Living Documents is a series of looped live installations developed between 2017 and 2019 based on five artist-choreographers and how they work. The project was initiated by Dominik Grünbühel and Charlotta Ruth as an artistic response to the following research question: What is liveness and what can it be? The research was directed towards the necessity—but also difficulty—of documenting live performances. This text reflects how the method of passing on (in Swedish, tradera) through the collaborative process with choreographer Anna Öberg, whose practice is based in Swedish folk dance, has come to influence the documentary approach. By resonating how passing on in the cosmology of Folk Traditions is different to other methods of physical and oral transfer, Öberg together with Ruth develop how passing on can be valuable beyond the realm of Folk Tradition.
Specifically, they unfold the ways in which this multi-sensorial transfer of material and knowledge from person to person and context to context can inspire documentary and reflexive translations between media and different aesthetic realms and thereby contribute to creative ways of sharing knowledge in the field of artistic research.
