Restaging the record: The role of contemporary archives in safeguarding and preserving performance as intangible cultural heritage

Abstract

Bounded by and framed within the question of the role of contemporary archives in preserving expressions of intangible cultural heritage, this dissertation examines the existing ways performed and event-based cultural heritage are fixed and represented; problematizes prevailing notions of information as evidence in archives; and disrupts issues of archival custody. The dissertation offers new ways of thinking about the points where archives and intangible cultural heritage intersect; as such, the project analyzes these intersections by examining three differing modes of performance-based archivy. With an eye toward existing archival theory and practice as well as an understanding of “the archive” grounded in performance studies, this dissertation uses three unique case studies to analyze and interrogate the perceived disconnect between “the archive and the repertoire,” as well as to expand the body of research on the preservation of event-based cultural heritage. The cases selected for this study, representative of the digital humanities, local practice and international policy, are: the Live Performance Simulation System’s Virtual Vaudeville prototype; the Katherine Dunham Archives and the Dunham Technique; and the implementation of the United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. These cases collectively interrogate boundaries between archive and repertoire, illuminating the existing ways contemporary archives document, safeguard and preserve event-based cultural heritage. At the same time, each individual case investigates instances of event-based archivy, highlighting necessary shifts in archival theory and practice to better support the preservation of performative means of cultural expression.

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