Archive as Chamber of Infinite Recession: How do we as Artists, Creators, and Performers contribute to a Living Archive?

<p>For us, as queer feminist writers and theatre makers, the archive is a chamber of infinite recession; a way to examine the living archives of our bodies  over time and in space; to register how past actions and experiences can remain unchanged in their remembered details while pushing forward into the present to be re-interpreted and to impact now on the way we make performance work and the way it might be received by an audience. In the material energetic world, nothing ever goes away though everything eventually changes its shape or nature. In the same way, the memory objects in our work can sometimes be seen by all participants (actors and audience) as very close and particular, but then as in a car or a bus - the same scene is revealed in a different key. Each frame offers a different perspective on our grief over gendered violence and its representations. We return again and again to “Aller à la mer”, to hear Cixous speak words into the archive, “if the stage is woman, it will mean ridding this space of theatricality. She will want to be a body-presence; . . . this stage-body will not hesitate to come up close, close enough to be in danger – of life” (Cixous 1984, 547). </p>