Contro l'oblio: pratiche artistiche e ipotesi di ricerca per la danza del futuro

Abstract

How can the perspectives on documentation, access, and research − noted within the UNESCO Convention and applied to tangible cultural heritage and landscapes − be applied to live performance, particularly dance? The immaterial nature of this art is direct evidence not only of the artistic tendencies of the era in which it takes place but also of multiple cultural aspects reflected in the dancing body's capacity to be an archive of practices, identities, and subjectivities: an active system that, according to the Foucauldian vision, operates acts of selection, preservation, and discarding. The point of interest, however, that the UNESCO convention brings us back to is not only that of archiving following a blind desire for preservation − which Hal Foster defines as “archival impulse” − but of putting into action a stratification of experiences, knowledge, research, ideologies within cultural policies and collective fruition, actively involving oneself in artistic practice. By analyzing the inclusion of Modern Dance in Germany in the lists of intangible assets and a case study such as Jérôme Bel’s work for Isadora Duncan, we intend to highlight the capacity of dance to place these memories within transformative processes, in dialogue with the issues and characteristics of the present, opening up a new creative landscape for artists.