Body as Archive

Body as archive : a performance installation

Body memory then and now

An archive has often been defined as a ‘material’ or a ‘tangible’ documentation of history. Similarly a body on the other hand, a representation of structure, flesh and bones. Can an archive be something ‘immaterial’ or ‘intangible’? Can’t it be an embodiment of ‘memories; ? Can’t the body be the archive of re-enactments of such memories? Such ‘body memories’.
How the historical narrative of nation-building carved the body memory in these two forms , towards a current body memory of the practitioners today? Which of these memories have they accumulated, preserved and continue to retrieve? Has memory be frozen or imposed? With these questions, Body as Archive provokes the larger notion of the classical, in these forms which breathes tradition in its being and contemporary in its existence.