Beyond Preservation: A Posthuman Exploration of Dance Archives as Glitched Space

September 2024Author biographyRichard is an instructor at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, where he teaches in the Expressive Arts Therapy Program. His work focuses on the intersection of post-human theory, the arts, and arts-based research, focusing on how these perspectives can enliven creative practices.Shannon is an elementary school instructor in Victoria BC. Her work focuses on posthuman theory, new materialism and arts based research.Keywords: Glitch aesthetics, Posthumanism, Remix culture, Ritornello, Anarchive, Choreographic archives, Digital distortion, Emergent choreography, Archival disruption, Dance historiographyAbstractIn contemporary dance, performances slip away the instant a show ends, with conventional archives missing out on the always-shifting interplay of bodies, setting, and mood. This article puts forth something called “glitching the archive,” a posthuman take that recognizes the generative potential of technological glitches: think warped visuals, scrambled data, and sudden repetition. Those errors reshape how dance is documented, reinvented, and shared.Drawing on glitch aesthetics, remix culture, the Deleuze & Guattari-inspired notion of the ritornello, and anarchival strategies, the argument challenges canonical approaches that treat these records as stable, closed artifacts. Instead, glitch welcomes humans, machines, and software to co-create emergent choreographies by unraveling and recombining bits of archived material. Familiar motifs, or ritornellos, pop up among digital distortions, grounding each round while revealing subtle variations.Meanwhile, the anarchive frames these shifts as open-ended, ongoing processes, resisting the fixed and final nature of traditional documentation. The blend of glitch, remix, and anarchic logic emphasizes the bodily, contingent, and beyond-human dimensions that feed into contemporary dance. We discover that archives aren’t finite containers of memory but lively sites for constant reshaping.Viewed from that angle, every glitch becomes a chance to spark the archive’s untapped possibilities, opening doors to new choreographic directions that disrupt linear dance history and call out conventional notions of ownership and authorship. Maybe the glitch isn’t a mistake but an invitation: a rhythmic stutter that leads us somewhere thrillingly unexpected.PreludeContemporary dance has long been defined by its live, fleeting qualities; what occurs onstage, in a specific space and time, tends to vanish once the performance is over, leaving behind only fragmentary traces in the form of written notes, digital video, or anecdotal memory. Over the centuries, choreographers and dance scholars have grappled with how best to document these time-embedded or durational experiences (Franko, 2005; Lepecki, 2006; Taylor, 2003). Traditional forms of dance notation such as Labanotation (Laban, 1939) or Benesh Notation (Benesh & Benesh, 1956) sought to record bodily positions and transitions on the page, yet these systems failed to capture the expressive intensities and affective intricacies (the shift of weight, the performer’s affective tone, the flux of energy that arises in dialogue with music or environment) that enlivened the actual event. With the rise of photography and then film and video, archiving efforts became increasingly entwined with technologies that promised to store movement for future retrieval (Birringer, 1998, 2002, 2008). Although these audiovisual records expanded our capacity to revisit past works, the oscillatory tension between the live event and its recorded trace has never fully resolved, as many scholars point out that a camera, no matter how high the resolution, cannot replicate the immersive, interrelational dynamic of being there. Digital technology, especially in the form of high-definition streaming, motion-capture data, virtual reality, social media, and emergent digital ecologies, heightens these archiving possibilities even further, yet inevitably reveals the precarity of any claim to a “complete” record. At every turn, the uncontainable essence of movement, a fleeting interplay of corporeal, sonic, and environmental dynamics, exceeds or disrupts the boundaries of the recorded document.In reply to such quandaries, dance scholars have repeatedly stressed that archives must be acknowledged as partial, contested spaces and as selective frameworks that preserve certain aspects of a performance and ignore or erase others (Schneider, 2011). We can see this in the ways past dance has been documented and canonized: certain choreographies, often originating in Western concert dance traditions, achieve a privileged status through repeated restaging or distribution on widely circulating media, whereas others (including folk or community-based dances) remain absent from formal archival systems and thus risk fading from institutional memory (Buckland, 2006). Debates over how to address these imbalances frequently circle back to questions of how one might expand or unsettle the canonical archive, seeking a more inclusive and ever-shifting approach that acknowledges the living, constantly morphing nature of dance. This article takes up that challenge by proposing a provocation referred to as glitching the archive, an approach that calls attention to the generative potential of mistakes, disruptions, and accidents within both the creative process and the historical record. It emerges from a posthuman vantage, echoing the machinic multiplicities that embraces nonhuman actants (including, but not limited to, digital platforms, computer algorithms, and hardware vulnerabilities) as agentic co-creators in choreographic processes rather than passive apparatuses at the disposal of human intention (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2013; Haraway, 1991).Instead of treating technological malfunctions—corrupted files, broken frames, crashes, or misalignments—as hindrances to dance preservation, a glitch-centered mindset views them as unexpected openings that can expand our conceptions of the archive and of dance itself. This viewpoint draws from ongoing conversations in posthuman theory, glitch aesthetics (Cascone, 2000), remix culture (Lessig, 2008; Navas, 2012), the Deleuzian-Guattarian concept of the ritornello (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), and the idea of the anarchive as introduced by scholars such as Manning and Massumi (2014) and Zielinski (2015). Together, these ideas converge on a provocative, nonconformist proposition: dance as an art form might be better served by seeing its documented traces not as conclusive evidence of what once happened but as continually shifting materials that demand continuous reactivation, an approach that disrupts conventional notions of closure, completeness, and finalized authorship. The emphasis here falls on the methodological possibility of deliberately seeking or harnessing glitches and remix strategies within digital archives to generate new choreographic thought and to reshape how dancers, researchers, and audiences access the past.The article’s core argument is that glitching the archive can operate on two levels: first, it reveals hidden infrastructures, biases, and assumptions within archiving systems (technical, institutional, or otherwise) by exposing their vulnerability to error and breakdown; second, it catalyzes a posthuman perspective that understands choreography as an emergent, co-creative endeavor among human bodies, software systems, motion-capture data, and unpredictable digital phenomena. While the concept of glitch has been extensively theorized within electronic music, video art, and network culture, its potential to propel contemporary dance’s inquiries into new transversal zones remains ripe for deeper interrogation, particularly in dialogue with posthuman perspectives that de-center the human choreographer and reimagine creativity as a multi-agent dynamic. Remix culture further enriches this conversation, offering a conceptual structure through which archived fragments can be sampled, looped, layered, and transformed. The interplay of remix and glitch highlights that dance archives need not be stable repositories but might instead be rhizomatic incubators that continually reinvigorate and reconfigure how choreographic knowledge circulates. The ritornello concept, as taken from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) writings on repetition and difference, serves as a connector: it highlights how cyclical returns or refrains function to anchor an otherwise unpredictable, glitch-ridden environment, providing enough familiarity to let difference flourish. Finally, the notion of the anarchive offers a shifting theoretical scaffolding by refusing linear genealogies and static forms of preservation, positioning the archive as a field of potential transformation rather than a conclusive record of past achievements.The text that follows begins by outlining the key conceptual currents: posthumanism, glitch aesthetics, remix culture, the ritornello, and the anarchive. It then considers the methodological ramifications of adopting glitch-based or remix-oriented strategies to engage with dance documentation, envisioning how these might be put into practice, either hypothetically or in orchestrated research-creation contexts. An extended discussion how such strategies creative processes, and the conceptual anchor of dance while questions and in a digital where to how the of glitch aesthetics and an anarchival reveals dance to be a living, us that the of movement not performances but rather and within every new of and the idea of a dance archive might of in an of how archives function a deeper with what is what is and these of that an to and the of what as dance, these boundaries often or or scholars such as that the or of memory can never be fully within archival is a that or audiovisual between the archive and the the for dance not as something that can be but as an that on through and often forms of shift or by such as and challenges by how nonhuman from to to environmental not but in processes of and the of dance, this perspective disrupts the that choreography from the of a human passive and Instead, it that bodies, and software to in ways or even from a human in dialogue with the concept of the archive, reveals that digital platforms, and the technological what is how it is and how future might and within this of the from hardware or network posthuman thus dance scholars to which actants at in how choreography is documented and with the that nonhuman as in the as the or aesthetics to within electronic the aesthetics of in a how software crashes, and digital became to the logic of certain conventional might treat these errors as to be glitch them as that the the hidden of the of glitch this to culture, that glitch the of digital that remain a dance a glitch can a video or into or or motion-capture into frames missing or than such distortions, choreographers glitch treat them as for new movement for by to replicate the stutter in bodily form or by the dance with the of a Glitch becomes an point for seeing how or possibilities for bodily and glitch highlights the remix emphasizes processes of and Remix culture, it in and has expanded to a of creative from to video art to itself. views remix as both an and an in that and fragments from not only as strategies but as ways of of knowledge that difference, and dance, remix might as the of from choreographies as the of with or or the of performance into a video Remix becomes particularly to an archive can be as an of fragments in new