Collection, Conservation and Interpretation: Documenting the 34th SIBMAS Conference 2024

From 23rd to 27th June 2024, two representatives from Centre 42 - General Manager Yanling and Documentation Executive Adelyn (that’s me!) - travelled to Hong Kong for the 34th Conference of the International Association of Libraries, Museums, Archives and Documentation Centres of the Performing Arts (SIBMAS), hosted by the Hong Kong chapter of the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC HK). 

The conference comprised keynote lectures, thematic talks, paper presentations, and visits to various libraries, archives, and performing arts centres in Hong Kong. Centre 42 was invited to present one of the thematic talks, focusing on our efforts to document and archive Singapore theatre history. We also had the opportunity to hear from and connect with professionals working in the arts and archival industries all over the world, and learn more about the processes of collecting, conserving, restaging, and reimagining the performing arts! 

2024 marks SIBMAS’ 70th anniversary. It was founded with the intention of creating a network of professionals working in the fields of archival, curation, and documentation, specifically of the performing arts. One of SIBMAS’ priorities is promoting research into the performing arts field through global exchange and knowledge sharing. In service of this goal, SIBMAS has organised international conferences biennially since 1954, bringing people and institutions together to share about continuing developments and challenges in the field of performance documentation. 

For this edition of the conference, SIBMAS worked with IATC HK, which played host in collaboration with the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library. The IATC was founded in 1956 to bring together theatre practitioners and critics, and foster mutual learning and understanding. In 1992, Hong Kong became the fifth Asian chapter. This is the first time IATC HK has hosted the SIBMAS Conference - in fact, 2024 marks the first time the conference was held in Asia.

This edition of the conference was themed “Dramaturgies of Collecting: Conserving, Restaging, and Interpreting the Performing Arts”. It focused on the strategies involved in curating and preserving the material included in archives and repositories, and the methods used and concerns involved in showcasing and representing these archives and repositories to audiences. Speakers from over 15 different countries - including Singapore - shared their unique perspectives on the documentation of performing arts. Here are some of our key takeaways from the conference!

How do we define ‘archival’, ‘curation’, or ‘documentation’, and what do we consider to be ‘an archive’? These are hotly contested questions, with no fixed answers; indeed, the continuing debates and evolving definitions tend to spark interesting conversations about how we view the field of performance documentation and archival. In his keynote, professor and writer Ashutoth Potdar defines the archive quite simply as a ‘place to gather, classify, and organise documents’. Regardless of whether the archive is physical or digital, large or small, whatever purpose or theme or narrative that dictates the material contained within, the similar defining trait across different archives are their positions as what keynote speaker Toni Sant (curator, researcher, and director of the Digital Curation Lab at Media City UK) calls ‘sites of consolidation’ - they are spaces where different, disparate documents are brought together to be stored and sorted. 

We can explore this concept further in theatrical terms using the ‘donut metaphor’ proposed by Professor Minako Okamuro in her keynote. The ‘donut metaphor’ takes reference from - you guessed it - an actual, regular, ring-shaped donut. It positions performances, being ephemeral in nature, as the donut hole, and archives as the donut around the hole. In this sense, the archive - and the documents and materials within it - surround an ‘absent centre’, and show their audience what the centre would have been. 

Sant defines documents as ‘evidence to support a fact’, which can be understood along similar lines. A performance happens, and inevitably ends; after that, the documents created around it - for example, programmes that provide audiences with information about the performance, or reviews where critics give their opinion, or video recordings capturing the entire show - remain as evidence that the performance occurred, and, when viewed together in an archive, allow users to learn about and understand the performance even without experiencing it for themselves. 

These documents - programmes, reviews, video recordings, and more - also take on a different dimension within an archive, beyond the value of their content itself. In her thematic talk, curator and art critic Chow Ling-chih notes that materials such as these become ‘documents’ when context supersedes content - in other words, when what the material represents about something larger than itself, becomes more important than what the material actually says. When these materials are gathered in an archive for the purpose of allowing audiences to better understand the performance they are related to, they become documents that interact with each other to tell the larger story of that performance as a whole. 

