Digging into the Archive  V – we will figure it out

SA, 22 10 2022, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Registration: anmeldung@kunstraum.net (subject: „Wühlen im Archiv V“)

Guest Input: Sööt/Zeyringer (Tiina Sööt and Dorothea Zeyringer)
Concept and realisation: Performatorium (Olivia Jaques and Marlies Surtmann)

The performance we will figure it out by Sööt/Zeyringer (Tiina Sööt and Dorothea Zeyringer) was shown as part of the performance evening On and beyond a Stage 2015 at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich.^[1] In this work, the artist duo dealt with the overcoming of obstacles, failure and the search for solutions in seemingly hopeless situations. Seven years later we are going to trace this performance together with Sööt/Zeyringer. In an input, the artist duo, which has been working together for ten years, shares their practice and thus leads us on the trail of their past ways of working. Together with the artists we travel through a wormhole to a past work as well as a past way of collaboration. The form of collaboration is an intrinsic part of the artistic work and changes over time, with people, with changing circumstances, with artistic interest; it is a listening, losing themselves, finding themselves (always anew); at times it is negotiation, at other times it is interplay.

The series Digging into the Archive finds ways of artistic-performative engagement with performances from the archive of Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, with different approaches each time. Using documentary materials and/or oral history elements, we conjure up^[2] the past event and enter the oscillating loop between past, present and future. The project demands the end of contemplation: not a reenactment, but a forensic composition of the traces, a physical recreation of a past event. For this, we use a ‘home made’ method, based on Diana Taylor’s concept of the scenario. This forms a framework that allows for multi-perspective interpretations and shifts in time, place and culture; a formalistic structure that makes equal use of the modes of tradition. On a practical level, we address the following questions: What can be experienced or understood through the process of repeating? What kind of updates or reinterpretations take place? What does this change of perspective imply for a feminist perspective on history, but also for an everyday dealing with past events? The focus shifts from the question of accurate and complete transmission to the question of what and how we learn from past (performance) events for a recent understanding of society and culture.

Artists and those interested in performance art are invited to participate in this experiment. Digging into the Archive is embedded in a research project for the archiving of performance art. By participating in the workshop, the participant agrees that recordings and images of the workshop, as well as images of any (artistic) results within the research project Archiving Performance Art? On Archiving, Transmission and Mediation of an Art Form in Motion are subject to CC BY NC regulations and may be published and used for further research.

Please wear comfortable clothes. The number of participants is limited to a maximum of 8 people. Please register  HERE with the subject line Wühlen im Archiv V.

Digging into the Archive is a cooperation between Kunstraum Niederoesterreich and Performatorium.

performatorium.wordpress.com
facebook.com/PerformatoriumVienna
instagram.com/performatorium_vienna

^[1] See performance evening On and beyond a Stage on the 2nd of April 2015, curated by Anat Stainberg, as part of the performance series #3 as can be seen from at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich (02.04.2015 - 30.05.2015).

^[2] In sisterly solidarity we remember at this point Netta Weiser's Radio-Choreography  and Diana Taylor's "conjur[ing] up past situations").