In a dark dark loft there is a dark dark box and in the dark dark box is a world of  memories and secrets waiting for you to unravel ….

 

Instability in Stability was a practice-led research project that explored how strategies for constructing and maintaining archives can be activated as a live artwork and digitally-mediated performance. The work challenged how the process of performance, documentation and archiving inter-relate, inviting a virtual audience into the private and personal space of my loft, my past and my creative working process. The outcome is a research-project that simultaneously constructed a fully functioning object archive and an online portal, housing the performance documentation of the archive’s creation.

 

On a personal level the project allowed me to examine and question my own bodily experiences and identity, considering how I wish to disseminate who I am to an audience, where I come from and why I work in the way I do. On a conceptual level three core questions drove the project:

 

1. How can we generate an understanding of experience through the things we document?

2. How can the process of creating documentation inform the modes through which we experience and thus perform?

3. How does this knowledge enable us to construct a digital archive, which embodies the interdisciplinary and itinerant nature of our bodies?

 

What resulted from the project was a wonderful sharing of stories and memories between different audience members, who generously showed me into their homes  (albeit virtually) and since the performance ended I am in the process of logging their participation with the intention to upload their contribution to the project website.