Paper short abstract:

Following the idea of an improbable symmetry between archives and creation, our purpose is to establish the way in which heritage, including aesthetics, is worked by its intense selection; art and archives feed on their own destruction, insofar as they result from elections and successive sortings.

Paper long abstract:

Between 2015 and 2017, the National Archives of France, in collaboration with the laboratory « Arts des images et art contemporain » of the University Paris-VIII, the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), the Centre national de danse contemporaine d'Angers (Cndc), and the École nationale supérieure d'art de Cergy-Pontoise (Ensapc), the research-creation project "Replay, restitution, re-creation ... For a typology of the rerun of archives", mixing scientists, archivists and artists determined to seize archival heritage bearing the trace of vanished artistic creations, in order to explore the modalities of a possible re-execution of the works.

The interrogation refers to archives as a trace and proof of the existence of a work of art, with the power to revive it when it is ephemeral, destroyed, stolen or forgotten. The object of study focused on the staging of bodies, from classical statuary to the implementation of the body in current performative practices.

Among all the actions undertaken, a corpus of archives has been made available to researchers and artists. It reflects a collegial and critical work questioning in an underlying way the evolution of looks of specialists and professionals focused on the history of their institution, the diversification of practices and the reuse of existing materials (http://replay.labex-arts-h2h.fr/content/corpus-replay). It is especially this work that we would like to present, since its results are now available for further research.