Performance Art Archives

Action Art / Live Art / Performance Art archives.

Beyond the books written about performance art, the papers, the conferences, the manifestos, there are people who collect and save, research and notate artists, their work, their stories. These performance art archives can be found around the world and may offer you a great resource for delving into artists work, focus, and motivations from around the world.

Performance Art Archives

• The African American Performance Art Archive (aapaa.org) – US : makes crucial documentation of historically significant performances by African American artists available on-line to artists, scholars, and students in the spirit of intellectual exchange. I began the archive in order to apply the questions posed by performance artists to the study of art history.  In the process, I hope to give artists a greater voice in scholarly debate and explore what it means to study African American art.
• Aggora8 – agora8 is a platform for collecting art documents and writings on art. Artists and authors are invited to submit documentation of realised and unrealised projects and a wide range of critical writings on art and artists. Publishing on agora8 gives you access to an internationally diverse audience who could not be physically present in the space and time of production.
• Archivos en uso – Archivos en uso es un proyecto colectivo impulsado por distintos grupos de trabajo de la Red Conceptualismos del Sur y del “Grupo de Estudios sobre Arte, cultura y política en la Argentina reciente”, radicado en el Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
• ArtPool – Budapest –
  • Artpool Art Research Center – Artpool Art Research Center is an avant-garde and contemporary art project and archive, founded in 1979 by György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay in Budapest. Artpool’s mission is to document, archive, research, share, and present local and international art practices related to conceptual art, Fluxus, as well as to experimental tendencies and mediums …The unparalleled collection of the Artpool Art Research Center documents the history of art movements, trends and aspirations that emerged from the 1960s, including what is termed as unofficial artistic trends (underground, samizdat). The archives’ 650 running metres and 2,300 hours of digitalised material allows research into some 7,500 artists, art groups and institutes. Thanks to the documents and works it preserves, Artpool is an ideal place of research providing an insight into the intellectual developments of an era. The Artpool archives is a treasure trove of letters, descriptions of artworks, notes, sketches, concepts, interviews, various writings and works, as well as photo-documentation, catalogues, invitations, posters, bibliographies, chronologies, monographs, periodicals, diagrams, portfolios, video- and audio documents.
• Centro de Documentación Arkheia, MUAC, UNAM – We aspire to build a reference collection of artistic practices in Mexico. Our collection works covers the period since 1952, the year the UNAM’s University City campus was founded, to the present, with special emphasis on work created post-1968. Our collection consists of works by more than 300 artists and is divided into two main bodies: the “Art Collection,” comprising works conceived in the fluctuating contexts of the art circuit, and the “Documentary Collection,” which comprises archives with materials of all kinds.

• The Ashkal Alwan library – Beruit, Lebanon : The Ashkal Alwan archive ( aaarchive ) is an invaluable resource for any scholar, artist, and researcher with an interest in the history of contemporary art and discursive practices in the region. An open and active repository of knowledge sharing and research, aaarchive aims to activate Ashkal Alwan’s unique multimedia material as a space for discovering, learning, and sharing, at a moment of rising displacement among Arabic speakers.

