This weekend, Ranva Marie Birger Hagen – responsible for the newly established department for research and dissemination at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium – is traveling to Helsinki to meet her new Nordic colleagues in NCTD.
Nordic Center for Theater Documentation is an association for Nordic actors who work with archives, libraries, museums or other companies within the performing arts field. NCTD works to strengthen performing arts documentation and research, and to promote the network between the participating countries.
This year, NCTD's annual meeting will be held at the Theater Museum in Helsinki. Nordic Theater Laboratory is participating for the first time and will be represented by Ranva, who is, among other things, responsible for the theatre's internal archive. Here, Ranva performs i.a. a broader work to strengthen local performing arts archiving.
The meeting program offers a series of lectures and visits to the Theater Museum's current exhibition. On Monday evening, participants are invited to see Enfant terrible at the Swedish-language artistic ensemble theater Viirus.
First of all, I am looking forward to meeting my Nordic colleagues, and if I then have to highlight one program item that I am particularly looking forward to, it is hearing the presentation D-ark - a Performance Art Documentation project, which will be held by Anni Saisto and Juha Mehtäläinen from the Pori Art Museum and T.E.H.D.A.S, respectively.
The Pori Art Museum was founded at the beginning of the 80s and in its exhibitions has focused on examining ephemeral forms of art. The artist collective T.E.H.D.A.S has been organizing performance events since 2005, which they have systematically video-documented. Since 2013, the two organizations have collaborated to develop a video archive tailored to performance art.
I have only recently become familiar with D-sheets, but the project seems to challenge the otherwise smooth dichotomy between the performance event and its documentation - and I find that exciting. In addition, D-sheets address various matters of copyright, digital preservation and metadata, all of which are highly relevant in my day-to-day work. So I am very much looking forward to hearing more about the project.
The following institutions will be represented at the meeting:
Denmark
Teatersamlingen på Det Kongelige Bibliotek
Teatermuseet i Hofteatret
Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium
Finland
Suomen Kansalliskirjasto (The National Library of Finland)
Teatterimuseo (The Finnish Museum of Theater)
Suomen Kansallisteatteri (Finnish National Theatre)
Pori Art Museum
Tanssin ja sirkuksen tiedotuskeskus (Cirkus and Dance Finland)
T.E.H.D.A.S. ry.
Den finske Nationalopera og ballet (Finnish National Opera and Ballet)
Iceland
Leikminjasafn – Landsbókasafn Íslands (Theatre Museum of Iceland)
Norway
Teatermuseet – Oslo Teater
Sweden
Musik- och teaterbiblioteket
Göteborgs Universitet
