What is a Living Archive? Curating the 'unruly' materiality of contemporary art (2021-2023)

Curating Living Archives is a multi-component Output comprising of workshops, commissions, and a web platform with further publication outputs in preparation. Funded by an RSE Arts & Humanities Research Grants (workshops) (PI Bodor, £9000), the project explored how to make materially, conceptually, and methodologically challenging time-based art archives public. Bodor's methodology was to collaborate with leading practitioners to devise four online workshops exploring different curatorial methods, ranging from using oral history to open-source practices, in response to a challenge with different archival collections at the University of Dundee. These comprised 'Speaking Performance', co-convened with Professor Heike Roms (University of Exeter), 'Reactivating Media Installations' with Adam Lockhart (University of Dundee), 'Curating as Expanded Conservation' with Dr Hanna Hölling (Bern University of Applied Sciences), and 'Resisting Recuperation' with Dr Roddy Hunter (Glasgow School of Art). The workshops invited further artists, archivists, curators, and conservators to share examples from their practice as a basis for participants engaging with a particular archive from the University of Dundee, namely the Alastair MacLennan Performance Art Archive, the REWIND Artists' Video Collection, and the Attic Archive established by DJCAD alumni Pete Horobin in the 1970s. Co-produced with Adam Lockhart, the workshops took place and are archived through the web platform https://curatinglivingarchives.network/. Bodor's methodology also included commissioning Miriam Mallalieu to explore performative writing to document the workshops and Holly Davey to produce a new artwork performed online and accessioned into the REWIND Collection. In addition to dissemination of the project through the dedicated web platform, Bodor has also been invited in 2023 to talk about the project as part of The Future of The Demarco Archive consultation project by Art360 Foundation at Summerhill, Edinburgh and has given a paper at the Shaking the Archive conference at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, which provides the basis of a book chapter proposed for publication in Spring 2025 currently in preparation.