contexts. While archival to a record of a as it in a remix culture the notion of a stable by and morphing that is genealogies of This with posthuman to the that it acknowledges how creativity is never but instead arises from or among bodies, and ritornello Deleuze & between and Deleuze in and how repetition never the the in which something has that every to dance, a ritornello might be a or that a by providing a the of remains the to in the energy or shifts in the an archival and historical a ritornello can take choreographic fragments or or in of The repeated or becomes enough to while the subtle that over glitch aesthetics and remix culture into dance documentation, choreographers and scholars how the ritornello can function as a that an otherwise of data, or This approach and with the posthuman idea that forms of repetition by memory or recorded and with the processes of that introduced in through the writings of Manning and Massumi (2014) and further by Zielinski from conventional archival logic by resisting or the idea of a and record. of positioning the archive as the of a historical or the anarchive or highlights how archived materials remain in to future and This and with dance’s emphasis on live yet it challenges the notion that records to and the memory of what An anarchival perspective that any of video, a a motion-capture only in performances or than the the anarchive what call Manning and Massumi a generative that calls archived into and anarchival strategies as deliberately the of archival that might be or taken out of at any with each new choreographic and this text not a it can be to of how a research-creation might these and in and might with a of archival dance from and of dance more high-definition of contemporary works, motion-capture from processes, and a of materials such as notes, or a conventional archiving this be and certain that future access a record of each performance as it a glitching to with or these them to or that not as opening a video in a text and then the scrambled The might to in or might generate and then to these and with creative and fragments of frames, and or in a environment, these glitch-ridden function as for and to to, or otherwise into dialogue and engage with the that have or might generate or that the in directions no one have glitch art the of the and such a that the technologies dance’s that with glitch remix strategies be to choreographic might from each of archival them in that a from a performance with a from a by a of a in motion-capture The the of dance what might as that new ways of seeing and difference Remix emphasis on not only calls attention to the among choreographic but to treat the archived not as a but as matter for creative in Choreographic the approach might at to institutional, notions of choreographic it and technological errors to creative with the that posthuman scholars have the of the that a posthuman us to that not at the of the the of with of that through among human and nonhuman dance, this of thought is by scholars and how the is never a closed Instead, it is by from to to the that each glitch to the this interplay more by the unpredictable that digital systems in to the and certain creative might creative to that a see the of glitch as a with a that welcomes chance the of and the to glitch can be as a new of chance that away from a Dance to the posthuman of their can from glitch-based which that software crashes, and the of can generative rather than to be as in the new glitching can operate as an and for dance archives in ways that a or logic a digital video of the of its or the of a to the as as to the with by or such one the that how the dance and or evidence of the archive’s exposing the of that might from these the hidden of or the of certain digital than these as and one might treat them as that to the social and technological of the in which the archive a glitch that repeatedly an of a attention to the nature of the or is to a digital that in and out of This the tension between dance’s and and the archival to its Although not every glitch the point remains that an archive in error can on how the process of It to that the and an or the among an archive glitch is one to that no no matter how and can claim to dance Instead, see as by systems and every glitch is a of this ongoing and dynamic and the of Remix culture, often for its with the of choreographic that acknowledges how movement and and contexts. canonical or dance the one in a restaging of a from how to in or Remix culture offers conceptual through which these can of the that choreographers or a remix-oriented the of or as a creative from conventional from the by with glitch remix can call attention to the interplay of and the from a then it with from a contemporary by an of a by in an echoing the posthuman of and The digital these fragments but the frames, sudden that the The is a that not to these it the and new among historical and technological might see a of from dance to contemporary or one might on the new that emerges in the glitch-ridden of machinic either the into a of resisting of any notion of that often archival The can be or and often it is at as for the of an with glitching and a performance or risk to audiences or is for providing a of The ritornello, as Deleuze and in offers that a repeated each it in the of dance, a ritornello might as a choreographic that the each by repetition from a Deleuze that frames or the repeated becomes a of both and might remain a but the might the music might or or the might movement from a motion-capture ritornello thus the a cyclical that draws attention to how each new from the An might to this as a of but might be to how it in to the digital at that the ritornello can as a to a that otherwise embraces and it can as an of how the archival record over one video of the or the repeated