterlife of Performance [activation of archives]
This last session will focus on participants’ presentations (solo or in duets), inspiring conversations regarding: the ethics and aesthetics of performance archives, how archives can be activated, which are the risks of altering the meaning of the performance, and the role of the audience in the process. The session will conclude with reflections on the continuum of documentation as a tool for activating and extending the life of a performance, referencing the activation of the audiovisual archive of the performance art film project STRATA by VestAndPage, presented as the immersive installation STRAT/osphere.