• Asian Art Archive: Live art / performance art – includes but not limited to:
  • The Ray Langenbach Archive of Performance Art : This archive contains video documentation (originally in DV and Hi-8 format) encompassing a spectrum of performances, art festivals, art exhibitions, events, and interviews that shed light into the development, circulation, and reception of performance art in South East Asia spanning over almost two decades since the 1980s.
  • Propositions for an Archive of Performance Art in India : In 2015, Asia Art Archive in India collaborated with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) to research possibilities for a digital archive of performance art from India, beginning with its emergence in the early 1990s through to 2010.
  • Performances by Yuan Mor’O Ocampo and Other Artists : Performances by Yuan Mor’O Ocampo and other unidentified artists at the 1st Philippines International Performance Art Festival.
  • Performance Art in Singapore : primarily performance and event documentation that sheds light into the development of performance art in Singapore from early 1990s to mid-2000s, including Artists’ General Assembly (AGA), a week-long art festival that led to the prosecution of several people involved, and the proscription of performance art in Singapore in the decade that followed. The majority of material pertains to the performance works by the artists who were part of The Artists Village (TAV), an artist collective founded by artist Tang Da Wu in 1988.
  • Performance Art in the Classroom The 2019 Teaching Labs series, part of AAA’s teacher professional development programme, focused on performance art. “From Drawing to Performance: The Lee Wen Archive” featured a talk on the history of performance art in Singapore, and used Lee Wen’s works as a case study. Following the talk, two sessions of Teachers’ Learning Community activities were organised to support teachers introducing performance art to students.
• Australian Performing Arts Collection – Melbourne, Australia
• AWARE – Archives of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions
• Berlinerpool Arts Network – berlinerpool is a non-for-profit platform of artists, curators and project spaces that has been growing since 2005 and is constantly expanding. berlinerpool is a physical and digital archive that provides information on national and international artists, curators and art spaces in Berlin. berlinerpool develops curatorial projects and cooperates with cultural institutions.
• Black Kit INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART ARCHIVE – since 1981. 3500 boxes, folders, cases for documents & performance relics. Founded by Boris Nieslony – (Instagram Here)
• Blaž Lukan: Performance Art and Archive
• Centre National de la Danse, Mediatheque – France :
• ECC Performance Art -Europe – ECC Performance Art is an online teaching and research platform dedicated to strengthening the discipline of performance art by providing artists, scholars, and curators with a range of tools and insights for their professional growth. ECC Performance Art offers an extensive course program related to key aspects of performance art practice, its theoretical investigation, as well as its documentation and forms of curation and exhibition.
• European Live Art Archives – Europe : ELAA is the European Live Art Archive, which is based at Girona University. The aim of ELAA is to share knowledge, experience and documentation of live art throughout the European Union and the focus of our activity is the production of a live art programme, filmed interviews with artists and the organisation of symposia.
  • Video archive
• The Fales Library & Special Collections – US :
• Franklin Furnace – Pittsburg PA, USA – archives of works presented through their organization
  • Moving Image Archive
  • Event Archive
• Fondation Cartier –Performing arts Archives The archives document the Nomadic Nights and Nights of Uncertainty from 1994 to today
• Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics – Based in US, covers the Americas. The Hemispheric Institute gathers artists, scholars, writers, learners, and activists from across the Americas. We focus on social justice and research politically engaged culture and performance. We share this work in digital archives and amplify it through dialogues and public scholarship, residencies, publications, and gatherings
• High Performance (Magazine) Archive
• Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) on 5 April 2016.- South Africa : The Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) is an interdisciplinary institute based in the University of Cape Town’sHumanities Faculty, formerly known as the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA). Since 2008, the Institute has fostered innovative practice and research in the creative and performing arts that works across the disciplines of music, dance, fine art, drama, literature and film, with a particular focus on black practitioners and issues that affect black South Africans. …A key premise of the ICA’s work is that interdisciplinary practice in South Africa, and live art in particular, help us to understand the complexity of our contemporary society – one that is chronologically ‘post’ apartheid, but that continues to grapple with material redress, land redistribution and systemic racism.
• Independent Performance Artists’ Moving Images Archive (IPAMIA) – a collective and its archive of digital moving image documentation of performance art. the core of the collection is made up of documentation taken and collected by well-travelled performance artists during their encounters. The main focus is the performance art presented in and after around 1980.
• International Performance Art Archive – Black Kit | Die Schwarze Lade
• Library Of Congress – US : Performing Arts Web Archives at the Library of Congress
• LIVE ART ARCHIVES, RECORD OF LIVE ART PRACTICE, THE DIGITAL PERFORMANCE ARCHIVES, DIGITISATION OF NATIONAL REVIEW OF LIVE ART – pdf document
• Live art (The live art archives) – University of Bristol
• Library Incubator Project – : Live Art & Community Participation