might be the to in to performance glitching the archive, the ritornello might be deliberately out for repeated that each of the is or in a new thus difference each This interplay of and with a posthuman of dance as an ongoing among human bodies, and the that and as as by and us to see archival as in a historical and more as intensities for future emergent This logic the traditional to and the a and a remix into an anarchival that not for them to new possibilities, that every retrieval of the past is a of the This perspective the that the best to a dance is by it in Instead, it that emergent in the capacity of dance to and generate fully that the fleeting of performance can never be in a arises inevitably between an anarchival and the of many institutional archives that to and historical artifacts. Dance and often for and in their to or such glitching or the archive might to or might archival of is to two archival an that the of conventional preservation, and a second, to glitch-based and This approach the for while a of creative an might an anarchival in digital or research-creation its to canonical forms The between archival and creative or glitching need not be but can be as of a on the nature of dance and expand these inquiries into for how dance history or might be than archival and materials as to deliberately or remix the or that with historical might a of how choreographic or how specific movement and how machinic or can or choreographic This approach with the archive, it from a static into a for with motion-capture from canonical works, or them to generate new or that traces of the while machinic or glitch might be into on dance aesthetics, or performance to both a of digital and a to with their enriches the field of performance dance into or art forms that on documentation. The field of performance by scholars and has long to the tension between and glitch into that how machinic or never passive and can that performance show on video might glitch the performer’s of the an approach by the glitch might the error into the or the an into the posthuman that the performance is not the of but an that arises through of and the archive and in remix questions or ownership and the of and the contemporary dance choreographers often restaging their or that choreographies might and unsettle these particularly the and the or them the archive to an or an be on how the audiovisual materials or can be or perspectives and glitch aesthetics might back such closed and systems, that the between and emergent and that creativity is or by or the and of remains especially a remix approach specific these dimensions dialogue between and the that or historical in the documented can be through the of a to a of that further that creative from while a or that ongoing in this becomes a form of out it and the in which choreography has been might both the choreographer and the that an unexpected choreographic the of historical and posthuman dance scholars and can new of and processes that the and of the digital in the a this shift with the in which digital technologies every of and the of a stable, record fading as and digital Glitch offers a to and for generative that what might be as digital or into a of creative dance, which has been a often documented the nature of dance, long as a to and preservation, becomes a through glitch and remix, the or record is no a but a for creative that the art form into choreographic perspective here that and dance of posthumanism, glitch aesthetics, remix culture, the ritornello and an of anarchival reshape our assumptions documentation, and the of choreographies over archives see that the technologies to preserve dance and to the of an or conclusive record of these glitches and as creative openings rather than to be how nonhuman processes and choreographic digital and with bodily in ways that human intention technological can fully Remix culture these and possibilities by that archived fragments not static but can be sampled, and to new movement and new and The ritornello a within these processes, and back to a that shifts and each it thus and difference into a Finally, the anarchive conceptual to the notion that dance is and generative and creative it is as a of at risk of glitching to or in new and to new that might from or the human perspective not the challenges of dance history and choreographic it that their of performances for future Instead, it dance and to the and of every archival and to how glitches and can a for creative The fleeting of dance has often been a for within the to their for as as glitching the archive that the essence of dance is what its ongoing The recorded traces not static generative that can new performances each or otherwise a posthuman the archive becomes a of for between and and repetition and the future of dance on the interplay between live and digital then glitch, remix, ritornello, and an of archiving for that The of glitch, and remix, within the field of an the that dance remains in but and the of static It is in this space that the of dance can be in the the and the of matter and & Benesh, An to Benesh dance & and the technology, & of and & The from past to culture, of The aesthetics of in contemporary computer The of dance. and repetition work & Guattari, and of work of for and for Dance and The of became in and of specific and a dance. & & work and the of art and in the & in the in the of of The glitch of Remix The aesthetics of and in of The archive and the memory in the (2015). for especially for the arts, a concept to the of in the The and in contemporary dance. The and of in dance. on Dance notation and The technology, & culture of Benesh movement and of & and of that The choreography of in Dance as of the The of and movement Arts The of dance work of & of contemporary dance Dance work Dance in and at perspective on