Convent

• My research into 18th century preservation practices led me to a favourite book that details these heart histories of the famous and infamous: historian Charles Bradford’s quirky tome, Heart Burial (1933).
• Amazingly sweeping and entertaining, the book narrates the heart journeys of many – primarily western – military, religious and political figures.
• One such figure, the diplomat Sir William Temple (1628-1699), is buried next to his wife in Westminster Abbey.

• The practice of preserving the heart – the ancient symbol of the soul and emotion – was not uncommon.
• But for people in the 18th century, as this case and others show, it also symbolised lovers being united in death.

Literary hearts

• Perhaps the most storied literary heart is that of poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
• Italian law required the cremation of a drowning victim’s body, so Shelley’s corpse was laid upon a funeral pyre on the shores of the sea, with literary luminaries such as Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt in attendance.

• The Shelleys’ son, Sir Percy Florence, had his father’s heart encased in silver and placed on display at Boscombe Manor.
• Upon his death in 1889, the heart was laid to rest in the family vault at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth.

Hungry hearts

• In May 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte’s corpse was autopsied over two days before it was to be transported from St Helena to France.
• Napoleon had requested his intestines be preserved and given to his son, and his heart be sent to his wife Empress Marie-Louise.
• When rumours circulated in January 1928 regarding the heart of renowned English novelist Thomas Hardy, many were in disbelief.

• Placing the dead cat with the remainder of the heart in a box, he left the Hardy residence, surrounded by mourners, and proceeded to St Michael’s where the contents were buried.
• Though Napoleon’s and Hardy’s storied hearts also serve as reminders, perhaps, that we shouldn’t take romantic traditions too seriously.

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Jolene Zigarovich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Its ephemeral nature means it is transient and impermanent, and cannot be experienced again in precisely the same way.
• How do artists hold on to the works that they make?
• The show reflects her focus on curating and re-framing interdisciplinary work to address the limited opportunities for recognition of contemporary independent Australian performance.

Meticulous design

• Marked by a spare, distinctive design, Archiving the Ephemeral is located in the Magdalen Laundry at the Abbotsford Convent.
• Along one side of the space, 132 brown paper packets are laid out in a continuous line on the floor.
• An accompanying video depicts Shelton’s meticulous process of burning, piece by piece, her entire performance archive to ash.

A living archive

• The exhibition includes an opportunity for each of us to become part of the living archive through conversations with two ground-breaking elders of Australia’s performance art scene, Jill Orr and Stelarc.
• We discuss Kantian notions of time as he tells me about his Re-Wired/Re-Mixed Event for Dismembered Body (2015).
• The sheer number of pages is overwhelming, and the breadth of audience commentary – joyful, moved, connected, inspired – is breathtaking.

A practice of care

• Archiving the Ephemeral fosters a practice of care and acknowledgement which extends to the practical ways in which our trajectory through the room and engagement with the artworks is enabled.
• Typewriters, brown paper, string, awls and aprons are part of the painstaking construction process.
• Read more:
  A litany of losses: a new project maps our abandoned arts events of 2020