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Research Streams

Epistemologies for the documentation of affect and becoming in cultural manifestations in performance (1969-1979)
Open Call For Zine Contributions
Research outputs associated with this stream

Commoning infrastructures

 

 

This research stream looks into the sites where these processes of transmission, care, and resonance can and are taking place.

Working closely with artists and archive holders, as well as a multidisciplinary team of researchers, historians, and conservators, this research stream focuses on the commoning of knowledge and resources, addressing the neglect of many archival objects and documents by bringing them into the attention of researchers and artists, while also connecting them to specialised academic knowledge—particularly in preventive preservation and conservation—so that it can be put into common use, shared, and collectively sustained as part of a living cultural commons.

Through a series of public technical workshops held in cultural institutions housing archives from the Portuguese revolutionary period, this programme provides training for artists, librarians, and archivists, while building a network of institutions and resources across Lisbon and Porto, where most of them are located . It fosters collaboration in preventive conservation and helps identify shared needs and resources. In doing so, it contributes to the making of a cultural commons, where knowledge, skills, equipment, and archival materials can be collectively mapped out. As part of this stream, we are tracing archival models and institutional forms which have contributed towards the development of performance-based manifestations, specifically cartographing repository initiatives resonating with the Portuguese Revolution.1

We are also tracing the infrastructures of the political economy of the archive from governance to the procedural, analysing the methods and protocols that have shaped (or constrained) their dissemination and sustainability. Ultimately, this will allow us to probe the cultural narratives of the Revolution that they carried through or produced and reproduced across temporal landscapes. Still thinking with the affective production triggered by these works – indeed, as epistemological tools – we ask what are, today, the possible techno-political tools for working with these archives, understood as instruments that enable visibility, dynamic taxonomies, and universal access—an essential condition of a common archival field?2

Researching these issues through an approach that privileges an understanding of culture as a commons requires moving beyond a simple private/public divide, and engaging with both private and public archives while also taking seriously shared affects, collective memories, and the immaterial dimensions of culture.3 It calls for thinking of archives in common and as commons, open to minor and potential histories, as well as to multiple forms of archival imagination. 4It also requires a joint problematisation of the public/common/private divide,5 approaching these categories in an articulated and non-exclusive way, and involving different scales and typologies of agents and actors in this mode of thinking.

All members of the research team are involved in this research stream. Click here to see the research outputs associated with it.

How to cite this resource: RESONANCE project team (2026). “About the RESONANCE project: Research Streams,” in RESONANCE: Epistemologies for the Documentation of Affect and Becoming in Cultural Manifestations in Performance (1969-1979). Available at https://resonance.fcsh.unl.pt/research-streams/commoning-infrastructures/ Contributions (by alphabetic order of last name): First draft write-up: Ana Bigotte Vieira, Hélia Marçal, Ana Pais Review and final draft write-up: Ana Bigotte Vieira, Afonso Dias Ramos, Joana Lia Ferreira,  Rita Macedo, Filipa Magalhães, Hélia Marçal, Ana Pais; Last review: 16 October 2026

The content on this website is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. This means anyone can use this information with appropriate attribution. Under this license, attribution includes giving appropriate credit, providing a link to the license (see above), and indicating whether changes were made. The RESONANCE project is supported by the Programa Regional Lisboa 2030, Portugal 2030 and the European Union (LISBOA2030-FEDER-00914500). This work is also co-funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the references 2023.17624.ICDT (https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.17624.ICDT). In addition, this work is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT, I.P., under the FCT-Tenure programme 2023.11076.TENURE.147, 2023.11076.TENURE.195, 2023.11076.TENURE.193, and in the context of the Concurso Estímulo ao Emprego Científico Individual, with the reference 10.54499/2022.03775.CEECIND/CP1725/CT0045. The research centres associated to this project are funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT, I.P.: UID/00417/2025 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00417/2025), UID/00693/2025 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00693/2025), and LA/P/0132/2020 (DOI 10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020). IHA, IHC, CESEM, ICNOVA, and IFILNOVA are funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects UID/00417/2025 (DO: doi.org/10.54499/UID/00417/2025), UID/04209/2025 (DOI: https///doi.org/10.54499/uID/04209/2025). UID/00693/2025 (DOl: https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00693/2025), UID/05021/2025 (DOl: https//doi.org/10.54499/UID/05021/2025), UID/00183/2025 (DO: https://doi.org/10.54499/UID/00183/2025), ond LA/P/0132/2020 (DOI: doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020)

Notes
1. Our approach to mapping the archives of theatre companies that emerged around the revolutionary period, §both before and after 1974, throughout the country is particularly indebted to the ARTHE: Archiving Theatre project. For the project’s booklet collection, where a series of methodological and epistemological questions are addressed through a strongly practice-based approach, see Arquivar o Teatro, 8 vols. (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de Teatro, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa), https://arthe.ceteatro.pt/recursos/.
2. In this respect see the books published in the aftermath of the Archivos del Común seminars at the Museo Reina Sofía, namely: Fernanda Carvajal, Mela Dávila Freire, and Mabel Tapia, eds., Archivos del Común II: El Archivo Anómico, Buenos Aires and Paris: Pasafronteras Editorial, 2019; Fernanda Carvajal, Moira Cristiá, and Javiera Manzi, eds., Archivos del Común III: ¿Archivos inapropiables?, Buenos Aires and Paris: Pasafronteras Editorial, 2022.
3. Roberto Esposito, “Community, Immunity, Biopolitics,” Translated by Michela Russo. e-misferica 10 (1), 2013, Accessed January 24, 2014, and Roberto Esposito, Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
4. On potential histories, see Ariella Aisha Azoulay, Potential History : Unlearning Imperialism, London: Verso, 2019. Here we are also taking stock of critical fabulations as a method, particularly through Saidiya Hartman - for example, her “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12 (2), 2008: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1. Archival imagination was also the central theme of the sixth edition of the Archivos del común seminar. See Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, “Archivos del común VI: Por una imaginación archivística,” March 9–12, 2026.
5. With regard to the very gesture of archiving and the challenges posed by this posture, see Red Conceptualismos del Sur, “Por una política común de archivos: Llamamiento a un acuerdo de buenas prácticas,” 2019, and Damián Cabrera, Graciela Carnevale, Moira Cristiá, Javiera Manzi A., May Puchet, and Paulina E. Varas, eds., Canasta básica para archivos inapropiables 01: Por una política común, Paris: Pasafronteras Editorial, 2024.