13:00:25 That's a little anticlimactic I had an extra button to press OK, and here we go. Welcome, everyone.
13:00:34 Just to let you know this session will be recorded and I am pressing record now.
13:00:43 Good afternoon, everyone.
13:00:45 My name is Matt testa, I'm excited to be with you today for this session on postmodernism in the performing arts archives.
13:00:57 And before we begin, I want to acknowledge our sponsor for this session.
13:01:05 Thanks to our sponsor full circle archives digitization
13:01:13 full circle, or kind of digitization focuses on cultural heritage collections, providing strategic insights to enhance every project, and to deliver with exceptional quality.
13:01:31 The speakers that we have today are coming from a few different institutions in performing arts.
13:01:44 We have Christina Taylor Gibson from the University of Maryland, who is
13:01:54 reflecting on Performing Arts archives postmodern theoretical approaches and her presentation, solving the postmodern puzzle in the performing arts and Susan reasoner considers how the ephemeral and embodied art forms of dance is preserved and accessed
13:02:13 in a cabin collections and Rachel McNicholas examines the postmodern work.
13:02:27 reminder, you can post any questions that you have in the q&a, we will get to them. At the end of the three individual presentations and we'll have a little discussion on whatever comes up the chat function is also in there as well, you have other thoughts.
13:02:49 And with that, I will introduce Christina.
13:02:55 Christina Taylor Gibson is project archivist at Special Collections and performing arts University of Maryland, College Park, and an MLS student on the same campus.
13:03:08 She is also a published musicologist with a specialty in musical modernism.
13:03:14 You can hear more of her work in the forthcoming podcast not a quiet place, exploring Special Collections and performing arts at the University of Maryland.
13:03:24 And you can read her most recent scholarly writing in the January 2021 issue of the 20th century music.
13:03:41 The work presented today stems out of a long meditation on the function and utility of the performing arts archive in realizing social justice.
13:03:44 Christina and turn it to you. Okay, great.
13:03:47 So let me share my screen.
13:03:57 Okay.
13:03:58 And.
13:04:11 slideshow.
13:04:15 Okay Can everybody can you guys see my screen. Yes we can. Okay. Excellent.
13:04:21 So, I'm speaking to you from Silver Spring, Maryland. And I'm starting this practice of acknowledging the land that I exist on at the beginning of my presentations.
13:04:38 So, this is the statement that has been given us by the University of Maryland. We are on the ancestral lands of the piscataway people who were among the first in the Western Hemisphere, we are on indigenous land that was stolen from the piscataway people
13:04:53 by European colonists we pay respects to piscataway elders and ancestors. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence displacement migration and settlement that bring us together here today.
13:05:11 Okay, so the paper I'm presenting today is solving the postmodern puzzle in the performing arts archive through FX theory and broken world thinking.
13:05:23 I'm the early ideas for this paper date from 2006. That's the summer I spent in Mexico City, researching the ways composers Carlos Chavez and Julio and carry yo shaped their careers and around us critical receptions.
13:05:41 The most notable thing about performing that research was the difference between the two archival repositories, I visited China has his papers are in the Mexican National Archive.
13:05:53 So you can see that on your screen in the left, it's a it's a nice bureaucratic building right.
13:06:00 And they're there because he worked for the Mexican government and employed a personal secretary for much of his career.
13:06:08 As a result, his papers are legible organized and accessible.
13:06:23 Cut eo had a really different career after an early association with a dictator portfolio DS, who funded a lavish European education can do was disgraced during the Mexican Revolution.
13:06:27 In the early 20th century, and never regained his prominence in the years that followed, patios papers were at that time in his family home. So on the right, that's the photograph you see it's not of his home, but it's the neighborhood where I visited
13:06:42 to see those papers.
13:06:44 And I got access to them, because a friend and colleague of mine knew the family, it wasn't like, you know, a publicly open archive by all archival standards cutting those papers were a mess.
13:06:56 And although his legacy did and does live on certain types of resources that became central to my study, we're already falling apart.
13:07:05 So that experience was a vivid illustration of the ways in which power money knowledge and archives intersect.
13:07:13 And in many ways it has guided my ideas about what an archive is and what an archive should be.
13:07:21 I'm not the only person who has had this sort of epiphany in recent years, the post structuralist critique of the archive articulated by Foucault and Derrida identified the purpose and activity of the archive is consumed with power.
13:07:37 Because power dictates how the archive operates its contents are partial and subjective, and therefore necessarily suspect.
13:07:47 At least that's how the argument goes there has been vigorous response from the archival community, especially in recent years, archival theorists, of whom Terry cook and Jeanette Bastion are two of the most prominent have proposed sweeping systemic solutions,
13:08:04 technologists, like those who create snack or who advocate for Linked Data promise computer generated cures.
13:08:14 In the decades since Foucault and Derrida leveled their charges and increasingly large constituent of our would be users have pursued projects that purposely circumvent the archive as an institution, and a system of organization in park.
13:08:31 This reflects a theoretical turn in scholarship.
13:08:34 One that de emphasizes positivist research, but perhaps part of the turn from the archive also mirrors, a fundamental distrust of the archive and of its ability to store and present documents relevant to contemporary stories.
13:08:52 Compounding the problem for performing arts archivists is the relative invisibility of the performing arts in narratives and theories about archival science.
13:09:02 the first wave of theorists, including Jenkinson and Schellenberg dealt with government archives and privileged preserving the structure and substance of the modern nation state, more contemporary archival philosophers are often rooted in the academy,
13:09:18 with a focus on large scale administrative innovation.
13:09:23 As the field of history has moved away from a recitation of wars and leaders and towards movement and context, there has been an increasing awareness of culture within the literature of archival theory, so this very conference, you know with collected
13:09:37 with themes around suffrage is an example of that right.
13:09:54 So in my mind, the contemporary Performing Arts archive faces to related large scale problems, left out of modern narratives about what the archive is and what work, it performs.
13:10:07 We have shoehorned processing methods developed elsewhere into our repositories.
13:10:12 And then, under the weight of increasingly influential postmodern archival critiques, we like our other archival repositories are becoming ever more distant from our academic users, and their needs.
13:10:25 These problems present an opportunity to reevaluate the way culture and power intertwine by reframing the foundational narrative of the archive. In order to connect it to an effective performance oriented past, we can begin to acknowledge the chasm between
13:10:44 what are working methods present, and what contemporary users hope the archive to provide only by seeing the problem clearly can we begin to shape solutions, as we do so I argue for the application of broken world thinking to the problem of the archive
13:11:01 research disconnect, allowing us to cobble together piecemeal solutions that are nonetheless oriented in a similar restorative direction.
13:11:11 So before I get too far into the argument, I want to pause for a moment and acknowledge my position ality.
13:11:18 Over the past several years, and especially in the month since the killing of George Floyd, there has been many strident calls for archival reform from historically underrepresented communities.
13:11:29 This paper represents my attempt, as a sis gender white woman living in the US to consider the philosophy and psychology around continued sustainable engagement with issues of equity in the archive.
