TRACE:displaced

Abstract

This was a series of commissioned and interconnected performance/installations produced with the intention of documenting them collectively in a single book, where the documentation process was to be integral to the performance/installations. The project was a development of the Cardiff-based Trace Installaction Artspace, an artist-led venue which explored the relation between performance art, installation and archiving from 2000 to 2008. The idea here was to displace physically the Trace 'artspace', and to some degree 'reconstruct' it at each new location, in order to allow invited collaborators from other locations to explore how new settings affect the performance-installation-archiving relationship. For example in Sydney, Australia, the artists lived in residence at Artspace for eight weeks creating continuous performance that included building and dismantling the 1:1 replica house installation in the Artspace galleries. The project involved a core team of collaborator artists and academic theoreticians from Cardiff who travelled to locations in Wales, Scotland and Australia to work with guest collaborators at those locations. The ultimate displacement would be the documentation of the various events as a sequence in a book, where the differences between each event, e.g. the differences that come from collaborators and places, would emerge from section to section, from page to page. When combined, central concerns which emerged were issues of recall, location and displacement by integrating observations, documents and memories of performance art into a 'live' scenario creating what I then termed as the practice of 'act-archiving' whereby an archive is produced during 'live' performance. Commissioning and partnership funding was supported by Arts Council of Wales, Wales Arts International, Arts Council of Scotland, British Council, Australian Arts Council and Arts Council of New South Wales.