Performing Arts Archives: Dynamic Entities Complementing and Supporting Scholarship and Creativity
- Performing Arts Archives:Dynamic Entities Complementing and Supporting Scholarship and Creativity
Francesca Marini is Assistant Professor of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies of the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has a B.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests focus on performing arts archives and digital preservation; she publishes internationally in archival and theatre journals.
Notes
1. Richard Pearce-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005), s.v. "record."
2. The InterPARES 2 Project, Terminology Database-Glossary (current as of April 26, 2007), s.v. "record," http://www.interpares.org/ip2/ip2_terminology_db.cfm.
3. See the Society of American Archivists, "Guantanamo Detainee Records May Be in Jeopardy; SAA and Others Seek Clarification," April 20, 2007, http://www.archivists.org/news/Guantanamo.asp.
4. See Carolyn Hamilton et al., eds., Refiguring the Archive (Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 2002).
5. See, e.g., Randall C. Jimerson, "Embracing the Power of Archives," American Archivist 69, no. 1 (2006): 19-32.
6. See, e.g., Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Verne Harris, "A Shaft of Darkness: Derrida in the Archives," in Hamilton et al., Refiguring the Archive, 61-81.
7. Among many postmodern archival writings, see Terry Cook and Joan M. Schwartz, "Archives, Records, and Power: From (Postmodern) Theory to (Archival) Performance," Archival Science 2, nos. 3-4 (2002): 171-85; and Tom Nesmith, "Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives," American Archivist 65, no. 1 (2002): 24-41.
8. As an example, see Jimerson, "Embracing the Power of Archives."
9. See, e.g., Matthew Reason, Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
10. Ibid. Among many writings that address performance documentation, see, e.g., Kenneth Schlesinger, Pamela Bloom, and Ann Ferguson, eds., Performance Documentation and Preservation in an Online Environment (New York: Theatre Library Association, 2004); Denise Varney and Rachel Fensham, "More-and-Less-Than: Liveness, Video Recording, and the Future of Performance," New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 1 (2000): 88-96; Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003; reprint, 2005); and Reason, Documentation.
11. "L'archivio deve vivere, deve essere un nucleo attivo con tutti quanti. Agli scenografi che . . . ho il piacere di conoscere, dico 'Questo qui è un archivio che aspetta le vostre opere. Sapete che c'è.'. . . Perché [l'archivio] deve vivere. Se non è conosciuto, se non convive con la città, con le persone, con gli studiosi . . . è un archivio morto. E il teatro non deve assolutamente essere un discorso morto, anzi deve far capire agli altri tutto quello che c'è, la possibilità proprio di fare, di scoprire." Francesca Marini, "Sources and Methodology of Theater Research in the View of Scholars and Information Professionals" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005), 174-75 (interview 3). In the discussion, I am withholding the names of the interviewees and of their institutions. This is an established practice in qualitative research and is required by the regulations enforced by the Office for Protection of Research Subjects of the University of California, Los Angeles, with which I was affiliated at the time of the study. The English translation of the quotes is mine. Since literal translation is not always possible, I have included the original quotes in the notes to allow for comparison.
12. Martha Ullman West, "Dancers as Living Archives," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 2006, B14.
13. Marini, "Sources and Methodology," 107 (interview 28).
14. Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire.
15. Marini, "Sources and Methodology"; see also Marini, "Archivists, Librarians, and Theatre Research," Archivaria 63 (Spring 2007): 7-33.
16. See Marini, "Sources and Methodology," 148-50. Research on the uses of performing arts archives is currently under way at the Theatre Museum in London, conducted by Bonnie Hewson. Bonnie Hewson, e-mail to author, April 17, 2007.
17. See Richard Schechner...
