VAULT

Presentation 1:

• Thinking about this topic influenced by journey: librarian with NYPL, working in traditional archive setting
• Interested in the question: what is a dance archive, since dance is a live, intangible artform
• A dance archive is built around an absence
• Dissatisfaction with video as the way to represent and archive
• Dance archive must be made up of many different things
• Dance Heritage Coalition: working directly with artists
• How are artists involved in creating their archives?
• How do these archives tell their stories?
• How is archiving itself a creative process?
• How can dance and archiving be integrated?
• How do artists engage with their legacy materials?
• Practical aspect (i.e. getting things to a point where they can be archived
• Artist’s Legacy Toolkit: suite of practical tools and guides and information about archiving
• How can we help independent artists? Support, funding, resources for this work tend to go to biggest, wealthiest companies. Looking to provide solutions that do not assume a great deal of money and time; resources for people at all career stages
• Archive consultants
• Reinventing the archive wheel: sustainability and connect-ability are important; create possibilities for different archives to speak to each other
• There is a need for a simple, stream-lined, flexible platform and a set of standards to create databases and ways of sharing work
• Not a lot of existing standards and platforms in the field
• Not about a one-size-fits-all, but many needs are the same
• The possibility of disappearance also create opportunities for conversation
• Shift from analog to digital = a shift in the way we think about archive and archival needs
• Digital life = constant turnover of platforms = potential for loss and system incompatibility
• “Archive brought to life”
• Engaging with an archive can become a part of the creative process and influence new works (David Gordon example)
• Archiveography: DG’s biography through his archive
• Live Archiveography, show, live performance, archival images, etc.
• Access and appetite
• Appetite of audience to access archives + appetite of artists to share their work; two appetites coming together (Eiko and Koma example)
• How to bring the body into the archive?
• Artform that is passed down from body to body, constant shift of material through different bodies (Gene Butler and Our Steps, Our Story)
• Brought in students and former teachers, teaching the dances and talking through them (included public component, film, audio)
• Questions
• Strategies for old videos? How to transfer them into more modern formats? (Mitchell Rose)
• Two parts (IS)
1. Digitization: material is deteriorating and window is closing
• This is a question of funding
• Regranting money, especially for independent artists
2. Repository: Who steps up to be the repository so that as formats change the safety of files is not compromised
3. Need for field to come together to decide what it wants and needs
• Gaps in terms of which artists are archived and which artists are not? (MG)
• How do we go back and repair those gaps? (IS)
• Concept of archival sciences: when you go to an archive, what is missing?
• What are the strategies or methodologies for archiving the gaps?