Remaking the Archive

Invited to share a short performance/action/gesture with a group of artists, curators, scholars and students in Toronto, Hall live streamed  this new work into their post-dinner gathering  and stayed for some questions and conversation. She has for many years been interested in the ideas surrounding “the archive” – who is IN it? How do they enter? How do its inclusions and exclusions determine what we value as knowledge that is important enough to “preserve”?   The event was “The Work of the Artist-Achivist in the Age of Machinic Devouring”, co-sponsored by TADDA (Translocal Action Dialogues on Digital Archives) and the Toronto Performance Art Collective.

Creating this short action offered me a concise, simple and direct engagement with those questions and invited me into a new way of exploring them. It also advanced the creative explorations that began many years ago in earlier works  like Marginalia, Towards the Reading Room, the Gynaeopedia, and the Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge itself.  The event took place on the eve of launching another new work, Walking Home, that was commissioned as part of  7a*11d – MIGRATE( 7a*mgr8) , the archive-based  project curated by Paul Couillard, and now a part of the largest archive of english-speaking performance art in Canada.

The artist is grateful to TL Cowan and Stephen Lawson and Paul Couillard for such a challenging and stimulating opportunity and exchange.