• Live Art Archives – Bristol UK – mostly UK focused including: An archive of over 20,000 records of Live Art/Performance Art, primarily from the UK, from the 1980s to the present.  Mostly paper-based, although it does contain some videos and DVDs, audio-tapes and slides.  Includes full sets of Hybrid, Primary Sources and LiveArt magazines.  Also includes a set of Liveartwork DVDs and a complete set of Bobby Baker DVDs from her Daily Life series.
• Live Art Development Agency – UK – LADA is a Centre for Live Art. All our specialised resources, opportunities, projects and events are driven by our unwavering commitment to experimentation and risk, to the sustainability of our planet, and to difference and diversity in all its forms.
• Live Art Works – liveartwork editions is a series of DVD publications that aims to present high quality, full length video documentation of some of the most interesting examples of contemporary, international performance art and live art. Published alongside liveartwork DVD, the editions series focuses on an individual artist or a specific performance. Both publications aim to give the individual access to a growing collection of the cutting edge of performance work
• Mrinalini Mukherjee Archive
• Museum of Fine Arts Boston – Performance Art Archive – US
• The Museum of Performance + Design – Research – San Francisco focus – The Museum of Performance + Design collects and makes accessible materials about the performing arts, with a special emphasis on documenting and preserving the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and diverse performing arts heritage from the Gold Rush to the present. We provide library services to researchers, and conservation and archival services to performing artists and arts institutions.
• New Museum Digital Archive – Brooklyn US : The New Museum Digital Archive contains documentation of the New Museum’s program and institutional history in the form of images, video, audio, publications and printed matter. 1977 to present.
• NYU – US : Archive
• Marilyn Arsem Archive
• Mediathek Tanzquatier Wien – Austria – online archive
• Performance Art Archive– Instagram
• Performance Art Argentina –
  • Un listado mínimo de obras a considerar para el establecimiento de una historia de la performance art en Argentina.
  • Performance Art Argentina Archive
  • Archivo oral de Performance Art en Argentina 
  • Archivo Activo en movimiento en construcción en libre distribución trans-americano federal
• PERFORMANCE ARCHIVING PERFORMANCE : “Performance Archiving Performance,” a presentation of projects that engage archive as medium,”
• Performance Art Reviews From Around the World
• PerformanceLogia – Venezuela – Performancelogía es un proyecto dedicado a la Recopilación, Publicación, Difusión e Intercambio de Documentación sobre Arte de Performance y Performancistas.
• Performance Magazine Archives – UK – Between 1979-1992 Performance Magazine documented an extraordinary period in the development of art in the UK. With its maverick and punk ethos Performance Magazine embodied an immensely active community of artists, writers and publics that crossed disciplines throughout the late 70s, 80s and the start of the 90s.

