Archiving the Repertoire: Observations on the Capture of the Ephemeral

Hailed as a popular as well as therapeutic form of entertainment in historic Korea, the folk masked dance-drama of Talchum was nearly lost during the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century. Since the early 1960s, though, practitioners and scholars have revived thirteen regional practices that are now preserved with the aide of government funds and programming. While much has been written and performed in Korean, very little has been translated into other languages. Further, attempting to communicate textually about a primarily embodied art form creates barriers to the transmission of information and to the accessibility of the form by those both within and without the cultural milieu of that art form. Throughout her year of primary research the presenter has attempted to engage physically with Talchum in an effort to overcome some of these barriers. This presentation will utilize Diana Taylor’s rendering of the “scenario” (from Taylor’s book, The Archive and The Repertoire) along with the support of video and still images in order to share some of her resulting observations.