Encounters in the Archive

Encounters in the Archive, devised and produced by Donatella Barbieri, and shot and edited digitally by Netia Jones', is a 17 minute long film about artist/researcher interaction with the archived, difficult to access objects, and in particular with ‘old’ costume and objects for performance.

It was shown in the V&A as part of ‘Transformation and Revelation’, a series of displays produced by the Theatre and Performance Department in collaboration with the Society of British Theatre Designers. ‘Transformation and Revelation’ has already been presented in different guises and ‘Encounters in the Archive’ has traveled with it.

This short film makes the research process the work itself, and places the V&A Theatre & Performance Archive as its scenographic space. It is the harbour of carefully stored-away ‘old’ costumes, which, once brought out into the light, unravel stories, secrets and images that feed the creative imagination, projecting new meanings into the future.

In this film the costumes, normally inaccessible, encounter six artists, designers and writers. Their responses during these intimate encounters reveal the thoughts that are triggered by fragments of old performances. For example, costume designer Nicky Gillibrand meets work by Giorgio De Chirico and Mikhail Larionov, while author Amy de la Haye has access to Chanel. Darren Cabon, fashion designer, finds connections with Victorian clowns, and Charlotte Hodes, fine artist, becomes acquainted with 18th Century ballet de court costumes.

The film was part of a practice-based research project titled ‘Encounters in the Archive’,conceived in collaboration with the London College of Fashion Research Department and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Drawing attention to the methodological use of the camera as both questioning and recording tool in the context of this research project, it focuses on selected responses to objects in order to articulate specifically the performativity of costume, as fragments of past performances, retained in their collected and conserved state.

See also https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/5802/

Encounters in the Archive will be shown in the Tapestries room at the V&A from March to September 2012 - I have submitted an article to be published on the website which is under review at the moment.

The film is accompanied by an exhibition book of images and text commenting on one specific encounter.

The film and the book were selected to be exhibited at the V&A from the Transformation and Revelation exhibition which ran for a month from March 18th at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and which was organised by the Society of British Theatre Designers national exhibition of design for performance.

In addition I have produced a series of drawings for Drawing and the Body, and exhibition curated by Charlotte Hodes in Stockholm.

The film has been shown and presented by the author at the following events:

- The opening of ‘Behind the Scenes’, an exhibition of Israeli costume design in Tel Aviv on 9th January 2011
- At the OISTAT (Organisation Internationale des Scénographes, Techniciens et Architectes de Théâtre) History and Theory Commission symposium at Prague Quadrennial.
- At Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2011) London, UK, 6 - 8 July 2011

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