• Performance Matters – Archiving Performance – US –Performance Matters is officially launched with this special double-issue devoted to questions of performance archives and the “archival turn” in performance.
  • overall journal archives
  • Access to 40 DVD collection of UK Based project Performance Matters
    • Sussex, UK
    • Melbourne, Australia
    • Bristol, UK
• Performance Sources Performance Sources identifies and showcases performance artists in a constantly evolving archive, enriched with interviews, analyses, reflections and news. Performance Sources recounts and relays what performance has been like at a given time, in a given place, the Générateur, from 2006 to the present day. At the same time, it gradually opens up to new archive sources, with performances produced by Performance Sources partner venues, a network destined to expand over time. Archiving means categorizing and labeling works that, by their very nature, seek to escape formats, reproduction and expectations. How can we do this, if we want to make elusive works such as performances available to anyone, anywhere, at any time? This is the paradox on which Performance Sources was built.
• Performing Archives/Archives of Performance (book) : Interdisciplinary and global in scope, Performing Archives/Archives of Performance investigates the relationship between live performance and recordings, bringing new—and productive—tensions between permanence and ephemerality into relief. Advancing theoretical understandings and analyzing specific artworks, performances, and archives, the contributors formulate new ways of understanding history, memory, enactment, and intervention, offering major contributions to ongoing critical discussions on performance and its disappearance and reproduction. 
• Perforum (Switzerland) – Through our Archive and our regular Festival we want to support a historical and contemporary discussion about performance-art and related fields. Our archive is open to the public.
• SALT – Research on Performance in Turkey 1984- 1999 Launched as part of Salt’s research into the history of art in Turkey, this web project focuses on performances realized in Turkey in 1984 to 1999. The website aims to present a comprehensive inventory of performances from the period in question and serve as a source of reference for further research on the trajectory of performance art in Turkey.The ongoing archival research has been conducted in light of interviews with participants and contributors to the performances. These accounts as well as the archives informed the inventory of works. Visual and textual sources, including photographs, video recordings, sketches, correspondences, posters and brochures from selected events, formed the basis of Salt’s The 90s Onstage exhibition. The archival materials compiled in this process were presented together for the first time in The 90s Onstage, chronicling individual and collective works that highlight performances. In parallel, Salt Research has initiated the process of cataloging and digitizing these archives to render them publicly accessible.
• Sammlung Maria de Robe – The Maria de Robe Collection is a long-term project, initiated by Joël Verwimp, in order to develop a unique partnership with as many different museums as possible – from the Asian to the Fire Brigade Museum. On the one hand, a special connection between the institute (museum collection) and the audience (eyewitness) is to be created from the perspective of performance art. On the other hand, the collection of performance art beyond documentation procedures is put into practice. The ephemeral quality of performance art is therefore not understood here as immaterial, but the performative, common experience (publicness) is captured as materiality: Collecting life’s unknowns.
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago – US : The John M. Flaxman Library is located at the physical and intellectual heart of the campus. Library staff collaborate with every program at the School to support teaching, learning and research across the entire curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Hundreds of thousands of books, magazines, movies and sound recordings are available on interdisciplinary topics
• SerformanceP International Performance Art Exhibition Archives (São Paulo, Brazil) SerformanceP is a performance art exhibition created in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2015. With a focus on live art, video-performance, urban interventions, and digital experiments, the platform has received over 100 works by Brazilian and international artists.
• Solyanka State Gallery, Russia :
• Stedelijk Studies Issue #3 – Fall 2015 – The Place of Performance – Netherlands
• Stedelijk Studies – Archives without a Lobby: On the Situation of Institutional Holdings in Galleries and Art Museums – Netherlands
• Theatre & Performance Archives – The V&A’s Theatre & Performance Archives are the national collection of performing arts documenting current practice and the history of all areas of performing arts in the UK, including drama, dance, opera, circus, puppetry, comedy, musical theatre, costume, set design, pantomime, popular music and more.
• UBUweb -Founded in 1996, UbuWeb is a pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant-garde artifacts. By the letter of the law, the site is questionable; we openly violate copyright norms and almost never ask for permission. The site is filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists better known for other things. UbuWeb’s large, boundary-blurring archive of the avant-garde necessarily alters what is meant by avant-garde, a term saddled with the legacies of patriarchy, hegemony, imperialism, colonization, and militarization.
• UMN Library performing art archive
• Wayne state ENG5860 Creative Writing: Performance Art Archives & Collection
• Wizya Vidéo Art Action (France) – archive

Making your own archive

• Database Art and Design: Pioneering Strategies in the Arts towards Collecting and Archiving
• Document Performance art
• Society of American Archivists – US
  • Resources for Performing Arts Archivists and Archives
  • Museum Archivist – Performance-based artwork in the 1960s and 1970s broke with the standards … that are generally associated with modern visual art museums.

Artists utilizing archives

• Unruly Archives (show, Blackwood Gallery, Ontario Canada)
  • Ali Eyal
  • Emily Jacir
  • Walid Ra`ad (also here)
  • Zineb Sedira

Literature on Archiving Performance Art

• Kajal Saikia, Samudra. The Five Pillars of the Archival Strategy en Understanding Performance as Art and Beyond: Multipled Gaze, 2014. Consultado 01-04-2019.
• Kajal Saikia, Samudra. Propositions for an Archive of Performance Art in India en Asia Art Archive, 2018. Consultado 01-04-2019
• Lopez, Miguel A., “Red Conceptualismos del Sur: Memoria, política, microhistorias y experimentación con archivos” en Robar la historia. Correlatos y prácticas artísticas de oposición, Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Metales Pesados, 2017, pp. 107-127.
• Reisz, Matthew: Archiving extreme performance art: where should the line be drawn? Times Higher Education, 2019

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Performance Art – resources

• What is Performance Art – IMMA
• Performance Art – Britanica
• Performance Art – Tate Modern
• Performance Art: An Introduction – Khan Academy
• Summary of Performance Art – The Art story
• Wiki Art – Performance Art
• Performance Art – Thought Co
• What is Live Art? – Live Art Development Agency