Embodied following describes a process of artistic-performative ‘documenting’ that focuses on the repeatability of practices, acts (Handlungen) and the physicality of events with the goal to find a way to transmit also hidden layers of socially engaged performances. In this phase Performatorium investigated this artform by accompanying the artists and deep diving into their artistic creation processes (embodied following). Through this research crucial aspects and moments of a project or a specific practice are identified, distilled and condensed (fleshies). In archival language this process could be thought of as looking for significant properties. This deep dive of observing, listening, learning as well as actively being taught specific methods and techniques is done in exchange with the artists and persons involved. In this process we discovered that each artistic position worked with the presence and time of the followers differently. Thus the borders were tested of what the embodied following could mean. The deep involvement of the researchers has similarities with the roles of a discursive reflector, a collaborator or participant. 

Embodied following as a methodological approach also means to distil concentrates. This embodied form of concentrates is what we call fleshies. With this we refer to the term fleshy kinds of ‘documents’ by Rebecca Schneider who mentions them in her publication on reenactments and the power of performance to remain, Performing Remains. Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2003:37). In our practice we define fleshies as various kinds of exercises that are identified, distilled and condensed from the performative processes and practices we follow. These exercises are created on the basis of our memory (including its bias). Sometimes we would use medial extensions, such as (during the following generated) audio recordings, sketches, notes or images, as memory aids. But usually the act of recalling is sufficient. It turns into a filter which has a different subjective quality and thus complementary accuracy to conventional documents. 

Fleshies are iterations of practices but not reenactments of an artwork. They build upon the repetition of central aspects or moments of the artistic processes and need to be passed on from body to body. In a second step, fleshies are then translated into scores that can be archived. They can also have tangible or digital documents attached. For instance, for one of these embodied concentrates we decided to add one page of the artists awareness diary to the score. When the score is performed this document is needed to learn some lines by heart.Therefore this material trace becomes part of the respective fleshy. However, these tangible or digital documents should primarily serve as attachments in re/activating the fleshies. The idea is that the scores should be carried out in order to pass these embodied documents on to (artistic) researchers and visitors in the archive. The methodological approach of embodied following including the development of fleshies hence relates to how practices of ritual, dance as well as music and dance in folk-tradition (as embodied knowledges) are being passed on through multi sensorial body-to-body transmission. This approach thus echos Diana Taylors repertoire which she understands as a mechanism for the transmission of embodied practices (Taylor 2003) or what Rebecca Schneider calls flesh memory which provides performance the power to remain and thus to resist disappearance (a term often used to oppose the idea of knowledge transmission through the body) (Schneider 2011:104f, 134f). 

Another important aspect of this approach is the scope for the followers ‘interpretation’, especially in the moments of extracting significant properties of a respective practice. This scope of ‘interpretation’ we call actualisation. Gilles Deleuze understands the actual as a sequence of the virtual; as a kind of movement from a starting point (virtual) to an arrival point (actual). The main aspect of actualisation, Deleuze claims, is difference. Thus the virtual can never be the same as the actual, since the virtual changes when or even through becoming actual; and thus through actualisation. (Deleuze 2020:122f) Hannah B. Hölling talks about archival actualisation. She uses Deleuze’s idea of the virtual and the actual to elaborate on the concept of changeable artworks in conjunction with the preservation of computer-based art. With archival actualisation the conservator and art historian describes the “virtual potentialities” of the archive. (Hölling 2015:86f) Accordingly the potential to re/activate a performance in many different ways is a potential inherent in the archival material. Also referring to Deleuze, Andre Lepecki elaborates on embodied actualisation when looking into the re-enactment of dance in the context of the archival turn. He argues that re-enacting does not aim for the fixation of a work in singularity and statis but rather actualises it through the body of the dancer. According to the performance scholar, actualisation unlocks the possibilities which are “kept in reserve virtually”. (Lepecki 2010:31)

Performatorium elaborated on the concept of actualisation in the frame of the workshop series Digging into the Archive (2019–2022) at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich as well as in the Tanzquartier Wien Research Affiliation project Actualisation. Performance Practices in Repetition and Relation (2022) where chosen performances out of the documental holdings of the two art institutions were drawn into the present through repetition and actualisation. As Hölling explains, actualisation describes the possibilities which lie in archival documents as a virtual potential as long as they are stored. When re/activated through an artistic-performative repetition the documents are actualised through the physical bodies of the participants, who bring their time and their cultural and socio-political realities into the repetition and thus alter the virtual through the actualisation. Therefore the ‘interpretation’ of the follower when identifying, distilling and condensing through the bodily iteration of performative practices implies an actualisation of the repeated practice and through that connects it to a (sometimes only slightly, sometimes completely) different temporal and spatial, that is a different cultural and/or socio-political context. 

Similar to the history of passing on dance techniques or songs and dances in folk-tradition or ritual procedures a person would learn the related exercises from somebody who has learnt them from somebody before, who had learnt them from somebody (…) who had learnt them from the followers, who learnt them from the artists (body-to-body transmission). Even if the current archival logic has difficulties to embrace concentrates such as fleshies, we argue for the importance of keeping a chain of body-to-body transmission intact. These repetitions, even when only snippets and fragments of a specific artistic-performative practice in interplay with tangible and digital documents allow for an understanding that goes beyond cognitive knowledge and linear transmission (which have dominated the western archival logics) and takes us to the level of embodiment and embodied practices.