In SIBMAS’ and IATC’s introduction to the conference, a lot of focus is placed on the ‘various challenges’ faced by archivists and archives in their efforts to ‘preserve and present the rich tapestry of performing arts and its history’. Some of these challenges are age-old and ever-present in the archival field; some are new concerns that are becoming increasingly prevalent in this modern age, which is defined by rapid technological developments and digitalisation. 

A mere century ago, the idea of recording a live performance with a video camera was nothing short of miraculous. Today, with the widespread availability of camcorders and smartphones, it is practically a given that there will be video footage captured of almost any performance. Sant notes that, as technology becomes more intertwined with our daily lives, it has similarly become inextricable from the ways we document and archive the performing arts. 

In his paper presentation, art critic and researcher William Chan cautions that technology and digitalisation can be both saviours as well as dangers when it comes to documenting and archiving the performing arts. The benefits of technological improvements and a growing digital sphere are obvious. On the documentation front, it’s easier than ever to capture photo, video, and audio footage of a performance - we are able to document aspects of a performance that were unimaginable just a hundred years ago. Similarly, we can reimagine the archive, which is no longer limited by physical constraints - online archives, such as Centre 42’s very own Archive of Singapore Theatre (C42 Archive), make massive amounts of information and material accessible to users outside of the countries in which they’re based; they also nullify the need for a physical space where bulky materials are stored. On our visit to the Chung Ying Theatre Company (Chung Ying), one of the nine major arts companies in Hong Kong, we had the opportunity to tour their physical archive, and hear first-hand about the issues faced in building and maintaining it. 

Some of the major concerns include: 

• the need for a significant amount of space just to store materials. Chung Ying devotes an entire basement room to their archive. This use of space is only possible because they have a whole building at their disposal to conduct their other activities. This is out of reach for companies with less available floor space. Centre 42 faces similar issues - space constraints in land-scarce Singapore have prevented us from maintaining a physical archive that takes up precious space. 
• weather conditions. Extreme temperatures, humidity and sunlight are just a few conditions that affect the integrity of physical materials, including paper documents, costume fabrics, and electronic storage mediums. The team at Chung Ying shared how heavy rain (a very common occurrence in Hong Kong) partially destroyed their collection a few years ago. 

• lack of budget, which limits the resources Chung Ying can spend on purchasing equipment, such as dry boxes and dehumidifiers, to keep their materials in good condition, or on recruiting personnel trained in conservation to restore damaged materials.

Concerns about having enough physical storage space, or rain and humidity degrading natural materials, become negligible with a digital archive, where materials exist in the digital sphere - more easily duplicated, more easily backed up, with boxes of information translated into strings of data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. 

Digitalisation and the digital archive aren’t a miracle solution with no strings attached, though. Technological advancements are not the answer to all the problems we face in the documentation and archival process - several of the conference speakers also bring up concerns and challenges. Researcher Shao Xiaojie, who worked on the Memory of the World music and audio archive, stresses the difficulty of preserving physicality and originality when we digitise material that was originally made with the analogue world in mind. 

This concern isn’t foreign to Centre 42 - the C42 Archive is entirely digital, and thus hosts digital copies of physical material, such as programmes and brochures. While our digitisation process makes the content of these materials available online, some aspects don’t translate - the texture of a physical programme, or the experience of flipping through or unfolding a brochure. For materials such as these, where (generally speaking) the content is more important than the format, perhaps it’s not as critical that the process of digitisation and digital archival strips their physicality. However, Elsa Bataille-Testu, a researcher who focuses on the collection and preservation of theatrical costumes, notes in her paper presentation that this isn’t always the case. When it comes to something ‘as physical as costumes’, that opens up many more concerns when it comes to digitisation and digital archival. Bataille-Testu points out the importance, and difficulty, of accurately reflecting physical aspects of a costume, such as fabric texture, weight, and even smell, in a digital archive. Capturing these digitally is certainly not as simple as scanning the pages of a programme, like we would at Centre 42. 

