Archival recollecting: the unstable realm of the visible.

The anthology Performing Archives/Archives of Performance consists of essays on the relationship between archives and performances. The anthology focuses on three key areas within the complex relationship between the archival and the performative, discussed within the theoretical framework of performance studies: Ontolgy; Performance; and Queering. The idea for the anthology began taking shape during the Performance Studies international (PSi) annual conference in Copenhagen 2008 entitled Interregnum: In Between States, where a number of academic and artistic performances addressed the issue of documentation and archiving. The topic of archives emerged not only in relation to performance art as such, but also within areas of ethnography, museum studies, and film production as well as broader issues regarding historical knowledge, local narratives, and identity politics. The anthology takes up the themes of the conference and expands on existing research on performance and archives. Notably, the publication addresses: aspects of cultural performance and acts of social remembering; the “archival impulse” to store and transmit; and seemingly oppositional relations between the stable and tangible materials of the archive and the ephemeral and embodied experience of performance.