“Now Recording: Performance” symposium

Located between past and present, archives are not neutral containers but active agents that document, preserve, and produce meaning. The Skulptur Projekte Archives is thus not conceived as a dead sammelsurium of documents, but as a permeable, shifting structure—shaped by the practices it holds and continually transformed through engagement. The Archives—like performance—operates through time, space, and the body, raising questions about how people affect and reshape art, sculpture, and archival knowledge. 

The symposium “Now Recording: Performance” brings together diverse perspectives on the continuous present of performance in the archives—asking how performative practices are documented, how they endure, and how archival infrastructures respond to the tensions between ephemerality and permanence, memory and liveness. Framed by the exhibition Performance People, which explores how sculptural practices have been expanded, animated, and performed across past editions of Skulptur Projekte, the symposium extends this inquiry into the archival realm. It explores how archives can hold performance not only as a trace or as a record but also as something still unfolding—a form that resists capture yet persists.

While rooted in the holdings and perspectives of the Skulptur Projekte Archives, the symposium opens a wider conversation: about performance and preservation, sculpture and its expanded field, and the evolving roles of institutions in shaping cultural memory. It invites participants to consider archives not as a closed system, but as a permeable site—where the past is in motion and the performative continues to unfold.

Conference language: English
Conference fee: 25 Euro / Person (including beverages and lunch)
Please register.

Program
Thursday, December 4
11–11:30 am
Greetings and introduction: Hermann Arnhold, Director LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster / Jana Bernhardt and Marianne Wagner, Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster

11:30am–12:30pm
Resurrections and Discoveries: Potentials and Challenges of Archival Performance Research—Lisa Beißwanger, Assistant Professor for Art History and Theory, University of Koblenz

12:30–1:30pm
Dancing Archives. Documentation and Revival of Pina Bausch's Choreographies—Gabriele Klein, Professor for Ballet and Dance, University of Amsterdam

1:30–2:30pm: Lunch break

2:30–3:30pm
Actio. Considerations on the Copyright Status of Performative Actions—Grischka Petri, Head of Copyright Research, FIZ Karlsruhe

3:30–5pm
Case Studies: From the Records
Von da an (From Then On) in Archive. Spaces, Works, Visualizations from the Anti-Museum: www.museum-moenchengladbach-1967-1978.de—Susanne Titz, Director Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach / Susanne Rennert, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art, Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland

How to Archive What Slips Away. Reflections on the Archival Anxiety of the Unrecorded—Jana Bernhardt, Research Associate Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster

Performance: Made for the Present, Collected for the Future—Marianne Wagner, Curator for Contemporary Art and Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster 

5–6pm: Coffee break  

6–7pm
Artist’s lecture: Everyone Was Always Early—Jeremy Deller, artist, London

Friday, December 5
9:15–9:30am: Arrival and intro

9:30–10:30am
Event, Object, Archive: Critical Approaches to the Conservation of Performance-based Works—Hanna B. Hölling, Research Professor, University of the Arts, Berne / Senior Fellow, Collegium Helveticum ETH Zurich

10:30–10:45am: Coffee break  

10:45–11:30am
Case Study: Substance or Soul—Soul without Substance? Leonie Müller, Paper Conservator, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster / Katja Siebel, Objects Conservator, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster

11:30am–12:30pm
Conversation: Spreading and Sharing. How to Distribute Archives—Maurin Dietrich, Director Kunstverein München / Vincent Schier, Curator Skulptur Projekte 2027, Münster / Eva Wilson, Curator Skulptur Projekte 2027, Münster / Moderation: Jana Bernhardt and Marianne Wagner

12:30pm: Final discussion followed by Goodbye Soup