The possibility of materials becoming degraded, lost, or destroyed is also as present in the digital sphere as it is in the ‘real world’. William Chan uses Hong Kong’s ‘vanished companies’ as an example. This is a phenomenon from the early 2000s - a time when technology was rapidly advancing and the internet was widely used. During this period, several Hong Kong performing arts companies flourished, focusing on presenting plenty of productions and programmes, but without much concern for intentionally documenting them. Many of these companies later became defunct, sometimes within the span of a few years. While the companies were active, much of the information about their work was presented online - on defunct social media and image-sharing websites that have shut down, or company websites that are now inaccessible because their domains have expired. 

Chan notes that, just ten or twenty years later, many of these defunct companies have been forgotten. The loss of digital records, through lack of maintenance and the ease with which digital data can be corrupted and erased, has led to the erasure of their existence. This phenomenon is not unique to Hong Kong - Singapore’s theatre scene also saw an explosion of small theatre companies and collectives from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, many of which closed down by the 2010s and left few traces of their existence online (some examples include Aporia Society, Dramaplus Arts, and Fiction Farm, amongst others). With few digital records left of these groups, it’s an uphill climb to unearth information and materials in order to document their work and their impact on the Singapore theatre scene. 

As technology continues to advance, it also becomes increasingly difficult to keep pace with new developments, and how these developments can change the way we document and archive performances. From 2015 to 2019, Centre 42 ran its first digital theatre archive, the Repository, which contained a collection of theatre ephemera (programmes, brochures, posters, etc.) from productions staged by 16 theatre companies. Each piece of ephemera was digitised, with the digital copy termed an ‘artefact’. Previews of 2,400 artefacts were available on the Repository, accompanied by basic information (year staged, venue, director etc.) about the productions to which they belonged; users who wished to view the entire artefact had to visit the Centre 42 office and access the artefacts on a local server. 

In her thematic talk, Centre 42’s General Manager Yanling discusses the technological challenges the team faced while running and maintaining the Repository. As technology developed over the course of a short five years, the Repository became increasingly cumbersome to use, especially for a population that was becoming used to being able to access information entirely remotely. In 2019, the decision was made to revamp the Repository, and spend the next two years developing its successor, the C42 Archive. Advancements in technology and the ways in which people used the Internet were taken into account when creating the C42 Archive, which launched in 2022 - it had an improved back-end design that made it easier to input multiple data points about an artefact, and most artefacts were fully accessible via the Archive, with no need for users to visit a physical location to view all the information they required. However, just two years after the launch of the C42 Archive, the dizzying speed with which technological advancements render previously useful hardware and software redundant means that we have to continuously evaluate the efficiency and usability of the Archive, and invest in updates and upgrades to ensure it remains a useful resource. 

Beyond issues relating to technology and digitalisation, other challenges we face have existed for as long as the concept of the archive itself. One of the key words that pops up over and over in any discussion about archival is neutrality - the concept of the archive being unbiased in the range of content it presents, and the way it presents that content. It’s generally agreed upon, through all the talks and discussions during the conference, that a completely ‘neutral’ archive or archival process is impossible to achieve. Malaysian researchers from Universiti Putra Malaysia, Arbaayah Ali Termizi and Dong Qingchen, explicitly call it a ‘myth’, because the priorities, biases, and blind spots of those who build and run an archive will inevitably be reflected in the archive itself. 

There are several ways in which these manifest through the archival process, beginning with the selection of materials to be included in the archive. Erin Lee, Head of Archive at London’s National Theatre, notes that curation at any level is inherently non-neutral, as it involves the archivist deciding what information and material is prioritised - what is included and excluded. In his paper presentation, curator Hans Van Keulen brings up a good example in the form of the Allard Pierson collection, which is run by the University of Amsterdam and focuses on European cultural heritage, including the history of theatre and performing arts. 

Van Keulen shares the methodology that the Allard Pierson collection uses to add information about new productions - instead of attempting to collect information about all the new productions that are staged every year (of which, Van Keulen notes, there are an ‘overwhelming number’), the personnel running the archive select a limited number of productions that are considered ‘representative’ for the year and gather material exclusively from these productions. The non-neutrality in this process is clear - a select group of people decide the few productions they consider to be ‘representative’ of an entire year’s worth of output. What’s considered to be ‘representative’ isn’t set in stone or objectively defined, and will inevitably be influenced by the biases held by the people selecting these productions. 

