| Abstract | Abstract Abstract: Public Recordings’ projects relay and 300 TAPES engage memory in intriguing ways that become no less interesting when examined from a cognitive perspective. At the surface level, dancers and actors work through a process of recycling either the performance of movements danced in the past (relay) or the telling of autobiographical stories of the kind one might circulate among friends (300 TAPES). When looking deeper and listening longer, a more complex treatment of memory begins to layer in. It includes the investment of the performer’s sense of self and questions of how memory is used and changed in a creation process. Through this treatment, Hansen becomes curious about the performers’ responses to archival recordings and situations of isolated repetition in the projects that, in part, render dysfunctional the otherwise ongoing biological process of memory adaptation. In response, the artistic director of Public Recordings, Ame Henderson, offers short sidebar reflections on how she understands and approaches issues of memory in her work. Henderson writes about choreography as remembering, collaboration and task-based generation, and the – to her work – central issue of forgetting. Some of these responses expand and complement Hansen’s cognitive understandings while others suggest that the two voices in this article arrive at shared discoveries through different languages.
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