13:11:44 I give this paper as an ally.
13:11:48 Not really from the position ality of a member of an underrepresented community.
13:11:55 And in the paper I sent her the Academy, not because this is the only important audience, but because it's the one I know best, and presents me with the greatest opportunity to effect change.
13:12:07 I do this work in recognition that reform is a collective endeavor, requiring my labor, and every other person's labor, and I offer this as a first draft a new piece of ongoing conversation, that is subject to debate revision and reconsideration.
13:12:27 I do however begin from a certain priority stance, I find Terry cooks assertion that archival work is the quote business of deciding what will be remembered and what will be forgotten convincing.
13:12:40 And I have little patience for argument's of objectivity in the archive.
13:12:44 Even those who agree with my basic point of view, often frame the contemporary archive as an enlightenment endeavor that solidifies with the formation of the modern nation state.
13:12:56 Valerie Johnson outlines just such a narrative, quote, the philosophical ideal of truth emerged in the modern era in the 17th century in the ideas of thinkers such as john Locke.
13:13:08 She goes on to argue that it was this emphasis on knowledge and knowing that led to the archive as a place where power resided.
13:13:16 This is a really tidy way to arrive at Derrida since he accuses the archive of controlling what can be known, but it doesn't really work for our purposes as performing arts archives and performing arts archivists, what we have to offer is more than what
13:13:33 Enlightenment thinkers might define as knowledge, we offer culture in all of its objective and particular delights.
13:13:42 In addition, both the arts, and the archives relationship with power is stronger and more substantial than we usually admit.
13:13:51 For that reason, we need a different foundational mythology.
13:13:54 Although I can't locate the exact moment when arts archives began to serve the powerful for the sake of argument, I'd like to start with the candy guess they sent them idea.
13:14:07 So the containers they Santa Maria are a collection of quasi folk quasi religious songs for or about the Virgin Mary from the 13th century.
13:14:17 Most of the songs, tell of miracles Mary performed every 10th song is a him dedicated to her.
13:14:24 The stories make apparent that the miracles address ills of many classes and stations of people from a little boy, to a great night where a dedicated Abbess.
13:14:37 The stated author is Alfonso the 10th, the king of northern Spain between 1252 and 1284, although we don't really believe he did the substantive work here.
13:14:50 And you. Well, you can even see it in this elimination but I'll get to that in a second. These songs were collected written down illuminated and performed by his extensive staff.
13:15:01 And so as you see here in the elimination on the screen.
13:15:04 You have scribes and musicians depicted doing this work. So that's one of the reasons this theory exists. We don't have time today to explore the full range of Mary's miracles, as described in the country guess.
13:15:18 But I can't make reference to this document without playing a little bit of music for you, and giving you a sense for what's going on.
13:15:27 So, here you have one of the miracles and we'll listen to just a little bit of it
13:15:39 is the sound sharing.
13:17:03 Okay. Although, it probably would be more fun to listen to the rest of that and to listen to what I have to say we're going to go on.
13:17:11 Um, so why did Alfonso the 10th wants such a book. He didn't write any memoirs, or leave any correspondence, so we don't know for sure, but we can make some educated guesses Alfonso was in the midst of a war, actually, a centuries long war.
13:17:29 No, wrong thing.
13:17:31 There we go.
13:17:33 So, um, the bright yellow portion in the middle represents Alphonse those territory. And the little arrows at the bottom represents the various battles being fought to expand it in the early years of Alphonse those rain, you and I know that the union
13:17:51 of Spain wouldn't happen for another two centuries, but when Alfonso came to power the Christians had recently captured, much more Southern territory, and he wanted to continue that trend, his strategy involved, beating Arab invaders at more than where
13:18:08 warfare and you have to remember that at the time, the Arabs were known for their knowledge for their libraries for their learning. So, Alfonso wanted hearts and minds, and he figured that the best way to get them was through the creation of a cultural
13:18:23 center. He wanted a library with documents, representing the particularity of the people's living under his rule, the contiguous they found them idea or the crown jewels of Alphonse those library, the diverse musical materials represented and the bottom
13:18:41 up collection methods of the day, make clear the politics of Alfonso message. I can make a Spanish utopia, with access to the knowledge that the Arabs provide the ways in which the Jews can transcend these boundaries and the religious traditions of the
13:18:59 Christians.
13:19:01 Alfonso didn't get a united Spain, but he did get a nickname, out of all of this that endures all of these years. He's known as Alfonso the wise.
13:19:13 So, I'm just going to pause for a second to point out that what we're seeing in the contiguous is essentially an expensive early community archiving oral history project today such projects are often advanced as cutting edge and anti establishment, but
13:19:29 the continuous demonstrate that we cannot assume either stance, and maybe just a reminder that after reunification is about and Ferdinand did not live up to Alphonse those implicit promise in this project.
13:19:44 So if your brain is a weird, and unusual place like mine. Now you are thinking of Mel Brooks in the history of the world, and singing the Inquisition side, so I'll give you a second to like run through that.
13:19:59 And.
13:20:00 Okay, moving on.
13:20:03 So, the audience for Alphonse us archive was multifaceted. It included the educated elite throughout Europe who might thrill to learn have such a document travel to see it and send support to defend it.
13:20:18 But it also included his subjects, most of whom would never be able to read the document those folks might however know about the project, and the effort to preserve and celebrate their traditions, we can best understand the power of Alphonse those come
13:20:35 t guess, and the power of our own repositories through what Mariah see for terms effect theory that is by studying the ways the archive wields power by manipulating how we feel.
13:20:49 In addition to how we think.
13:20:52 So as you may have gathered from my bio for the past several years, I've been working with the US with us wind band collections, particularly the American band masters Association and affiliated collections from a musicologist perspective, this is a strange
13:21:08 area of American music. So it registers as understudied. There are very few rigorous examinations of wind band music in the US compared to other popular repertory of the time.
13:21:22 Most of the research papers are by practitioners rather than historians,
13:21:29 but in dealing with excessive collections that are thriving, we receive regular donations both material and monetary a steady stream of visitors and reference calls engagement with outreach efforts, for the most part this is not a scholarly community
13:21:43 it's a curious community of musicians drawn to the repository for transparently effective effective within a reasons.
13:21:52 There is the son of a famous band, composer delighted to find his father's voice in an oral history I got that call, a couple months ago, or a retired band director advocating for a new john Philip Sousa statue, we have many records, advocating for new
13:22:07 john Philip Sousa statute statues, or the student of a teacher wanting to donate her teachers instrument.
13:22:17 So, that's the sort of work that goes on.
13:22:22 Three of the repositories I have mentioned so far actually all of the repositories I have mentioned so far are effective rhetorical bids for power.
13:22:31 They promise access to the archive, the opportunity to know and be known for generations, and the opportunity to build upon that exchange toward a collective imagined future.