Additionally, these biases aren’t limited solely to perspectives on documentation and archival processes. Sant points out that cultural and sociopolitical biases that exist outside of these processes also impact the ways an archive is built, curated, and presented. Longstanding histories of racism, misogyny, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia often manifest themselves in the creation and presentation of theatre and the performing arts - it’s unsurprising that they impact the documentation and archival process as well. Entire histories can be excluded from archives for these reasons. Esther Marinho Santana, researcher at the University of São Paulo, brings up one example in the form of Peking Opera performances in Brazil being excluded from official archives about Brazilian theatre history due to the perception that they are not truly Brazilian in nature. Academic Vikrant Kishore also notes the frequent exclusion of traditional performing art forms (often practised by marginalised indigenous communities) from state-run performing arts archives in regions that have vested interest in suppressing the histories of marginalised populations. Even the C42 Archive can act as an example - Singapore’s history as an ex-British colony, paired with the government’s decision post-independence to make English the country’s lingua franca, has directly resulted in a theatre archive that presents the majority of its information and materials in English, rather than any of our other national languages or commonly-spoken dialects. We can see that the geographical and sociopolitical contexts in which an archive exists can define and impact the shape an archive is allowed to take. 

Another hotly discussed issue in the field of archival is what Curator for Dance at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) London, Jane Pritchard, terms ‘the conflict between sensitivity and accuracy'. 

The world has evolved significantly over the past centuries, and what society considers to be permissible versus what it considers to be offensive constantly changes. Blackface and yellowface, once accepted and popularised in media, are now frowned upon; conversely, many regions of the world which previously condemned homosexuality now see increasing tolerance and acceptance of LGBTQ people. Often, the archivist has on their hands material that was par for the course in its day, but would now be considered offensive. Hans Van Keulen notes that, in such cases, the archivist must now grapple with the question of how to present and represent such material in the most sensitive and appropriate way, and indeed, whether sensitivity is more important than truthful, realistic representation. 

Sensitivity and truthfulness are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but the balance is often difficult to strike, and ultimately, which aspect is prioritised comes down to the different purposes of each individual archive. The C42 Archive, for example, aims to present information without value judgement; materials are represented entirely as they were contributed, without any corrections or additions from Centre 42’s archival team. In contrast, Pritchard shares that the V&A is extremely conscious of the ways certain artefacts in their collection could be negatively perceived in this day and age, and this impacts the way these artefacts are presented to the public. Artefacts may remain in storage rather than be made publicly accessible. They may also be presented with writeups providing context about the period of time in which they were created and acknowledging that they are now considered outdated or offensive by modern standards. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for the issue, and as societal perceptions continue to evolve, will require continuing conversations about the most appropriate ways to document and present such artefacts, and the ways to strike the balance of a sensitive and truthful archive. 

Obviously, all the issues faced in the archival process can only be debated when the archive itself actually exists, and the archive can only exist when there are documents to include within it. As previously mentioned, there are several reasons for a lack of existing documents, and one major reason discussed during the conference is a resistance towards documentation. Sant notes that there is a long history of resistance towards documentation in the theatre and performing arts field. Sant cites examples in his publication Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving, with a significant one being scholar Peggy Phelan’s declaration that performance cannot be documented, because re-representation of a performance becomes ‘something other than performance’. For a long time, this undefined ‘something’ was considered undesirable - in some way, sullying the artistic integrity of the actual performance. 

Thankfully, as performance documentation has become easier to conduct and more prevalent globally, this mindset has grown less popular in recent years - but the impacts linger. In her paper presentation, researcher Anna Lawaetz notes that a historical resistance to documentation has led to a reliance on self-memory, where a performance or event is only remembered by the practitioners involved in it, with no proper records of what occurred. Human memory is fallible, and people do not live forever - when access to these practitioners’ memories are lost, so is all knowledge of the performance. 

