A Mediterranean Matri-Archive

Choreographic Fragments of Emerging Corporealities

Abstract

This paper aims to refigure the question of archive into a gender-critical perspective, and proposes the theorization of a Matri-Archive: an imaginary place of methodological analysis, a performance-zone which serves to retrieve the corporeal memories of women’s creativity emerging from the liquid architecture of the Mediterranean sea. I rely on the philosophical-theoretical debate over the ‘archive fever’, which today still affects many voices of Dance and Performance Studies, in order to discuss the presumed ephemerality of a dance-event, and thus its (im-)possible archivalization. I envision myself an archivist who after experiencing the choreo-graphies produced by three female Mediterranean and postcolonial artists – N. Belaza; G. McMillen; N. Boukhari – attempts a series of archival exercises to argue the technical dissemination, and the poetical return, of their gestures in form of choreographic fragments. This writing virtually lands in Algeria, Turkey and Syria; from these Mediterranean edges, the three ‘archons’ begin to explore the multiple senses of ‘what’ a female corporeality can ‘do/become’ via the subversive power of dance language. A fragmentary consultation is here offered as an analytical and choreo- political practice, both to present some examples of female agency and eventually to state the urgency of acquiring alternative visions for alternative archives.