What forms might alternative archiving take? If archives traditionally comprise paper artifacts, what of performance? How, in other words, might we reconceptualise archival embodiment? Inviting responses to these questions, this event will feature performances by poets, curators and arts practitioners who each work with difficult and unwieldy archives in their practices: Remi Graves, Naomi Pearce, Bhanu Kapil and Blue Pieta.
Remi Graves will read from their latest collection coal, which ‘writes from and into the trans archive, presenting a sequence of poems and experiments mapping resonances between selves across historical records.’ coal was the winner of the inaugural Prototype Prize, in the short form category, for a work created at “the intersections of different literary and artistic forms”. It was published by Monitor Books in 2025.
Naomi Pearce, whose debut novel Innominate (2023) explored the undervalued and forgotten work of women administrators in London’s artist-led organizations of the 1970s, will follow Graves. In 2025, Pearce’s research on affective and embodied archival methods was published in Gestures: A Body of Work (Manchester University Press) and a special issue of the British Art Studies journal, Queer Art in Britain Since the 1980s.
There will also be a dance performance by Blue Pieta, a response to Bhanu Kapil’s writing with and near the archive of Enoch Powell (Churchill College Archives Center). This collaborative work was previously performed at Maximillian William art gallery in London. Blue Pieta and Bhanu Kapil’s co-authored collection, Autobiography of a Performance, was published in 2025.
Across these speakers, we invite you to consider how archives can(not) be performed, and what new resonances for archival practice ‘against the archive’ might emerge in alternative embodiments.
This event is curated and hosted by Bhanu Kapil (Churchill College) and the Ambivalent Archives Research Network. It will be introduced and facilitated by Ambivalent Archives convenor, Lauryn Anderson.
Please contact ambivalentarchives@gmail.com if you have any questions related to the event.
Further information: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/49363/
Full Speaker Bios:
Bhanu Kapil is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for How To wash A Heart, her first book of poetry to be published in the UK. Co-authored with Blue Pieta, a new book, Autobiography of a Performance, was published last year. Currently, Bhanu is writing Novel on Yellow Paper in the Archives Center of Churchill College, in proximity to the archive of Enoch Powell, who, in 1968, called for the repatriation of the non-white, Commonwealth-descended population and their British-born descendants.
Blue Pieta is a multidisciplinary artist, director, performer and dramaturg. They were dramaturg for the dance piece Thikra: Night of Remembering (2025), choreographed by Akram Khan, which premiered at Montpellier Danse Festival, followed by an ongoing world tour. Blue co-authored the book Autobiography of a Performance (2025) with poet Bhanu Kapil, which contains performance scores and essays on their collaborative works. Blue’s artworks and performances have been featured in exhibition programming by The Serpentine Galleries, Courtauld Gallery, Britten Pears Arts, The Place, Royal Court Theatre, Cafe OTO, and The Horse Hospital, among others. Their latest performance score, co-authored with Kapil, will feature in The Glass Mosque, an interdisciplinary book project by Minerva Projects supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
Remi Graves is a poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral, Arthouse Jersey and BBC Radio 4. They have performed at Tate, Cheltenham Literature festival and more. Remi has led courses at The Poetry School and facilitates in schools and community spaces across London and the South East. Remi’s debut pamphlet with your chest (2022) was published by fourteen poems. They have been selected for residencies with Jan Michalski Foundation and La Napoule Foundation/La Maison Baldwin. Remi is the winner of 2024 Prototype Prize (short form category), coal was published by Monitor Books in 2025.
Naomi Pearce is a writer living in West Wales. Her fiction, criticism and biography has appeared in Art Monthly, TON Magazine, e-flux Criticism and The White Review, amongst others. In 2023, she published her debut novel, Innominate, with MOIST books, described by Iain Sinclair as “a classic of local archaeology”. Her writing on embodied archival practice is included in Gestures: A Body of Work, Manchester University Press and British Art Studies issue ‘Queer Art in Britain Since the 1980s’, both 2025. She teaches interdisciplinary practice at Aberystwyth University.
The drama studio is located in the basement of the Faculty of English and is accessible via the Faculty lift or a stairwell.
Please do not attend if experiencing cold-like symptoms.