13:22:45 In every case the donors and caretakers offer their materials in the hopes that it will burnish reputations, the archive is set up to take the Alphonse those of the world, and promote them from Alfonso the 10th to Alfonso the wise, through the creation,
13:23:02 maintenance and display of manuscripts scores. And now, audio visual materials that project is delicate for it requires the cooperation and investment of a large part of the populace.
13:23:16 Just as the contest required everyday people to share their music with Alphonse was court and his musicians and his scribes, to be there to capture it, our archives do not function without donations and they are not visible without processing and description.
13:23:32 Furthermore, although the transition from 10th to wise begins with collective investment in this project. It is realized with patrons intellectual elites who come to the archive read its contents and report out the reality of presents.
13:23:49 That's elevating certain figures.
13:23:52 certain figures. I lost my spot in historical memory so elevating certain figures in historical memory from the very beginning before democratic governments existed, the archive function best when it balanced the needs of users donors and employers, such
13:24:07 that the eternal hearts and minds campaign humped quietly in the background, the understanding of the performing arts archive as an effective repository of power contextualize the call for inclusion as more than a bid for knowledge, but a deeply felt
13:24:23 plea for acceptance in a self defining narrative.
13:24:28 Likewise, it explains the power structures grip on the archival narrative.
13:24:33 As long standing and tenuous, in part because it extends farther back than the post enlightenment imaginary.
13:24:42 As a practical matter, because of the interdependence of users donors and archivists in making the contemporary repository function, the post structural technique has been devastating for us, guiding users, away from the archive as a basis for historical
13:24:56 narratives. Post colonialism has not made the situation any better.
13:25:01 As Jeanette Bastion writes, today it is the minor narratives. The Untold Stories, the traces the whispers, and the expressions of marginalized identities that people yearn to find in the archives bastions own study of the Virgin Islands abandons the archive,
13:25:21 because of its unreliable and exclusionary practices. Instead, she depends on oral history to construct a narrative of Carnival in the Virgin Islands.
13:25:33 This is a trend elsewhere, with many studies now emerging that ignore or dissenter the archival evidence Jolla pores, the life and opinions of Jane Franklin uses a handful of letters to imagine a life story barely hinted at in the primary sources Cydia
13:25:50 Hartman abandons the archive all together in order to write about the experience of female enslaved people in the US.
13:25:58 The distance between the repository and the scholarly user grows ever wider.
13:26:04 In the face of strident calls for equity scholars gradual abandonment of the archive and the increasing demands of the Neo liberal institution. There are two harmful temptations.
13:26:15 The first is maintaining an unrealistic vision about what is possible.
13:26:21 Lauren Vermont calls this cruel optimism, because it fails to acknowledge the very real systemic obstacles that stand in the way of meaningful change.
13:26:31 My hope and providing a new foundational narrative grounded in the config us is to dissuade listeners from this approach by emphasizing the severity of the divide the other temptation is cynical disengagement.
13:26:46 In this case the archivist sees the obstacles as insurmountable, and simply gives up as a response to that reaction, I offer a philosophy borrowed from the digital humanities community.
13:26:58 Stephen J Jackson's article rethinking repair elaborates on broken world thinking and open acknowledgment that we cannot fix everything, and that in fact aggressive utopian activity may do more harm than good.
13:27:13 Instead, and Jackson is really thinking of environmental harm in his article but I'm applying it here, to a social justice equity framework.
13:27:23 Instead, Jackson advises a piecemeal situational approach with an emphasis on first principles. It is a flexible practical solution, allowing the celebration of steps, large and small, in the right direction.
13:27:38 In this way, broken world thinking a lot acknowledges the archivists effective experience as well as the users and sees repair as collaborative and gradual by necessity.
13:27:50 So, in the past few years I've watched the potential of broken world thinking at my repository, and I'm not saying in any way that this is like a model or perfection or anything like that.
13:28:03 I'm just I offer this example as a way of of grounding this heady analysis.
13:28:10 When I became the American band masters Association project archivists in 2018, there were already initiatives in place to make the repository, inclusive.
13:28:21 Long predating me, the curator was very intentional about cultivating a wide range of relationships to forward this work in the band, community specifically.
13:28:31 And when that curator left, the new appointee announced that continuing and accelerating di work would be central to his activities.
13:28:40 So, in such an environment, I've been able to advance outreach efforts like a podcast with an episode on HBC your marching bands, an area where our collections are not strong but would like to be.
13:28:51 I've been able to participate in extended conversations about taxonomy, and subject fields with colleagues. When I process the band collections I spent a lot of time observing and thinking about the ways previous years of collecting and white male sis
13:29:05 gender community, and that's very evident in the ABA collections have affected our holdings and our institutional identity.
13:29:14 So all of those little decisions and continued activities have prepared us to respond intelligently and thoroughly when members of our donor community have approached us wanting to find ways to collaborate around diversity, equity and inclusion, and that's
13:29:28 been very recent like the past few weeks.
13:29:32 Obviously, the story is still unfolding. But it's been gratifying and hopeful to observe how years of work and intention have these moments of growth and flowering.
13:29:42 Okay, one more note before I finish, and I know it's long. Much of the literature I've quoted from today refers to access running, and many of the archival conversations around equity focus on collecting practices.
13:29:54 I don't think we can collect our way out of this problem. So, as I have described it above, and as I envision it being applied elsewhere, the repair process I have in mind is more holistic.
13:30:06 I like the way Bastian refers to whispers and traces in the archive, because in my experience, this is accurate. We have stories of underrepresented communities and our repositories, no matter how much past collecting processes, focused on dominant populations,
13:30:23 but we need to help surface them.
13:30:27 For this reason, moving toward equity also includes description cataloging access outreach and every other part of our jobs, our steps can be small or large, but if we are invested in this work, they need to exist consistently and crucially, even when
13:30:44 restrained by power or politics, we need to point ourselves toward larger his systemic change. My hope with this paper is to spark conversation.
13:30:54 So I'll end here. Thanks for listening and I look forward to your comments and questions.
13:31:05 Thank you so much for that Christina.
13:31:08 Very interesting work and I look forward to hearing some more conversation about this in our q&a.
13:31:16 You are welcome. I'm going to meet up next season Wiesner Susan has been the archivist for the Labonte and Barton EF dance collections at the University of Maryland.
13:31:31 She's worked as a choreographer written written as a dance critic, taught dance theory and technique at several universities, and continues to work with intersections of language and movement, using motion capture and other technologies, her current research
13:31:49 focuses on movement and notation systems as a means of machine learning and transfer of data between artistic forms and building the dance dance annotation platform for the study of indigenous dance forms.
13:32:05 She has conducted research into meta data and the development of ontology is for the Performing Arts using digital humanities methodologies and has developed a database of dance publications.
13:32:25 At the Maryland Institute for technology in the humanities or myth wheeze Mary is principal faculty specialist for the Performing Arts, where she manages projects focusing on the performing arts and teachers of course in the digital humanities and embody
13:32:36 village.
13:32:47 Susan. Please take it away.
13:32:44 I'm gonna share my screen.
13:32:48 Yeah.
13:32:50 Can everybody see my screen nod your head yes, yes.
