Acts of Transfer

Lloyd, Lizzie; Beinart, Katy

Abstract

Acts of Transfer is a project about returns, re-enactments, repetitions, and retellings. A collaboration between artist Katy Beinart and writer Lizzie Lloyd, Acts of Transfer documents and reactivates a selection of artworks from the past that contain elements of social engagement or public participation.*

Our title for this project is borrowed from a chapter in Diana Taylor’s book The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003) which explores different forms of archive, and questions the documentation and recording of performance. Taylor identifies a rift between the ‘archive’ as a Western approach that privileges the textual document, and the ‘repertoire’ of performance as embodying ‘vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory and a sense of identity.’ The artworks that we revisited in our project range from performances, events, and films, all of which were developed or enacted through some form of social engagement or public participation. We began by thinking about what the afterlife of projects like these might be. We wondered how they are, or could be, archived and what an active, creative, or experimental archive might look like. We knew that revisiting a participatory or socially engaged project after the fact of its occurrence would never be a neutral process, so we have foregrounded our subjectivities in the process while, at the same time, attempting to retain some sense of the original artwork too.

Citation

Lloyd, L., & Beinart, K. (2022). Acts of Transfer. University of Brighton

• Book Type: Other
• Publication Date: May 19, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913309152
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10020477
• Publisher URL: https://shop.brighton.ac.uk/product-catalogue/books-publications-merchandise/books/acts-of-transfer
• Related Public URLs: https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/actsoftransfer/
• Additional Information: Art Book