(re)Commit to Memory: Replacing Site (in which Bob and Lee spend twelve hours at a loss)

A practice-as-research intervention invited by PARIP International Conference 2005, ‘(re)Commit to Memory’ was an installation of twelve hours in duration, and the final iteration of a research process exploring the manner in which sites can be renegotiated both for the user and the creator of site-specific performance practices. Located within the transitory space of a corridor, the performance paper sought to develop knowledge in the transaction (both haptic and cognitive) between the user of the space, the space she is in and the performer/academic. The audience was witness to the traces developing through Whalley and Miller’s inhabiting of a space usually reserved for transit. The installation endeavoured to create a space in-between earlier conference papers and their practice. The heteroglossic structure of the installation utilised anecdotal, academic and performative discourses to encourage the audience to engage in both haptic and cognitive responses to the installation and its location, and to foreground the tension between exoteric and esoteric voices in their site-specific practices.