I_PAD: Organization and reactivation of Italian performative media in digital archives

This essay examines the methodological issues raised by the digitisation of the audiovisual heritage of the performing arts, using the PRIN 2022 I_PAD project – Italian Archive of Digital Performance: Mapping and Dissemination of the Iconographic and Audiovisual Heritage of Italian Media Performance: Giacomo Verde Archive (University of Milan, Link Campus University, ISTI-CNR Pisa) – as a case study. Through an analysis of the documentary collection of Giacomo Verde, a pioneer of techno-theatre and electronic theatre, the article reflects on the notion of authenticity and identity of the digital theatrical object, on the distinction between a digital archive and a digital library, and on the epistemic potential of performing arts archives as tools not merely for preservation but for the active production of knowledge. I_PAD’s methodological contribution lies in the development of a specific archival workflow for hypertextual and interactive audiovisual sources, which includes digitisation, restoration, semantic enrichment of metadata and structuring into Archival Information Packages. The resulting archive is conceived as a dynamic ‘action space’ in which consultation becomes re- enactment, memory becomes an active resource, and the document functions as a secondary source capable of generating new narratives and new practices for the transmission of performative knowledge.