IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Name: Performing the Archive: An Experiment in Collective Memory in the Face of Technological, Geopolitical and Climate Crisis
Start: 2026-10-19T13:30:00+0300
End: 2026-10-19T16:30:00+0300

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Performing the Archive: An Experiment in Collective Memory in the Face of Technological, Geopolitical and Climate Crisis

Monday October 19, 2026 1:30pm - 4:30pm EEST

Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

This workshop will be an experimental performance-based process that will ask participants to work with scores and notational systems that require collective conversation, rehearsal and performance. Techniques borrowed from conceptual art practice (specifically Robert Smithson's *Nonsites* from 1968) and experimental music practice (the lineage of John Cage, Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros, and Anthony Braxton) will be discussed and workshopped, with scores provided to participants to begin the process. The scores that we will work with do not require a music background and in fact do not need to be used to produce music or sound. At their root, they are orientation devices and engines for creating collective movement. Through reading and thinking about scores--which are by definition, *prescriptive* and *descriptive*-- we will think through how our archives work in their current state and theorize different possible outcomes for memory work when the sites which house this work are (already) under attack or may be imminently under threat.

At stake are questions about how the human resources of memory, ritual, and performance can be leveraged to tackle questions around the preservation of community and institutional archives in the face of the massive global crises that we currently face and their impact on natural and physical resources. Beyond an engagement with conceptual art and experimental music practice, this workshop will draw from the theory and practice of Counter Archives, the Dark Forest of Theory of the Internet, Mutual Aid, and environmental activism.

Speakers

Alex Waterman

Music & Audiovisual Archivist World Music Archives, World Music Archives and Music Library, Wesleyan University.

Alex Waterman was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1975. He is a cellist and composer as well as a musicologist, curator, and archivist, currently the audiovisual archivist atthe World Music Archives at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. A founding member of the Plus-Minus... Read More →

Monday October 19, 2026 1:30pm - 4:30pm EEST
Education hall: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania

Workshop, In Person

Zoom link https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81977024051
Zoom password 867213

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IASA-BAAC 2026 Conference

Alex Waterman

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Alex Waterman

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