13:32:56 Well that was a hard act to follow. I'm not met, Christina was a hard act to follow.
13:33:05 Anyway, um, I am at the University of Maryland in the Maryland Institute for technology in the humanities, but I did used to work in the special collections in the performing arts, where Christina and I first met.
13:33:18 I want to acknowledge that I am currently sitting in Colorado on land. Traditionally people by the Cheyenne the Arapaho the youth and the Sioux.
13:33:32 So, in my abstract. I told him how as a dance study student way back in 8990, which was sometimes noted as the end of post modernism and dance, which is another topic for another day, my fellow students and I would run through the London to shouting juxtaposition
13:33:53 as a rallying cry, we pointed out the age of the tube the kids with blue Mohawks and change the underwear ads and the posters for theatre and dance performance.
13:34:05 Now make me go back, go back there.
13:34:08 What we were noticing, where the terrorists and safety of the deep dark confines of the tubes that we had read about from those escaping the bombings of the Blitz juxtaposed with our current joy and being students free to explore and use the tube to get
13:34:23 to that next dance performance.
13:34:26 We were also noticing the strangeness of tattooed pierced wild haired bodies of our fellow to travelers contrasting the posters and dancers and beautiful costumes and sometimes the dancers themselves sparkling with sequence and lace and the everyday actions
13:34:41 of people in the space alongside our own philosophical musings from our very privileged position as students of an art form many considered elitist.
13:34:50 We were deeply invested in the questions of what is performance, what are the dance isms, how can we characterize and categorize them, and for that matter what.
13:35:01 After all, is dance.
13:35:06 So I'm going to give a quick little description of our history of post modernism and dance.
13:35:13 Most dance historians point to a performance given at the Judson Memorial Church in 1962 Produced by Robert Ellis done. This was the first performance of works from his class that he taught at the Judson church.
13:35:27 The concert featured students such as David Gordon Deborah Hey, Fred hurt go, Steve Paxton Yvonne Rainer Meredith monk Lucinda childs among others. It ran for over three hours is done was unwilling to curate to reduce the number of works which ran the
13:35:42 gamut from chance procedures on him and pedestrian movement to more balletic modern kind of homeschool movement vocabularies from this first performance until 1964, the workshop students presented close to 200 works, both as a collective and individually.
13:36:05 What they informed was a community.
13:36:08 They were reacting against modern dance and the works of Martha Graham doors Humphrey Ted Shawn, Jose Ramon, etc.
13:36:16 They were exploring new uses of space, time and the body, using nudity and non technique.
13:36:24 So to where they were rebelling against Merce Cunningham concept of art for art's sake.
13:36:29 Interestingly, several of these dancers were in Cunningham's company where we're taking classes at his studio, and most potent postmodern choreographers were actually highly technically trained dancers.
13:36:43 They shared an interest in spirituality and non Western dance, which actually have been a theme for years thanks to story ballet is a door Duncan read St.
13:36:53 Denis Ted john and others, but the manifestation of this varied according to the dance styles and Vogue. When the earlier choreographers who are working.
13:37:02 So to was there often a link between political movements of the day. Black Power feminism anti war protest and gay advocacy.
13:37:13 We are talking about the 1960s to mid 1970s, although that post modern dance could be argued to have existed well into the 1980s and I would argue even today.
13:37:26 Later on a smaller group formed, what was known as grand Union.
13:37:32 I want you to notice one thing in here. They're looking at Black Power there's not a single blackface here.
13:37:39 So this was a very elite group of individuals.
13:37:47 It's kind of cool though they're working with objects. They're sitting on mattresses, they're wearing the flag and they're nude underneath there making boxes and women are actually
13:38:00 holding men, but rather than abstract technique and stylized sets and props the Judson dancers inserted the use of ordinary actions and common place objects.
13:38:12 It was a time for no in fact Yvonne Rainer created the note manifesto 1964. No to spectacle. No to virtuosity no to transformations and magic make believe no to the glamour and transcendence of the star image know to the heroic know to the anti heroic
13:38:32 No to the heroic know to the anti heroic no to trash imagery, no to involvement of performer, or spectator no to style no to camp. Notice seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity and no to moving or being moved.
13:38:48 All of this is juxtaposed with who they eventually became. There are several stars within this Pantheon.
13:38:56 They might have been not involved with camp but actually there were several people involved with camp.
13:39:05 Danny naked would be one.
13:39:08 The seduction of the spectator by the wiles of the performers when we teach choreography, talk about who's your audience. Pay attention to your audience.
13:39:16 They didn't really care.
13:39:17 So, and I love the last note moving or to being moved.
13:39:28 So, a little scholarly work, Janet at. I'm going to talk about Roland Bart first image music text 1977 his paper the death of the author states that quote writing is the destruction of every voice of every point of origin, writing, is that neutral composite
13:39:46 oblique space where our subject slips away the negative we're all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing now substitute author with choreographer, or dancer.
13:40:01 They are writing dance.
13:40:04 Catherine Stevens, and ascension archive discusses what she calls the appropriate set of trace, which she equated, whether for good or ill, to what many dancers refer to as muscle memory.
13:40:16 But this is a much broader than muscles and she does note that it involves neuro muscular skeletal sensors, the vision system the vestibular system mo post posture gesture, and movement.
13:40:29 She argues the appropriate receptive trace can be unconscious procedural and implicit, but can also be explicit in that it can be declared in words.
13:40:40 It can also utilize referenced memory.
13:40:44 In the same text, Evelyn delves into aspects of memory and mentions the recent explosion of interest in memory in the archive. She also states that quote imagining the body is an archive necessitates rethinking the meanings of both body and archive and
13:41:00 argues that this rethinking quote requires a radical openness to the possibility that knowledge can be both legible and embody that it is not only access through tests, but also generated and understood through physical states and actions, she discusses
13:41:17 food going Derrida notes the dare to puzzled over the boundary separating the body's interior from its exterior asking where does the outside commence.
13:41:27 Janet Edson Lansdale who believes very strongly that everything is a text
13:41:34 in writing the struggle with the angel which was her nod to mark a poetics of lightness and strange fish. And when she argues that in dance, the body is both subject and object of practice in theory, and further that the idea of performance is that it
13:41:51 is an interpreted act and interpreted text, especially in dance, and more to the point, in postmodern performance is quote associated with the personal investment of the individual and the creation of a fluid work, rather than interpreting a fixed text.
13:42:12 I find this absolutely fascinating, because everything they're saying, can be juxtaposed with what is actually happening in an archive inside bodies. Every time we think about this.
13:42:27 So, Where does the outside commit.
13:42:31 Who is the individual.
13:42:33 What do we really care about.
13:42:37 Steve Paxton and Robert done both look to improvisation for inspiration and exploration.
13:42:44 It uses the body, but not explicit memory.
13:42:48 It is the most ephemeral of the ephemeral art form of dance. It is unfixed, it is fluid.
13:42:55 It is one of the hallmarks of postmodern dance and is perhaps more like a plutonium absolute, and then it comes from the deep and body of knowledge represented through physical manifestation.
