An Archipelago of Floating Islands Memory, Transmission, Transformation

In October 2023, Eugenio Barba donated his personal library to the Bibliographic and Museum Hub of the Puglia Region, along with his memorabilia, books and the Odin Teatret archive. This paper presents the LAFLIS: Living Archive Floating Islands project, conceived by Barba and realised at the Bernardini Library in Lecce. This ambitious initiative, the first phase of which was inaugurated on 4 October, 2023, aims to create a living archive based on Barba’s poetics, the Odin Teatret and the Third Theatre movement. As Barba (2023) states: How can we bring the knowledge, emotions, and experiences in these documents into the present, translating them into forms that resonate with today’s concerns? How can documents build a bridge to cross over? Building this bridge is what makes an archive come alive. In essence, we are speaking of transmission in other forms, expressions, methods, and techniques. A different way of thinking and acting. An active process of intensification and metamorphosis, not merely preservation. (pp. 158-159) LAFLIS goes beyond the traditional functions of an archive (memory) and transmission, embracing a third crucial role: transformation. The challenge is to restore a sense of wonder and imagination to historical materials through a mise-en-scène bridging the gap between the past and the present and translating the archive into an artistic, sensory and kinaesthetic language. This transformative experience was co-designed by Eugenio Barba and a team of "fellow travellers," turning the archive into a sensory and visual journey for visitors. The library’s rooms, where the narrative unfolds, become themselves a performative space, animated by installations and immersive environments. At the heart of the project lies an exploration of memory — not merely as the preservation of archival materials, but as the very life of memory and theatre itself.