Additionally, the history of considering performance and performance documentation to be two separate processes (and shying away from the latter) has resulted in practitioners continuing to lack in-depth knowledge of documentation processes and understanding of the purpose and value of archival. Lawaetz notes that the practitioner’s priorities often differ from the archivist’s - what a practitioner is interested in archiving may not make for the most effective archive; conversely, a practitioner might also refuse to provide material that could be of immense value in documenting a performance for the future. 

Even when a performance has been documented, it’s not always guaranteed that artists and practitioners are willing to contribute their documentation to an external archive. The C42 Archive, being a consolidated archive of Singapore theatre history, aims to represent the many different theatre companies, collectives, and practitioners who have played a role in the scene. This requires us to reach out to these different companies, collectives, and practitioners to gather information, materials, and documents about the theatre productions they’ve created and staged over the years. Inevitably, we encounter practitioners who prefer for their documents to be kept private, or organisations which run their own company archives and prefer for their documents to remain exclusively available on their own archives. Having no access to these documents, there remains a gap on the C42 Archive that we cannot fill. 

In cases such as these, Ashutoth Potdar states, archivists face the issue of lost material, a lack of documents. He questions: if all material and information about a performance is lost, then did it really happen? How can we document an event completely lost to time? After all, archives are (for obvious reasons) often built around material that archivists actually have in their possession. In response, Chow Ling-chih raises the possibility of an archive that highlights not what it contains, but rather, what is missing, allowing users to read what is missing through whatever incomplete fragments of documentation may exist. 

Professor Okamuro offers an example of such an archive with the Lost in Pandemic project. In contrast to most theatre archives, which focus on documenting productions that were successfully staged, the Lost in Pandemic project focused on preserving materials, such as brochures, posters, and publicity trailers, that were created for Japanese theatre productions that were ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of focusing on the materials themselves, the Lost in Pandemic project prompted viewers to evaluate the ‘lost’ productions they referenced, and reflect on the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Japanese theatre scene. 

The Lost in Pandemic project was an ingenious effort in documenting a significant period in time, motivated by unique global circumstances - whether we will see more archives embracing the concept of ‘highlighting what is missing’ remains to be seen.

As we’ve seen, the issues faced by archivists and archives worldwide are many and varied. Several of the conference speakers shared about different strategies that have been attempted in order to make archival processes - collection, conservation, curation, organisation, display - more effective and efficient, and to create the most useful and usable archive possible for users. 

Chow Ling-chih stresses the importance of thinking long-term when it comes to designing and building the archive - being clear about how information will be displayed and navigated by users, from the very start - to ensure the final product will be functional and useful. Jane Pritchard references her experience with cataloguing and displaying artefacts for the V&A Archives to emphasise how crucial it is for an archive to have a well-structured taxonomy - a clear, easily understandable classification system, where information is neatly categorised in order to make it easy to identify, search for, and find. After all, she reasons, an archive may contain a wealth of material, but if users cannot easily navigate it to find specific information they want, it becomes simply a disorganised storeroom. 

Centre 42 shares this mindset - clear and functional categorisation has been a key feature of the C42 Archive since it was first launched. Materials uploaded to the Archive are sorted under various categories, and are searchable by content type; by media type; by date range; and by several content-specific tags that narrow down the search field. This allows users to sieve through over 20,000 artefacts hosted on the Archive to find exactly what they want with ease. 

Additionally, the C42 Archive is also built around the idea of interconnectedness - information and materials are not treated simply as individual artefacts, but links are drawn between them in various ways. For example, an entry about one theatre production will link out to different stagings of that production, to information about the various practitioners involved in the production, theatre ephemera from the production, and more. This contextualises every artefact within the wider theatre ecosystem in which it exists, and provides users with a representative depiction of Singapore theatre history. 

When it comes to gathering information and material, the library staff at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (HKAPA), who manage the institutional collection, stress the importance of proactivity. HKAPA grows its collection by actively seeking out relevant information and materials through different channels - students and staff, active practitioners, other archives - which is crucial for the health of their archive, ensuring its material remains continuously relevant and up-to-date. 