13:43:07 I'm going to see if I can actually make this work.
13:43:13 Okay, the first is a video of Robert Ellis done class that he was teaching.
13:44:12 So they were actually responding to an improvisation, then another individual you could see his foot at the beginning, had done in front of the entire class, and then they got up and improvised around what he had actually done.
13:44:27 Now I'm going to show you something done it actually a Jacob's Pillow.
13:44:32 And this is an example of what Steve Paxton calls contact improvisation.
13:44:42 An interesting phenomena
13:44:48 in the sense that it has a form or a goal or an aim, which is to stay in touch, keeping in touch and giving away and taken away.
13:45:01 Sounds like a regular relationship in some ways, doesn't it but it's focused on the skin.
13:45:07 And it's, it's about the skins ability to affect the body, mind, very quickly, and to
13:45:23 stimulate.
13:45:26 Okay.
13:45:32 All right, um, I also very interesting that he's talking about the skin when they're actually wearing clothes and I noticed that the male dancer, grabbed her pants at one point to put her over.
13:45:45 And I have to tell him that I have no idea how much time because I forgot to start my timer.
13:45:51 And we should be pretty good at. How much time do I have left.
13:45:55 About see about five minutes, five minutes. Okay. All right, this page Lyft, or intentionally left, like, because we can't see you sitting out there and our audience, which is probably a good thing from your viewpoint, because you're going to move.
13:46:14 So, this page is blank because this is your turn to try some of these things. So what I want you to do is a little bit of contact improv with, and every day.
13:46:27 You may not use your hands.
13:46:31 Basically, you move through the space with various different timings. So you might sit here and say here's, here's my everyday on to, and I'm going to do content but I can't use my hands right so I'm going to do something with my chair or move around
13:46:48 and see which different body parts you can get involved but I can also say, let me do the same thing with a very different time, and how that feels. Can I move this object.
13:47:02 So I want you to try it on your own.
13:47:05 I'm going to give you a couple minutes.
13:47:07 But I do want you to try it in different ways.
13:47:15 This is when you guys do this.
13:47:28 We have to turn off my camera here in it.
13:47:34 It can be any object. You can stand, you can crawl, you can use your chair.
13:48:00 Okay.
13:48:01 I'd like to bring it back. And in the chat. I'd like to just to go ahead and notice what what body parts. How did it feel. Did your body change wasn't embarrassing.
13:48:14 Was it fun. Was it what how can you describe what you actually did in the chat,
13:48:22 which for some reason I can't see.
13:48:26 So maybe met can throw out if anybody's brave enough to put something into the chat can throw out a few words that people have.
13:48:39 I don't see any responses yet, I will say from my own experience it involve leaning my armpit over the back of my chair and keeping my balance and in some unusual way.
13:48:56 One person says I did a hip hinge to bring my foot up to a chair,
13:49:03 says I use my feet toes ankles and shins to explore a yoga block from the floor.
13:49:11 Yoga balls behind me.
13:49:14 It's incredibly difficult to describe movement, especially when you're doing everyday movement notices somebody use part of the terminology a hip hinge.
13:49:25 I know what that is. So, but I could say it with just other words but the problem is, I'm using words to describe something that is embodied.
13:49:37 It's a really problematic and it's a challenge. When you're working in the archive, and I'm working with Liz Lerman, I used to work with Liz Letterman's bunch of certified movement analyst who all have ways to do things that have been bartending of archive.
13:49:54 The album bartending of archive. The Robert Ellis done archive. How do I make that. So it can be a physical thing inside. What is pretty static, as an archive.
13:50:07 So one of the things I did was to build a gallery where attendees could actually go in and work with a built object which happened to be a huge because the Hebrew.
13:50:17 And they could get in it. They could play with it. I also worked with a connect to, so that it could be an interactive experience, all of this, while they learned about what was going on in the archive, which was the bartending and papers.
13:50:31 So it was a way of actually bringing them physically into it. The other thing that I did, which you can actually see that on lib.umd.edu, if you want bartending, or you can see, Robert Hollis done.
13:50:48 So I built a website.
13:50:51 I'm one of the things, remember I said that the postmodern we're playing with time and space, and I decided that if that's pretty much what they were doing.
13:50:59 But, dealing with the body over here.
13:51:02 I built a timeline.
13:51:04 And from the timeline, you can scroll through and get information about Robert Ellis done, who I mentioned, suddenly been ignored completely in terms of Korean sneakers.
13:51:17 You can also look through a map
13:51:22 and get information on where he went in three years, and the middle of the 80s, where he was all over the place and the map is interactive so you can start exploring the map you can have.
13:51:34 You can see where he went. and when he went.
13:51:43 So he was.
13:51:45 It would be really neat now these days do this and augmented reality and have all of this coming up, but maybe someday I'll do that.
13:51:57 So, there are bodies in the archive in their archives in the bodies that dance, but the means of linking these bodies to the ephemeral works that we're in are produced on stages and in rehearsal studios and living rooms in little zoom places to the saved,
13:52:14 text, images, sounds, costumes props etc that are left behind, remains highly problematic there are no control vocabularies at this point for specifically for dance, much less postmodern dance, a common language for describing dance and movement continues
13:52:30 to elude us. There are notation systems, but very few people can actually read them, or write them genres are becoming hybridised and blended bodies are changing into digital data through animation avatars augmented and virtual reality ones and zeros.
13:52:50 It's online conferences and classes where the body is not.
13:52:58 Well, not that is a complex challenge, and the archive isn't necessarily changing with the needs of those trying to save a vestige of the ephemeral art.
13:53:08 Instead, the past and the current are juxtaposed in the bodies instead of materials are juxtaposed.
13:53:15 It's a postmodern world where life is an archive that still defines present preservation and access.
13:53:24 At least, where dance is concerned.
13:53:26 Thank you for listening, and that is me. Yes.
13:53:31 Thank you very much.
13:53:34 Thank you. Yes, I saw you that final slide earlier, recognize your face right away in there. Thank you.
13:53:44 All right, moving on.
13:53:47 Rachel McNicholas is up next. She is an archives processing technician in the music division at the Library of Congress.
13:53:56 She earned her PhD in historical musicology from Case Western Reserve University with an emphasis on medieval studies, and is currently pursuing a certificate in digital curation for information professionals at the University of Maryland, her presentation
13:54:15 today developed out her broad interests in the discourse between music and wartime politics during the 20th century and research in the Daniel Nathan collection at the Library of Congress.
13:54:30 Rachel.
13:54:32 Thank you for that introduction. I seem to be having problems sharing my screen at the moment.
13:54:42 Okay.
13:54:44 Is it that you're not seeing the button, Rachel or, Um, let me see what I can do.
13:54:54 There you go. Here's my desktop.
13:54:59 Oh,
13:55:01 work from home, buddy.
13:55:10 Can you see my PowerPoint. We absolutely can. Wonderful.
13:55:09 Here you go.
13:55:10 Thank you for that introduction, Matt.
