Performing the Jewish Archive

20世纪的各种灾难已经在欧洲的文化结构上撕开了一个洞。这个项目的首要目标是通过将最近重新发现的犹太艺术家的音乐、戏剧和文学作品带回学者和公众的关注，来重新梳理这些空白。学术成果将包括专著、期刊文章和评论版本，该计划将通过互动网络资源、教育项目和五个国际文化节的表演产生更广泛的影响。我们的学术工作和艺术实践将涉及三种类型的“犹太档案”：a)作品本身，通常提供有关其创作背景复杂性的信息；B)传统的档案文件；C)民族志档案（口述历史和证词）为过去和现在的人提供历史信息和阐明事件的意义。我们没有将任何类型的档案特权化为“文本”，而将其他类型的档案特权化为“背景”，而是将这三者视为相互启发的共同文本。这些都是我们调查中同等重要的方面。其中一些档案处于危险之中，这使我们的工作变得特别紧迫。虽然新的档案在世界上一些地方开放或被发现，但老年幸存者的脆弱记忆正在迅速消失，家庭档案被处理或恶化。与英国、美国、中欧、南非和澳大利亚的合作伙伴组织（表演者、教育工作者、博物馆、图书馆、档案馆和决策者）一起工作，我们将遵循现有的线索寻找新的档案，并帮助保存那些最近曝光的档案。我们的多学科团队带来了研究专长，使我们能够专注于c.1880-c时期。1950年，近代以来犹太人流离失所最严重的时期。我们的案例研究包括最近从布拉格附近的特雷津犹太人区（Terezin Ghetto）找到的戏剧手稿，在澳大利亚、南非和英国的私人收藏中发现的东欧音乐作品，以及大屠杀后立即写的幸存者经历的文学叙述。通过对犹太人在拘禁、流放或移民等不同情况下艺术创作的案例研究，我们将更广泛地阐明艺术在现代社会的一种典型经历中的作用：流离失所。艺术家在什么时候用创造性的作品来表现位移的断裂，音乐、戏剧和文学在什么时候创造了与他们以前生活的连续性，或者在旧生活和新生活之间架起了一座桥梁？我们的共同文本表演创造了过去和现在之间的关系，不仅通过利用所有三种类型的档案（例如，通过在投影档案图像的背景下穿插重新发现的戏剧中的场景和叙述的幸存者证词），而且通过明确地参与这些过去的人工制品的多种可能的意义，无论是对原始观众还是对我们自己。表演的前景是，过去可能会在我们的现在和未来继续存在——在一个非常真实的意义上，“思考过去”。在项目期间开发的用户反应测试将帮助我们确定我们目前在吸引用户参与方面的成功程度。我们将邀请纳什乐团（Nash Ensemble）等世界领先的表演者与业余表演者和学生表演者一起演出，并在特雷津纪念馆（Terezin Memorial，二战前犹太人聚居区所在地）和约克郡克利福德塔（Clifford’s Tower， 12世纪大屠杀发生地）等具有历史意义的场所举行演出，以吸引来自广泛不同群体的观众。我们将鼓励艺术从业者、政策制定者和文化活动策划人员参与这些档案，并通过教育项目让参与者根据档案文本创作自己的表演，从而使这些档案的参与永续下去。

The manifold catastrophes of the 20th century have torn holes in the cultural fabric of Europe. This project's overarching objective is to re-knit certain threads across those gaps by bringing recently rediscovered musical, theatrical and literary works by Jewish artists back to the attention of scholars and the public. Scholarly outputs will include monographs, journal articles and critical editions, and the project will have wider impact through an interactive web resource, educational projects, and performances at five international cultural festivals.Our scholarly work and artistic practice will engage with three types of 'Jewish archives': a) the works themselves, often providing information on the complexities of the context in which they were created; b) traditional archival documentation; c) ethnographic archives (oral history and testimony) providing historical information and illuminating the meaning of events for past and present generations. Rather than privileging any type of archive as 'text' and others as 'context,' we consider all three as co-texts mutually illuminating each other. All are equally valuable aspects of our investigation.Some of these archives are at risk, giving our work special urgency. While new archives open or are discovered in some parts of the world, the fragile memories of elderly survivors are fast disappearing, and family archives are disposed of or deteriorate. Working alongside partner organisations (performers, educators, museums, libraries, archives and policy-makers) in the UK, US, Central Europe, South Africa and Australia, we will follow existing leads to seek out new archives, and help preserve those that have recently come to light. Our multi-disciplinary team brings research expertise allowing us to focus on the period c.1880-c.1950, the most intense period of Jewish displacement in the modern era. Our case studies include recently recovered theatrical manuscripts from the Terezin Ghetto near Prague, musical works from Eastern Europe uncovered in private collections in Australia, South Africa and England, and literary accounts of survivor experiences written immediately after the Holocaust. Via these case studies of Jewish artistic creation in diverse situations of internment, exile or migration, we will illuminate more broadly the role of art in one of the paradigmatic experiences of the modern age: displacement. When do artists use creative works to represent the rupture of displacement, and when do music, theatre and literature create continuity with their former lives, or a bridge between the old life and the new? Our co-textual performances create a relationship between past and present, not only by drawing upon on all three types of archives (for example, by interspersing scenes from a rediscovered play with narrated survivor testimony against a backdrop of projected archival images), but by engaging explicitly with the multiple possible meanings of these artefacts from the past, both for their original audiences and ourselves. The performances foreground ways in which that past may live on in our present and future - in a very real sense, 'thinking forward through the past'. Audience response testing, developed during the project, will help us determine how successful we are in generating audience engagement in the present. We will attract audiences from widely diverse constituencies by featuring world-leading practitioners such as the Nash Ensemble alongside amateur and student performers, and by staging performances in historically significant venues such as the Terezin Memorial (the site of the former WWII Jewish Ghetto) and Clifford's Tower in York (the site of a 12th-century pogrom). We will perpetuate engagement with these archives by encouraging arts practitioners, policy-makers and cultural event programmers to engage with them, and through educational projects in which participants create their own performances based on archival co-texts.