Archiving Fellowships Blog: LEIMAY, Part 3

By Benja Thompson

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

Embracing the Creativity of Archives

A Meal by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, featuring the LEIMAY Ensemble, HERE Arts Center, New York, USA, 2024, performance photos by Pasha Antonov

Suddenly, we found ourselves in Detroit for the Archiving and Preservation Fellowship Convening. After two months of intense work, sifting through mysterious, unnamed files and crafting workflow processes for continued archival needs, the daily rhythm of endless progress shifted into a space for reflection. To be able to review the completed tasks and future trajectory of the LEIMAY archive with co-director Ximena Garnica offered an exciting opportunity to finally start to dreamspin. Together, we reckoned with the incredible scope of LEIMAY’s artistic journey, as well as the depth of the accompanying archive. As a working artist for virtually their entire life, this was a rare moment for Ximena to take a breath and see their oeuvre as a tangible continuum.  

Then, to share these revelations with the other generous and inspiring Fellowship participants who attended the convening, felt like a long-awaited reunion of old friends. Immediate connections were made between individual journeys, artistic practices, and contemplations on the horizon. Throughout the Fellowship convening meetings, my own perspective on archiving work expanded and deepened, leaving me with intense affirmation of not only the work done this summer, but my commitment to the field entirely. These sentiments were exponentially refracted through our meetings with various archivists across Detroit, whose warmth and dedication to service spoke directly to the ideals that drew me to this profession in the first place. 

A Meal by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, featuring the LEIMAY Ensemble and Guests, HERE, NYC, USA, 2024, performance documentation photos by Maria Baranova.

The return from our Archiving and Preservation Fellowship Convening brought us directly into the whirlwind rush of production on LEIMAY’s newest performance piece, A Meal. For some context, A Meal was developed from a residency program over the course of six years, manifested as multiple “Encounters.” Encounters included public storytelling circles and theater performances, and brought together community partners and past collaborators from around the world. Even I was brought in as a partner in the production to run lights, sound, and video softwares. As the archivist who had just spent the summer processing photos from the last half-decade of A Meal’s development, to find myself within the core artistic team felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

A Meal by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, featuring the LEIMAY Ensemble and Guests, HERE, NYC, USA, 2024, performance documentation photos by Maria Baranova.

During the production process, I routinely drew upon my archival experience. One scene in particular felt like it needed an extra element, and I suggested we use images from one of the past Encounters to augment the audio component. The scene featured a sound collage of interviews with NYC street food vendors, and there was a collection of photographs taken as part of this interview process. Due to my involvement with the archiving of these images, we were able to incorporate them into the artistic work, and thereby breathe new life into the stories that were shared. Another instance of archive-infused artistry was the inclusion of an “audio guestbook.” Audience members were invited to record reflections after the show, and these audio files are currently being processed, along with material submitted by the performers. By discussing the ways that archival work can be generative and occur alongside creative work with Ximena, the impact of the Archiving and Preservation Fellowship Convening immediately influenced LEIMAY’s artistic approach. Now, there is an embrace of archiving, not as an afterthought or a passive response, but as an active part of the act of creating. 

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