13:55:13 So today I will be test cussing postmodern dances and well, but about Daniel Negron.
13:55:21 So Daniel Negron colossal to our solo dance, titled the Peloponnesian War premiered in Brockport New York in 1968.
13:55:31 The work would provoke shock baffle intrigue and in many cases personally involved. Those who attended the performance Negron was an American modern dancer who studied under Martha Graham, Anna Sokolov, and Helen Maris he performed on Broadway between
13:55:48 1945 and 1956. But despite many successes became disenchanted with its emphasis on show and commercialism. So we left the industry and sought to create works that weren't intended for not solely entertainment, but also as vehicles to comment on current
13:56:07 events, which as I will explain was the case with the Peloponnesian War.
13:56:13 Despite its enormous popularity and dozens of performances, but work is little known today to to paucity of secondary sources, although Christina schlundt does discuss it in her biography of Daniel Negron our evidence instead lies and archival materials
13:56:30 held at the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library approaching this work from the vantage point of a researcher, I will show how several documents in the Daniel Negron collection at the Library of Congress, land insight into how neighboring
13:56:44 incorporated post modernist aesthetics into this work and why he did so, the idea is I proposed in this paper or my own, and not the official opinion of the Library of Congress.
13:56:57 So, post modernism in the context of this presentation refers to the movement that emerged during the late 1960s or 1980s across the arts and sciences, it flipped the traditional focus from creator intent to audience reception.
13:57:14 In order to do this, visual and performing artists frequently a shoot linear narrative, and instead use collage fragmentation and quotation as a means of appealing to the subjective experiences of the viewer or audience, In turn, each observer was responsible
13:57:32 for constructing his or her own personal meaning, depending on how he or she interpreted a work of art Nygard titled the Peloponnesian War after three cities is epic by the same name, which narrates the ancient war between Sparta and Athens between 431
13:57:52 and 44 bc Nagar and however, was not concerned with creating a dance that physically portrayed these specific events. Rather, written during the highly contentious Vietnam War.
13:58:04 He sought to draw parallels between the two conflicts and emphatically criticize war in general.
13:58:12 As with much postmodernist art, he conveyed this message through a collection of disparate characters themes, music, and choreographic styles to create a work that he referred to as a quote, dance, Theater collage.
13:58:27 At the same time the use of collage required the audience member to draw connections among the various elements. And as a result, his or her own conclusions about its significance as a work of art.
13:58:53 Sorry, I lost my spot Megan's notes for me early planning stages indicate that he always envisioned the work as a collage. This page data to march 20 1966 offers a list of seemingly unrelated themes and scenes for the Peloponnesian War such as manual
13:59:12 arms of gun, playing with it, musical comedy bit killing a chicken, an intellectual decision, the hand prop will it keep the snake alive, and so on, he incorporated some of these elements into the final dance, which was divided into two parts with an
13:59:32 intermission, and separated into 15 movements as outlined in this program, which he designed.
13:59:39 Each was focused on a specific scene related to war or violence and Negron changed into a variety of different costumes on stage, he became a soldier, gambler cortisone scientist concentration camp and make Hitler, a woman, a peasant and Santa Claus.
14:00:00 He imitated the pope with the sign of benediction.
14:00:03 In the only overt reference to the political climate. He appears at the first lady of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963, regardless of who Negron became each character falls victim to violence, either as a witness, or in depth, the auditory and choreographic
14:00:23 elements are equally significant to the scenes negra collaborated closely with composers and considered music, a crucial aspect of his dancers, he would only perform to recorded music, however, as tapes were easily transportable adaptable to multiple
14:00:42 venues, and he viewed it less commercial.
14:00:59 He recorded the auditory elements for the Peloponnesian War on two tapes that ran simultaneously. Eric Salzman who compose new music for the work compiled them on the first tape actor Franklin gala monotonous the merits and English translation for through
14:01:04 cities is the Peloponnesian War.
14:01:17 It began playing as soon as the audience began entering the hall and continued until the conclusion of the performance, even during intermission.
14:01:17 The use of this continuous text emphasizes the perpetuity of war sense antiquity.
14:01:24 In his notes Negron work, wrote copious Lee about the epic and meticulously chose the passages that he would incorporate into his collage, as there was only time to include 40 out of over 470 pages.
14:01:39 These notes go on for pages and pages.
14:01:44 The second tape played a collage of musical styles that is just as disparate as the movements that accompanies a series of notes, most likely dating to 1967 offers a list of possible composers, or works that cross genres and time periods Renaissance composer
14:02:04 Michael Pretorius Vivaldi Haydn Beethoven Copeland Scriabin Stockhausen. The Maple Leaf reg Bob Dylan john Coltrane and Max Roach, among many others Negron us different works than listed here on the final tape, but created an equally complex collage of
14:02:25 newly composed electronic music patriotic songs, focus on jazz organ music liturgical chant Valley themes and Broadway musicals, all often manipulated or change the process by which Negron chose the music that he did is mysterious.
14:02:45 He provided at least a small indication and a letter to James Taylor data December 4 1967, quote, you're right. The formula for success study the way out, and the forefront authors who are great.
14:03:01 So great they are unbearable and frightening to the commercial vendors, then make your contribution palatable cute delectable. Take out the spine and circlet of art.
14:03:14 Voila, you are a success.
14:03:23 For the Peloponnesian War, all fragments are from well known works have recognizable associations and our non commercial, the snippets from Broadway are the one exception, perhaps an ironic Ode to the industry that he left in order to create works with
14:03:33 more social names.
14:03:36 In this case, his choice of music and sounds comments on the dramatic performance to create a pronouncement against war.
14:03:44 For instance, the first movement is titled waltz Negron enters dressed as a soldier. The sound of the Star Spangled Banner accompanies the scene hovered is played in six different overlapping keys creating a cacophony that automatic that audibly questions,
14:04:00 American patriotism.
14:04:02 Several reviews from different performances report that audiences were uncertain whether to stand or remain seated.
14:04:09 Most chose to sit as they tried to make sense of the situation.
14:04:14 In the following movement titled arise Negron Don's a Hitler mustache and narrates the rise of the dictator through his dance. The melody from the George long lead the national anthem of Germany sounds in the background.
14:04:29 Joseph hide who wrote the three stanzas song in 19, in 1792 for the emperor of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. During the Nazi regime. The first stanza was performed at highly important occasions, followed by the anthem of Hitler's cabinet.
14:04:48 In 1990, the third stands alone was named the national anthem of Germany. Now the history is much more complicated than that but they don't have time to get into it entirely here by stripping the melody of its text Negron auto be evokes the reign of Hitler,
14:05:05 who he imitates on stage at the same time he simultaneously juxtaposes the pores of the past with a very well known, modern day melody and miscellaneous balls Nagar and x out the various ways in which one might die.
14:05:24 The subsequent movement turning dance has the subtitle, quote, having heard of death, he refuses.
14:05:32 Although the protagonist was just warned of the consequences of engaging and violent conflict. He nevertheless chooses to ignore them.
