water action2011
archive installation
"...boundaries that threaten to hold us are fluid; soluble marks that disappear."
Water Action is an archive installation work deposited (and viewable) in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection that came out of my research into performance documentation and, specifically, the question: how can documents perform? The installation is partly a mischievous intervention into the archive and partly an attempt at documenting process. The work consists of an archive box with several photographs, video and audio tapes, accession forms and other objects and ephemera alleging to pertain to a performance, ‘Water Action’, performed by me in 1986. This performance never took place as represented and the collection therefore represents a fiction - the performance only takes place in the mind of the visitor to the installation, creating links between and across these fragments. However, at the same time, some of the artefacts also represent simultaneous documentation of the process of making my one-to-one performance untitled piece.
Water Action was developed as a final year independent study research project for my BA Drama degree at the University of Bristol. It was exhibited and then accessioned into the University of Bristol Theatre Collection in May 2011 and is viewable on request under the reference: BDD/IS/000002.
The work was also presented at the JISC-funded Curating Artistic Research Output (CAiRO) Summer School at the University of Bristol in June 2011 as an example of creative documentation.