Author: Jules Pelta Feldman

What role does architecture play in choreographing performance – both the actions of the performer, and the reception of their audience? How do the spaces we inhabit affect our movements and behavior?

Submit an abstract to our upcoming (online) session at the College Art Association's annual conference! Theoretical, art historical, practice-based and experimental contributions are all welcome.

The idea of "anarchival materiality" – which probes how rebellious and fugitive media might help reveal the histories and biases of anthropology – seems a promising approach to the documentation of performance.

In recent weeks, our research project hosted its first two public events: the two-day colloquium “Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Care —  # 1. Mapping the Field,” and “Living Materials: Ethics and Principles for Embodied Stewardship,” an in-depth conversation between Cori Olinghouse and Megan Metcalf. Julia reflects on what we learned from these events, and how that knowledge will endure and change in the future.

We anticipated a scintillating and productive discussion with anthropologist and filmmaker Michaela Schäuble when we met with her in April. That assumption proved entirely correct – but other assumptions we held about the contemporary practice of anthropology, and Schäuble’s own approach to documentation, were turned inside-out. (Photograph by Anja Dreschke.)

As an art historian, I am used to thinking of memory as something that must be captured in another medium – text, video, etc. – in order to be preserved. But perhaps memory itself can be a form of preservation.

Submit a paper for presentation at our colloquium in May, "Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Care – #1. Mapping the Field."

Much like art performance, freely improvised music is considered spontaneous, transient, and unique. Could approaches from the world of music help us conserve ephemeral art?

Might Pippin Barr's simple flash games represent a useful tool in the conservation of performance art?

How can live art be preserved for the future? And what does conservation theory and practice have to teach other disciplines seeking to understand art's most ephemeral medium?