14:05:42 Eric Salzman also incorporated sounds from everyday life more time and natural disasters into this tape soundtrack for similar purposes.
14:05:52 At one point Negron imitates a man who is frustrated, as he remains on hold on the phone. He requests the time, only to receive a horrifying whistling sound, and a voice at the tone The time will be 10 987651 hydrogen bomb drops splat, followed by the
14:06:17 sound of an atomic bomb exploding.
14:06:20 The historic reference here is unmistakable
14:06:25 the sequence of elements from salesman's plan for the tape lyst other sounds used within the Peloponnesian War. Applause Jingle Bells toilet flush women's screams escaping steam an avalanche with cracks machine guns, Dennis drill a burglar alarm goblet
14:06:42 smashing, and many, many others.
14:06:46 The effect is one in which violence is inseparable from everyday life.
14:06:51 I'm unable to access recordings, and videos of the scenes that I have mentioned here. The video from National Dance one and two, from the Daniel Negron theater film and dance foundation demonstrates the small animation of text, music, and everyday sound.
14:07:12 See
14:07:20 you able to see the screen.
14:07:33 Was that a yes or no.
14:07:38 Okay, wonderful. Thank you.
14:07:40 Okay, so I'm just going to play a part of this so you can hear an idea of what it would have looked and sounded like, and the elements that are involved.
14:07:51 So this is her National Dance one. Ah.
14:08:18 acting aggressively.
14:08:19 And that war should be declared without delay.
14:08:22 However, despite and King naka de mis, a man who had a reputation for both intelligence and moderation came forward and made the following speech.
14:08:33 Spartans.
14:08:36 In the course of my life I have taken part in many wars.
14:08:40 And I see among you, people are the same age as I am.
14:08:44 They.
14:08:47 And I have an experience, so I'm not likely to share and what maybe agenda and Susie as and four.
14:09:15 other directions,
14:09:19 tools and his estate.
14:09:26 With a population of any other place and habits.
14:09:48 So as you just heard in that video we saw began with a Russian folk song, as you heard in the background as well the narration of facilities, then the music drops out and all you hear is this speech from facilities but Negron continues on with the same
14:10:06 choreography as he would have done the original dance.
14:10:10 If the music had been there then he ends imitating a march from essentially a military parade. There's this moment where you hear the heavy breathing that that sound as if you just finished a heavy workout or something.
14:10:25 And, come on, followed by the start of National Dance to, which is a series of jazz scene's, and one from musical theater I do believe if I recall correctly.
14:10:41 And so essentially this global amalgamation of different things, both in terms of, you see something from Russia all the way to something from it, idiom that's distinctly from the United States.
14:10:57 Now in addition to music Negron also purposely uses props and choreography as a means of emphasizing war and its consequences as a soldier, he discovers a disturbingly realistic severed arm wrapped in newspaper, you can imagine my surprise when encountering
14:11:15 this in the archives Negron is not horrified at the carnage but fascinated. He shakes it has its hand arm wrestles with it and kicks it off stage or rhetorical seen that vividly displays the disposability of human life on the battlefield sculptor look
14:11:33 Ralph Lee created the prop and model that using a cast of migrants are also incredibly heavy.
14:11:40 It is a sign of not only the tragedy of war but also the desensitized and apathetic mindset of American society, or at least us he said at another point Negron who picked up a rifle pointed it directly into the audience and fired the cartridges were removed,
14:11:58 of course, but it nevertheless shocked and startled the audience, they were no longer mirror observers but also actively affected by the drama on stage.
14:12:08 Every review that I have read stresses the lasting impact of the scenes through which Negron sought to persuade the audience to abandon their role as by standards in a time of war.
14:12:21 The choreography also contributes to this message, I'll be honest, I'll be it on a subtler level.
14:12:27 While the style is usually have a more modern aesthetic Nagar and also includes passages of tumbling ballet and pantomime. He even reused portions of the choreography from his highly popular earlier dances strange hero from 1948 and independent terminate
14:12:44 figure from 1957.
14:12:46 Strange hero explores the interior motives of an unnamed gangster and his self serving and other violent behavior in determinant figure focuses on an individual that turns a blind eye to global tragedies that faces these realities, as an explosion strikes
14:13:03 him dead.
14:13:05 When you send the Peloponnesian War, the two choreographic citations recall the scenes from his prior dances that Warren of the consequences of perpetuating societal violence.
14:13:33 Peloponnesian War then is essentially a collage of distorted altered and fragmented characters dramatic themes musical quotations and choreographic styles. The monotonous recitation of facilities, is the one thread of total continuity.
14:13:38 When interpreted in light of the performance on stage. However, the ancient or suddenly does not seem so far off the tragedy of war has repeated itself time and time again.
14:13:50 No one regardless of politics profession, religion, gender or culture is immune to it's devastating effects.
14:13:59 At the conclusion of the word Negron changes into a white bathrobe, the clear reference to togas from long ago collides with a common theme from modern Jake is a raw statement of both the universality or four, and it's repetitiveness cover as one reviewer
14:14:17 However, as one reviewer remarked, his final action provides a solution for what has so far seemed so hopeless quote vagrants slowly walks offstage through the audience, and to the exit.
14:14:29 There he class, each person's hand in the silent love of brotherhood. It is his answer, and perhaps the only one, and quote peace love and Sarah solidarity can solve the endless cycle of war.
14:14:44 Now that Negron has spoken, the audience must reflect and choose whether to take action now neighbors could have perhaps more clearly expressed as message through a narrative structure.
14:14:57 The use of collage however displays a commitment to audience reception.
14:15:03 Sally Austin Tams for reviewer for 1972 performance of the work keenly observed this collage athlete describes this work for it consists of taunting glimpses of the familiar taunting, because it does not present an implicit or explicit interaction of
14:15:21 those similarities. The dance compels each member of the audience to integrate its elements for himself. Each person who saw the Peloponnesian War would have a different explanation for it.
14:15:34 The greatness of Megan's creativity is his use of reality.
14:15:39 He causes us to look and then to realize that we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear the music was chosen from well known works all characters were recognizable by their fashion and some observers may have been familiar with the choreography
14:15:57 is drawn from vagrants earlier works it because the familiar aspects were deconstructed and patched together and fragmented form. Audience members were required to draw their own associations, among the similar elements.
14:16:12 So while the Peloponnesian War clearly conveys a strong message against violent conflict. Each audience member would have reacted differently to the experience, due to the multitude of components and countless ways in which they might be related or connected
14:16:33 to one another. In 1980 Negron reflected upon Peloponnesian War. In a letter to Suzanne vile director of the dance program at the National Endowment for the Arts, quote, many dancers hated it.
14:16:45 The New York press held in contempt. Why large audiences loved it came to see it four or five times what through it. People from the other arts supported it wasn't really a good work or not to my way of thinking there is no answer.
14:17:02 I did what I had to do some of my audience left, and some stayed Negron son need to speak out against war and violence, and that is what he sought to do in this dance.
