Archiving Performance / Performing the Archive

FaculteitFaculty of Humanities

NiveauBachelor

Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

After completion of this course, the student has:

gained knowledge and insight in the tensions that underpin archival practice in performance archives;

acquired the research skills by gaining experience with conducting archival research and performance analysis, and by gaining insight into how these research methods may be used to analyze various performance practices;

strengthened their ability to find, read, and analyze literature and other sources, and to use this research to build and support their arguments;

gained knowledge of the local and international performing arts landscape through visits to the national theatre archive and relevant theatre festivals;

learned to animate archival materials through innovative, creative and critical responses to performance documentation.

Content

In theatre, dance, and other performance practices, the ephemerality of performance has long been a central concern. In performance studies, practices of archiving performance have been related to situating embodied and experiential acts of transfer and also preserving local and 'unofficial' knowledge in contrast to colonialist structures of written records and extracted artefacts. In this course, you will study the intersections of performance, media, and memory through the dual lenses of archiving performance and performing the archive. You will explore literature and theories on archiving performance alongside practices of re-enactment and adaptation, and you will conduct research at the national theatre archive. You will also reflect on the politics of archiving: Whose stories endure? What other stories might we tell by doing research differently? You will examine how archives themselves can be understood as performative, shaping cultural narratives, power relations, and artistic contexts. What new archival opportunities are opened up by emerging technologies, such as Generative AI, robotics and motion capture? And how may we reflect on the critical implications of such technologies? The creative process of designing a re-performance or re-enactment, in which you will take part, opens up a critical space to interrogate how performing the archive can generate new forms of knowledge, embodiment, and historical understanding.

You will learn how to conduct archival research on theatre, dance, and performance practices, and how to meaningfully connect this research to issues of the present day. How do ephemeral acts of performance leave traces, and how do these traces shape what we remember, forget, and re-stage in the contemporary performing arts field? We will visit relevant cultural institutions and a performing arts festival. You will also learn how to conduct archival research and carry out a contextual performance analysis, which introduces you to the practice of dramaturgy. Your research culminates in a re-enactment of a canonical performance or performance event, which may take various forms—such as a live performance, a tabletop re-enactment, a video interpretation, or a virtual reconstruction.

This course is the last course in the specialisation track Doing Media Heritage: Texts, Institutions, Curation.

Additional information

Priority rules
This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you
- are a student in the BA Media and Culture and this course is part of your specialisation (verdiepingspakket)
- are a student in the BA Liberal Arts and Sciences or Taal- en Cultuurstudies and this course is part of your specialisation (kernpakket)

In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.

Schedule
Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final, and may still be modified until the third Wednesday in September.

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