Adkins, LB., Duffy, N., Büchler, P., Cass, N., 2017.

Notes for a Performance - (Re) visioning Heritage Sites and Archives.

This research interrogates historicity and narrative memory implicit in heritage sites and archives. The research is the culmination of a four-month artist residency at the Tetley Centre for Contemporary Art in Leeds, working with the Tetley's industrial, heritage archive located in-house and at West Yorkshire Archives, supported by the Tetley and Carlsberg brewery. Outputs include three exhibitions 'Notes for a Performance - (Re) visioning a Smoky Meeting', 'Notes for a Performance - 10 Smoking Men' and 'Made in Translation. A series of performances, 'Notes for a Performance - (Re) visioning a Smoky Meeting' & 'Notes for a Performance - (Re) visioning a Ritual' and two accompanying publications. The works have been presented at major international galleries; Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Tetley Leeds, Anglia Ruskin Gallery Cambridge, The Portico Library Manchester, RINTed#4, Barcelona, Spain ?and ARCHIVE, MABB2018, Malmö Sweden?. Manchester School of Art Research Centre, Manchester School of Writing Research Centre, The Tetley, The University of Leeds and Temple Bar Gallery funded this research.

Research investigates how performance (re) visioning can extend the understanding of heritage sites and archives to present an 'affective' understanding of the past alongside how methodologies of performance (re) visioning can interrogate narrative and collective memory using cinematic language. The research utilized methodologies used in film and theatre such as tableaux vivant and stage lighting as a means to construct narrative memory performances referencing the cinematic. Audio Description techniques created meta-narrative performance texts that articulated multiple and conflicting readings of the heritage archive studied - the now, the future and the past concurrently.

The performance works extends contemporary discourse around performance art (re) enactment, heritage studies and the cultural institution. It explicitly references recent developments of re-enacting (historic) performance art moments by cultural institutions alongside medieval, religious tableaux vivant. These methodologies are used to 'perform the archive' combining live re enactment and cinematic tableaux to present an affective reading of the heritage site and archive. This research uniquely combines and thus extends the performative critic of cultural institutions by artist Andrea Fraser and the re-enactment of historic performance art works as seen in the exhibition The Artist Is Present by Marina Abramovic. The publications included critical reviews by world-renowned artists and theorists, Pavel Büchler and Nick Cass, Cass identifying the works significance as challenging the way in which heritage sites present historicity through performance art re enactment.

Notes For a Performance - (Re) visioning A Ritual

Notes for a Performance - (Re) visioning A Ritual