The Crossed Archives International Conference aims to be a space for meeting and sharing diverse experiences related to the identification and treatment of performing arts archives. More than that, we wish to open a space for discussion about the circumstances of archiving as a practice, highlighting its fundamental role in the preservation and understanding of the performing arts.

We propose a cross-approach of similar initiatives from Chile to Brazil, from Italy to the United Kingdom. It is about sharing, reflecting on and considering ways of approaching (and possibly safeguarding) the companies' archives, in particular relating to the aforementioned period and the key terms “Independent Theatre” and “Decentralization” present in the speeches of the time, understanding the archive simultaneously as a system of organization and thought of the past seen from a situated present, on the one hand, and a set of practices, decisions and concrete material procedures, on the other.

This meeting will bring together researchers and artists such as keynote speakers Heike Roms, consultant at ARTHE - Arquivar o Teatro, organizer of the project 'It was forty years ago today...': Locating the Early History of Performance Art in Wales 1965-1979, and Elisabeth Azevedo, coordinator and researcher in the “Traje em Cena” project, which organized the costume collection at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo and the research “Inventário da Cena Paulistana”.

 

We will also count on the presence of recent experiences in which the digital takes on a central expression in the ways of imagining, treating, and presenting the archive. This is the case of the European project (ERC) “INCOMMON. In praise of the community. Shared creativity in arts and politics in Italy (1959-1979)” represented by Marco Baravalle who, in addition to having inventoried the tense relationship between performing arts and politics in the Italy of the “anni di piombo”, proposes cartographies, uniting protagonists with existential and aesthetics. Two projects from Chile are part of this same line of approach to performing arts archives. If the CATASTRO DE ARCHIVOS DE ARTES CENICAS, represented here by Pía Gutiérrez, professor at the School of Theater at PUC, in Chile and member of the ARDE project, is the international proposal that most closely resembles the mapping underway by ARTHE, the ARDE project - Archivos de Arte, represented by researcher Katharina Eitner, unfolds, somewhat like INCOMMON, the notion of archive into each work process, documenting current scenic practices in parallel with the revisiting of specific archives and the mapping of cartographies.

We will welcome nine communications on cases of archives currently existing or under construction that help to problematize technical, historical, sociological, political, artistic and philosophical issues, related both to archiving practices and to the production and transmission of knowledge about the performing arts from these archives.

We hope to be able to count on your participation and contribution to make this event a moment of broad discussion!

 

The ARTHE Project team - Archive the Theater