Unarchiving: Amnesia & Innocence
Over 20 years I’ve amassed an overwhelming, chaotic archive of unused ideas, inspirations & references on scraps of paper, notebooks &hard drives that I’d have liked to implement towards a performance work but have piled up instead. The theme Amnesia & Innocence comes from the title of a list found written on one such sticky note. I’d like to creatively process the archive in a way that helps me develop a new practice & approach to making; confronts a perceived ongoing issue in my art work; & reveals patterns & insights of my long-term artistic concerns & evolution.
I propose to do this through a process of using amnesia & innocence as strategies to confront a single, randomly chosen item in the archive for each working day. I’ll respond to the selected item through movement study, writing & research as if I have uncovered an artifact from an unknown world. In this way I hope to see how, if at all, I resonate with it presently. I’d catalogue the findings in an online blog that shares what gets produced from that day like dance videos, written & visual reflections, etc.
Rather than trying to piece together or physically manifest a buried world of past ideas, I’d like to see how these artifacts can serve as living prompts for me to explore current interests & methods.
