Documentation of Performance Art

Based on a seminar at the IKR in summer 2023 on the conservation treatment of installation and performance art and how to document, preserve, collect, or exhibit, students will work together to test, reflect, and discuss various forms of documentation of performance art in practice. In moderated collaboration with an expert, participatory methods from the field of research will be used for this project. Conservation theorist Vivian van Saaze investigates practices for documenting and preserving performance-based art by integrating theories and methods from ethnography, museum studies, and science and technology.

This workshop is also open to other students at the Academy and partner institutions. 

Vivian van Saaze is Modern and Contemporary Art Specialist at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University. Van Saaze was co-founder and director of the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH) and programme director of the Master Arts and Heritage: Policy, Management, and Education. She co-authored several collaborative research projects such as Collecting the Performative, a research network between Tate and Maastricht University.

Charlotta Ruth is educated at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, holds a MFA in choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts. Since 2017 Ruth is associated with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she concluded her PhD in Arts (2022) and currently co-leads the research project Archives in Practice (Jaques/Ruth/Surtmann). She initiated the looped choreographic installation series Living Documents (Ruth/Grünbühel 2017-2020) which explored how to document artistic practice through the practitioners' intrinsic media; sound, set-design and choreography.