14:17:15 He left each audience member with the responsibility to determine whether it held merit as a work of art, and how to react archival materials such as those I have shared today, and many others in the Daniel Negron collection, provide that invaluable insight
14:17:32 regarding his process when creating the Peloponnesian War and the ways in which he deliberately sought to communicate, an anti war message negar in the post modernist however offers no roadmap for drawing specific associations among the dance theater
14:17:49 collages many components, even decades later, that remains for each of us to consider and to decide.
14:17:57 Thank you for attending.
14:18:02 Thank you, Rachel I will applaud all three of you for your, your great work today, and I will encourage everyone who's in attendance to add some questions to the QA and we have about 12 minutes to respond to any that come up so please send those in, in,
14:18:26 in my own
14:18:30 thinking through some of the common themes and threads that I have heard in your work today.
14:18:38 One is this step death of the author of the shifting of the emphasis from this author records creator.
14:18:48 Usually individual of authority over to the audience or the user, and the various ways that they engage with that work.
14:19:01 I don't have a good question, out of that but that that was one thing that struck me.
14:19:12 Well, I do think it presents a problem for the archivist right, and how to preserve something with such a disabled identity, both as the author and as like a work, and that came up really clearly in both Susan and Rachel's presentations that it presents,
14:19:32 all kinds of challenges.
14:19:36 Because we're used to as archivists like guiding people towards a narrative and when there's no stable narrative to guide someone toward then, what, what do you do and what kind of implications does that have in terms of description and outreach, I don't
14:19:52 know if either of you want to respond to that but
14:20:01 I think you're spot on my thought I think it's incredibly difficult to think about how do we describe this or organize this specially if materials come in without a very strong sense of order, because there's so many post modernism itself is a term that's
14:20:21 very controversial in the sense that there's so many different ways that it can be defined. And so that's the thought where I think archivists also need to think as researchers, how would they approach these collections.
14:20:35 In the case of the Daniel Negron collection and help us in war. The materials for that are mostly confined to a single two inch binder. And so in that case, those are easier to keep together but when thinking about collections that might not have that.
14:20:55 I think it becomes much more difficult to come up with say one method.
14:21:07 No, I don't think I'm going to address that but I'm actually one thing that Rachel just was saying couple things about Daniel Negron actually kind of had a friend who did her entire PhD on him.
14:21:24 Um, I always knew him as the King of improvisation he wrote the textbook on improvisation, that we would use specifically structured and prompt and you can see how he he does deal with structure, because he had had, and while he is he's considered one
14:21:42 of the minor people in the postmodern era and dance for those of us who are specifically dance related but he he's the one who pretty much.
14:21:55 Bob done and Steve Paxton and the other early post moderns.
14:22:00 consider a post modernist because you can say, Bill T. Jones actually followed, Daniel vagrant and his work and he's very much a postmodernist but other people would argue you know he's a post.
14:22:24 He's a modern post modernist so and we do play with all of these terms in the dance world and we can't really say what it's what but it also there's the fact of what I had to do for Robert L is done is, we have some of the.
14:22:42 I don't work there anymore.
14:22:44 Skip a has some of the Robert Ellis done collection very small part Library of Congress. So in order to build mine work I had to go out there to the Library of Congress, and get what was partly there, and then use what is partly it's Skipper.
14:23:00 So, and how do you connect the two so back to something Christina said earlier about like data, how can we use technology to be able to access all of these different places where things are stored.
14:23:14 Same thing with lava and it's all over the world, but most of those archives have closed, so you can't get to the materials to having having actual access to that material is really important.
14:23:26 And I just kept thinking the whole time both of them were talking is like juxtaposition juxtaposition. I'm also, I forgot to mention that Robert Ellis done ended up being a librarian at the New York Public Library.
14:23:40 So he did get a degree, and went there because he couldn't make enough money being in a company just so little known fact. But, um, yeah how the gallery exhibit that I did.
14:23:56 How can I preserve that.
14:24:00 Well, you can build the Ico secret. You can check it out, and you can build it.
14:24:04 So you can get your hands on it, there is data stored somewhere from the connect to that we use.
14:24:12 It's still never going to get down into the body and Daniel Negron is one of those people who you need to watch. Lots of work by him because the man used his body beautifully and amazing hands, they were very big.
14:24:27 So, yeah, I'm not really answering that question.
14:24:30 I'm saying lots of other stuff, know that those are all good points.
14:24:41 One question that came in, in accepting the future of nature of archiving performance and recognizing those absences within the totality of the archives.
14:24:48 How do you think we can reconstruct the effect or feeling of performance in the archive.
14:24:54 Or should we even try within the archive to preserve something so subjective.
14:25:05 I mean, I'll start. We don't have an answer to that, like nobody has an answer to that. So let's not pretend that we're gonna come up with today like the answer to that question that's been haunting Performing Arts archives, for their entire existence.
14:25:22 That said, I think, in the papers today we did see several approaches toward that. I mean reception history is one way of trying to get at that right you know seen lots of subjectivity is lined up together, and embodiment is another way of trying to get
14:25:42 get at that, you know, trying to record in some way, what the physicality of this is, And then to store it through computer technology.
14:25:55 And then, you know, the.
14:26:00 Having a.
14:26:03 I don't know how to put this in words but but having an understanding that your user is not coming without their own effective experience to the archive, either.
14:26:12 So they carry with them knowledge that is not legible and a text, as well. So I do think, you know, I find the users that skip it to be intelligent about reading between the lines in the, in what we have to offer them, because many of them are performers
14:26:34 and many of them do know what that feels like for them, and so can can draw lines between the dots, even if those lines aren't legible in a typical humanist way.
14:26:47 Know.
14:26:57 And another thing that kind of jumped out to me during stina his paper was about the FX theory and how that applies to to some of my own experience working with researchers where I work at the Peabody Institute archives.
14:27:16 We get so many alumni or other musicians who are interested in discovering new record rediscovering the words of people they may have studied with performed with.
14:27:29 And they, their response to finding these things are learning about what's there is often comes with much more enthusiasm than I get sometimes from the, you know that the very serious scholars who are doing the more in depth, research, and you know I
14:27:59 like being able to support those different kinds of projects, and the ways that.
14:27:59 What was the phrase that you used and how we feel over how we think. In the definition of perfect theory that kind of spoke to me as I was listening to your paper because.
14:28:15 Yeah, you know, one of the things that happened as I put together this paper is, I, I'm a student and I'm trying to, you know, level up my knowledge of archival theory.
14:28:26 And when I came across Mariah see force paper, it really put into words so many things that I've been trying to say and, as I was writing and rewriting this piece.
14:28:38 And so I, I do really love the way she elucidates effect theory and if you're interested in this, I highly recommend that you like read her work.
14:28:49 she deals a lot with the homosexual community and trying to understand how to document trauma and art in and around the AIDS crisis.
14:29:03 So, but for us, you know, I think anyone who's invested in the arts understands that this is more than just nuts and bolts right and.
14:29:19 And I don't think as archivists, or as researchers that we should pretend otherwise.