Chow Ling-chih also notes that proactivity should not be limited to the process of gathering material - it is crucial to continuously improve the archive instead of simply maintaining it. Effort must be put into understanding an archive’s audience - their wants, needs, and issues with the archive - in order to improve the archive’s design and structure, and keep it robust and useful. 

Proactivity can also be practised through collaborative archiving - Arbaayah Ali Termizi and Dong Qingchen reference the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (ASIA) as an example. When viewing information about a production on ASIA, users are able to share additional information and reflections via the notepad function, and read other users’ contributions as well. This active and collaborative method of information sharing engages users in the archival process and provides ASIA with an additional stream for information gathering.

Professor Okamuro concurs with the importance of actively engaging archive users with the documentation and archival process - the flow of information should not be unidirectional, solely from the archivist (through the archive) to the user. Not only does active engagement grow the information and material available on an archive, it fosters deeper understanding among users about the importance of archiving - and with understanding, Professor Okamuro notes, often comes tangible support for the creation and maintenance of an archive. 

Additionally, it is not just archive users who should play an active part in the performance archival process; Anna Lawaetz notes that it is similarly important for artists and practitioners to participate as well. The benefits are apparent from an archival project headed by Erin Lee, who was embedded in the entire process of creating and staging the National Theatre’s Till the Stars Come Down (2024) in order to create a collection of material about the production. 

Being present for the creation process, and conversing with the practitioners involved - the playwright, director, designers, and more - allowed Lee to learn from them and understand the production from the inside, providing valuable perspective in her archival process. Importantly, it also allowed the practitioners involved to learn from Lee as well. They gained first-hand insight into her archival process and understanding of the kind of information and material Lee found crucial to document, in order for someone not involved in the production to best understand it. Lee notes that the practitioners gained more appreciation for the archival process, learned ways to make the documentation process smoother, and better understood how they could contribute to making the eventual archive richer. 

Centre 42 is no stranger to dynamizing the archive by involving artists and practitioners in the documentation and archival process. Two of our residencies, the Archival Residency and Vault Residency, encourage theatre practitioners to engage with the C42 Archive and Singapore theatre history in different ways. The Archival Residency supports artists to form their own archival collections, whether of their own body of work or someone else’s; through the process, they gain a deeper understanding of some aspect of Singapore theatre history and generate new archival material that contributes to the C42 Archive, helping to enrich its collection. The Vault Residency gives practitioners the opportunity to engage with, and create a contemporary response to, a historical Singapore theatre production, breathing new life into a classic in the canon or spotlighting a lesser-known work for a modern audience. Watch the video below to hear from Centre 42’s General Manager Yanling about Centre 42’s efforts to dynamize the C42 Archive, and find out about three previous Vault Residency projects that engage critically and personally with Singapore theatre history!

Ultimately, it is critical for archival and documentation to be a collaborative effort. It goes beyond involving users and artists in the process - it is also key to recognise that every archive exists in a community of other archives. 

Centre 42 is keenly aware that the C42 Archive is not the only theatre archive in Singapore. We familiarise ourselves with other theatre archives to ensure the work we are doing on the C42 Archive is not simply duplicating work that has already been done by others. We engage with the groups that run these other archives to share knowledge and information, in order to build an archival community where we work with, rather than compete against, each other. Click here to take a look at some other theatre and theatre-related Archives!

With a wide variety of speakers and attendees from all over the world, representing various libraries, museums, and archives, the 34th SIBMAS conference was an excellent opportunity to hear different perspectives on the realities of collecting, conserving, restaging, and reimagining the performing arts in today’s complex, interconnected, rapidly changing world. There was plenty to learn from the challenges faced and strategies applied by other archives, and there was also plenty to share from Centre 42’s own experience as a relatively young theatre development space running a consolidated digital archive of Singapore theatre history. As Centre 42 continues our efforts to document Singapore theatre, and the C42 Archive grows from strength to strength, there’ll be plenty more learning points that we look forward to sharing with others, as we work towards building a rich, diverse, and interconnected archival community, here in Singapore and around the world. 

Published: 26 November 2024