'Challenging Archives' aims to establish methodologies allowing us to address ethical, logistical, procedural and professional issues associated with archives/collections relating to body-based performance art, particularly those holding material that may be considered as ‘challenging’ in nature. The project uses the archive relating to the life and work of internationally renowned performance artist Franko B as case study. Archives such as this present significant challenges due to their body-based nature and ‘difficult/challenging’ content which may, for example, contain bodily fluids, sexually explicit content and/or depict ‘medical’ procedures and/or harm against the self. In establishing the methodology, we will develop a robust system to enable the complex nature of such archival resources to be catalogued and made available to researchers and others.
Johanna Linsley is a researcher and artist. She is interested in performance documentation and archives, listening in performance (particularly eavesdropping), and queer understandings of both domestic and public space. She was research assistant on the AHRC-funded project Performing Documents at the University of Bristol and she is currently co-editing a book arising from the project with Simon Jones, Paul Clarke and Nick Kaye. She is currently working in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection on the Wellcome Trust-funded project 'Challenging Archives'.