Corpus research / 2026
Mishmeret — A Residency for Performative Preservation

Participants: Carmel Ben Asher, Tamar Kisch, Matan Cohen, Ofir Yudilevich
Artistic Research: Mor Bashan, Yael Vakman, Ido Feder, Dror Shoval
Mishmeret is a research-based residency that explores performance as a poetic act of preservation in times of political and cultural instability. While performance is often associated with ephemerality and disruption, this program approaches it as a living archival practice — one that operates through presence, repetition, embodiment, and attentiveness.
Situated within a hybrid space that merges elements of a museum, ensemble, and archive, the residency investigates how performative gestures can offer modes of cultural survival and continuity. Performance here becomes a site of embodied memory, critical reflection, and creative inquiry.
The participants, referred to as “The Guardians,” embody a dual role: artists engaged in personal and collective research, and performers embedded within a living system of artistic preservation. The residency unfolds through seven interconnected chapters:
Repertoire Study – Practicing and transmitting early dance works by Noa Eshkol, focusing on the first suite.
Reading Group – Engaging with texts, letters, choreographic scores, and rehearsal footage from the archive.
Archival Work – Hands-on participation in the preservation of materials: negatives, letters, books, and objects.
Independent Studio Practice – Developing personal artistic research and dramaturgical dialogue.
Material Gathering – Creating a shared pool of performative artifacts: video, text, movement, poetry, sound, and images.
Ongoing Documentation – A continuous presence of the camera as part of the work itself — documentation as performance.
Public Events – Presentations at Tights Conference (December 2025) and participation in Intimadance Festival (Zullulen 2026).
Mishmeret positions preservation not as a conservative or nostalgic gesture, but as a creative, critical, and poetic act — one that asks: What do we preserve, how, and for whom? And what happens when we choose not to?
״משמרת״ תוכנית רזידנסי עיונית-מעשית