Abundant Archives of Amazing Performance
As I so deeply miss the uncomfortable, subversive, movement-driven, messy performances I came to NYC for, I have felt eccestatic by recordings which have popped up that I didn’t know existed. But the urgency to watch in a specific window, a limitation for the number of viewers, or cost have all felt like undue artificial restrictions.
Many have long offered robust, deep archives of their work—which I’d like to celebrate. Here are two pairs that exemplify what I would like to see more of. Perhaps I’ll add more to this list in the future.
Organizations
The Chocolate Factory’s Vimeo is a pantheon of stellar full-length performances.
Roulette an archive that’s experitially designed to feel the scope of their decades of experimental intramedium (interdisciplinary? multidisciplinary? multimedia?) archives.
Individuals
Praise be to Reza Abdoh’s archivist Adam Soch, for capturing these problematic performance collages.
Miguel Gutierrez has his disography of queer choreographies online in a way that demonstrates his ourve so beautifully.
MY convinction
Recordings should remain free to watch. It should be the goal of arts institutions that have a 501 (c)(3) status to remove as many barriers to access to what they produce so that it may reach the largest possible [target] audience. What are the barriers and who is the audience? Great questions to ask always!