Variation lies in waiting. "Conserving" performance between archive and repertory

The paradigm change (Kuhn, 1970), which is taking place in the arts disciplines – and hence in the humanities as a whole – following the introduction and development of the notion of performance affects a number of theoretical axes, among which one of the most important and significant is the relationship between orality and literacy: performative knowledge, as Schechner has argued (1985() belongs to the oral tradition. No reflection on the archivability of performance can afford to lay aside such a complex and fascinating issue. If performances are essentially made up of actions, how can they be “conserved” and archived? In so far as we are used to linking the act of archiving with the production of documents, i.e. with the transferral of action from the field of praxis to that of poiesis by means of writing, can we still consider the latter as the most adequate means to conserve performance? Documents are more properly objects (Roger Fidler, Mediamorphosis, 1997), and as such they are inscribed acts – acts which, once transformed into writing, are no longer “acting”. This is similar to what happens to oral discourse when it is fixed through writing or mechanically recorded (on the other hand, the opposition orality/literacy ought to be reconfigured nowadays following the current development of the cultural means of production and transmission, having mechanical recording been added to the two previous modalities). Should it not be preferable, then, to think of oral memorization (producing repertories rather than archives)? Not only because it remembers and re-produces actions through the actions themselves (cfr. the notion of “twice-behaved behaviour”, central in performance studies), but also because, as Carlo Sini (2004) and Jack Goody (2000) among others have noted, oral memory is always open and liable to variation, therefore more creative (even if involuntarily) and more “affectively” shared?[...