Archiving Fellowships Blog: LEIMAY, Part 1

By Benja Thompson

Benja Thompson is a 2024 Archiving and Preservation Fellow with LEIMAY. Read more about the Fellowships here. This is the first part of Benja’s blog.

The Space in Between

Coming from a background of film archiving and artistic collaboration, I felt immense excitement at the opportunity to work with LEIMAY this summer. Learning of their multimedia approach to butoh-inspired dance immediately sparked my aesthetic passions for light and motion, and the company’s deeper level of community engagement and resource sharing spoke directly to my personal ideals. So, in the midst of the Fellowship interview process, I went to see their residency performance at Stanford University. Before my work with LEIMAY had even begun, I experienced the serendipity of this New York ensemble performing in my home state of California at the exact moment I was immersing myself in the possibilities of their world. I have still not shaken some of the images, movements, and emotions from their performance, and the connective curiosity I felt from the group while meeting with them after the show further heightened my appreciation for their process. 

Personal Archive or Artistic Portfolio? 

“A Meal Encounter.” Date of Completion: July 8-10, 2021. Materials: Live conversation on digital film.

At its core, LEIMAY manifests as the creative partnership of Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya. Emerging from the DIY experimental art scene of 1990s New York, specifically Williamsburg, these two artists totally entangled artmaking and life. As a consequence, the LEIMAY archive stands in a fascinating flux. “Home movies” become material for future audio-visual projection installations. In turn, performances for gallery openings are clandestine home movies, as an early iteration of LEIMAY required them to hide their mattresses to obscure the live-work nature of the space. This amorphous blending renders my work with the LEIMAY archive especially intimate and deserving of expansive immersion. It’s no wonder that I live in the loft within the dance studio, along with other creative partners of LEIMAY, and may contribute to the production of their upcoming three-week performance run.  

In Situ & Real-time  

By documenting and archiving the final stages of development for their new production, I’m able to immediately stress test the preexisting procedures implemented over this decade long community archiving project, make adjustments as necessary, and create streamlined manuals for future archiving. One of my main goals for this fellowship is to catalog the audiovisual collection, primarily dealing with the New York Butoh Festival, which LEIMAY produced from 2003-2009. Using the beginnings of a physical inventory started in 2013 by a volunteer and the seven hundred or so video files digitized by Ximena’s father, I was able to create a catalog of the collection that fed directly into their archive’s infrastructure, while updating the taxonomy and hierarchy to reflect the company’s vision. Holding history in one hand and the present in the other, with eyes on the future, collapses space-time in a way that perhaps only an artist’s archive can. Connections and patterns can arise after decades of developing the craft, which in turn may catalyze a new evolution of practice.  

“Extinction Rituals.” Date of Completion: December 5, 2023. Materials: Live performance on digital film.

Crafting a Resonant Vessel 

Thanks to years of effort from countless contributors, the LEIMAY archive is nearing usability as an active portfolio for the company’s decades of history as well as an incredible educational tool. I simply feel so grateful for all of the volunteers and interns who dedicated time over the years to bring the LEIMAY archive together. As with the distinction between home movies and performance documentation being completely blurred, the people existing within and around LEIMAY’s spheres are simultaneously co-workers, students, teachers, friends, partners, and families. I’m working towards an archive that reflects the expansive inclusion animating this community.  

All photos courtesy of LEIMAY

Header Image: “Kinetic Resonances.” Date of Completion: August 13, 2023. Materials: Live performance on digital film. Additional Information: Kinetic Resonances is an immersive sculptural installation and a durational dance performance consisting of a series of kinetic string-sculptures powered by performers’ bodies. The work allows for multiple interplays between the environment, the materials of the body, and the sculpture. It explores the relationship between space, materials, and bodies and how each is affected by the other revealing the physics of causality and potentials for interconnectivity.

Benja Thompson is currently pursuing a masters degree in Library & Information Sciences at San Jose State University. They received their BAs in History of Art & Visual Culture and Film & Digital Media at University of Santa Cruz, California.

As a practicing queer archivist, Benja works to uncover obscured truths and bring untold stories to light. With the Mill Valley Public Library, they established the first queer archive of Marin County, which couples oral history interviews with current community members alongside materials stretching back one hundred years. They also train on analog film preservation with Other Cinema and Canyon Cinema. With the LEIMAY Archive, they are very excited to help share audiovisual material from this unique dance studio’s fascinating artistic practice, and intend to develop understandings of ‘the archive’ beyond a passive repository into an active vessel.

Photo credit: Cam Archer