Archives in Motion is a site-specific performance created in partnership with University Settlement and staged in their historic gymnasium—one of the first basketball courts in the United States.

Led by faculty member Irina Kruzhilina, the project brings together students from The New School to engage with the physical, historical, and social layers of the site. Drawing from materials found in the University Settlement archives, the performance emerges through a process of research, improvisation, and collective creation. Site-specific projects are an immersive activation of the chosen space and how students engage with and respond to it.

Founded in 1886, University Settlement is the first settlement house in the United States and remains one of New York City’s largest social-service and community-support organizations.

Archives in Motion explores how meaning is constructed from archival fragments—what archives preserve and what they leave out. Rather than presenting a complete narrative, the work stages the act of reading, assembling, and interpreting archival materials, bringing them into the present through the bodies and voices of performers in the very space where these histories unfolded. The result is a performance that activates the archive in real time, placing past and present, document and body, in dialogue.

The project also carries a historical connection to The New School: David Mannes, founder of the Mannes School of Music, once taught at the Settlement. A record recently uncovered in the archives notes,“There is a string quartet class every Thursday evening in charge of Mr. David Mannes.” 

ABOUT SITE SPECIFIC PROJECTS

Site Specific provides students with a practical appreciation of the processes and methodologies associated with the development, rehearsal, and production of site-based performances. Students engage in performative activities in response to the physical, historical, and social layers of the chosen site, as well as various thematic, textual, and visual sources. These responses form the basis of improvisational, visual, and multimedia content for a devised site-based performance. While faculty provide overarching themes, creative prompts, artistic provocations, and technical guidance, students take primary responsibility for creating and executing the performance.