an archive and/or a repertoire

 an archive and/or a repertoire explores the liminal spaces that emerge between archives and ephemeral new media. Featuring the Mobius, Inc. Records —the administrative archive of the Boston-based Mobius Artists Group—this exhibition serves as a local laboratory, delving into materials from Mobius’ experimental performances, new media projects, sound works, dances, and installations. Currently housed in Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC), the Mobius, Inc. Records contains organizational records, photographs, and video documentation from c. 1968 to 2009, chronicling the early work of individual members and the artist-run organization founded by artist Marilyn Arsem, who also founded the Performance Area at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), where she taught for over a quarter century.  

an archive and/or a repertoire questions the boundaries and limits of the archive, through what performance studies scholar Diana Taylor understands as its embodied counterpoint, the repertoire. The exhibition is organized in four research threads that activate a potential remapping of the archive in light of the repertoire—Deep Time, Siting Place, Horizontal Collectivity, and Document / Residue—featuring photos, posters, newsletters, and other physical materials from the Mobius, Inc. Records at TARC. Presented alongside are embodied contributions from Mobius Artists Group members, new commissions and works by group artists Lani Asunción and Forbes Graham, as well as work by artists Aki Sasamoto and Takahiro Yamamoto. Responses to the archive also include oral histories from artists, activists, and cultural workers adjacent to Mobius, video documentation of the group’s early performance works, and ongoing public programming. Altogether, the exhibition components pose a challenge to the legacy of the material archive while also activating the collective imaginary of the repertoire—gestures, spoken word, movement, dance, sounds—that might otherwise be lost, erased, or forgotten.  

an archive and/or a repertoire is organized by Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin, PhD, with assistance from TUAG Graduate Research Fellow Wenxuan Xue (Tufts University PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies), Senior Preparator and Installation Manager David Thacker, and Exhibitions Assistant Meera Chauhan, in dialogue with artist and Mobius founder Marilyn Arsem and participating artists.  

Generous funding was provided by the Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC), Tufts University, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Image: Marilyn Arsem in collaboration with Joan Gale, Mari Novotny-Jones and Sarah Hickler, Mothers of Time, September 1994. Performed installation at Coontree Farm, Pepperell, MA. Photo: Bob Raymond. Image courtesy of Mobius Artists Group.