Performing Rights: Encuentro, Montreal

Year: 2014

The Library of Performing Rights was developed in collaboration with Lois Weaver and Queen Mary University of London for Performance Studies international 12: Performing Rights in 2006 and is now based in LADA’s Study Room. A roving archive that collects materials, documents, and traces of performances that engage issues of social justice, the Library is a playful and political appropriation of institutional space.

The Library was also featured in the Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro 2014 – part academic conference, part performance festival. Encuentro 2014 took place 21-28 June at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Whilst installed at Encuentro, Lois Weaver worked in collaboration with Jo Palmer (designer and production manager), and with Joanna Donehower (librarian and dramaturg) to install the Library in Montréal and to expand its French-language and Canadian collections.

The portable, purpose-built architecture of the Library referenced old fashioned libraries, and included shelves of books, daily newspapers and recent journals, a reading room, monitors for independent video viewing and web searching, as well as performances by librarian personae.

The Library of Performing Rights was a quiet place to go and be for a while, but it was also a space to search for and find new stimulus or information, to find partners in dialogue, in struggle, and in creation.

Visitors to the Library could bring materials to add to the collection, gather at the Long Table dedicated to facilitating conversations between artists and activists, or participate in the Circulation Desk, a ventilating system for impromptu talks, screenings, and dialogues that spill out from the other Encuentro events.