Archiving the Living: An Ecological Approach to Fluid Scenic Practices

An Ecological Approach to Fluid Scenic Practices

Abstract

This article proposes an ecological approach to contemporary performing arts in Chile (2019-2025), shifting the notion of the archive from a static repository toward "archiving the living," understood as a metabolic and relational process. The study begins by identifying an ontological crisis in traditional representational models and an accelerated loss of cultural scenic biodiversity caused by extractive logics that fragment memory. Facing this collapse, fluid theatrical practices emerge as territories of resistance and the self-affirmation of local knowledge. Through a transdisciplinary analysis of cases such as Fasma, Danzas Terrestiales, Sensitive Machines, and Hitting Bottom, the research examines how concepts like "distributed somatic intelligence" and the "body-us" reconfigure the stage. The investigation articulates a dialogue between Hartmut Rosa's resonance theory and the relational ontologies of the Mapuche, Selk’nam, and Andean peoples, validating ch'ixi thought as a tool for inhabiting present-day contradictions through a territorial and "sentipensante" (sensing-thinking) voice. It concludes that the living archive is not a record of the past but a social technology of active care that sustains the vitality of experience. This paradigm allows documentation to operate as a performative and generative power, transforming vulnerability into a revision of ethics that propose new paradigms of community situated outside of hegemonic historical narratives.