Performİstanbul aims to be among the best libraries in the world, leading the way with a 672-hour, live process in the field of performance art with its Live Art Research Space (PCSAA).
This research space, which will fill a serious deficiency and be open to the public, will be a resource for many disciplines.
Performistanbul, the international performance art platform, continues its works in cooperation with various cultural and art institutions in different places with its "placeless" identity while opening a new page and breathing fresh air into this field. It is primed to create Turkey's first Live Art Research Space, which will host many sources in live art and have an important role in training and development for performance art.
The PCSAA, which will include more than 7,000 sources consisting of international live art archives, documents and publications, sustains its work by using the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) in London as a model. In this respect, the present digital documentation of international artists' performances in the LADA has been added to the archive's collection. In addition, nearly 500 international performance artists were contacted, and archival-documentary donations have been collected from over 100 artists. In order to increase this number, book and archive donations are expected from local and international performance artists or from artists who include performance art in their productions.
Performistanbul, which is one of the initiatives that the SAHA Association supports within the scope of the 2018-2019 Support Fund for Sustainability of Independent Art Initiatives, conducts work for the development of the PCSAA with the support it has received.
With the publication series of Performistanbul, which will start in this year, work has also been conducted to translate important sources into Turkish and to create new publications in performance art.
Different activities focusing on the live process and performance art in the space will be organized in addition to the library and digital archives; training seminars, conversations and workshops will be held at the Performistanbul Live Art Research Space as of March.
'Needed: You!' once again
The archive of the 672-hour live process under the title "Needed: You Again for the Live Art Research Space!" which took place between Feb. 16 and March 16, 2018, carried out for 24 hours a day over 28 days, will open as an experimental digital archive.
Performistanbul opens the gates of the Live Art Research Space, which hosts "Needed: You Again for the Live Art Research Space" during the construction period, by carrying this experience to a different dimension this time for visitors. In this renewed space, which has been turned into a research area, documentaries on the performances will be shared with the audience for the first time. In addition, objects that the artists accumulated during the performance processes, the diaries they kept and their photographs can be accessed both digitally and physically.
At the end of this process, the digital archive will be made accessible via the internet.
Moreover, there will be talks with artists and guests from different disciplines throughout March as well as video screenings in the space, which will be open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
In some of the talks, the content of the performances in "Needed: You Again for the Live Art Research Space" and the artist-audience experiences and relationships will be discussed, while digital experience in art, digital archiving, the digitization of art and the archiving of performance art will also be on the agenda.