Protocol for the Archive as Gesture is a series of prompts for navigating new routes into the material legacy of the past; a series of guidance questions and actions to catalyse new research, new conversations, new perspectives, new interactions with the archive. The Protocol situates our own bodily materiality as a productive form of encounter with that legacy.

 

Practically the protocol is a support tool to guide anyone stepping over the threshold of the archive. It encourages and inspires an embodied approach to entering a space that operates in a systematic way, with a specific mode of governance. It asks people to question: how can you work with your body in this space? How can you work with the rules, and around them?

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This protocol was established through the creation and delivery of our workshop Embodied Identities in the Archive. This workshop was commissioned by the Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol and hosted at the Theatre Collection, University of Bristol on 11 September 2019. An earlier iteration of the workshop was presented at Queen’s University, Belfast as part of the Uncovering Material Knowledge conference, 30-31 August 2019.

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The protocol has been published in the Archivoltage Reader.

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