Manifesto
I — On the Conditions of the Archive
Founded in 2016 by Mackenzy Bergile, Mackenzy Bergile Studio emerged from an inquiry into the conditions through which memory becomes materially transmissible. Rather than understanding the archive as the passive repository of an already constituted past, the studio approaches it as a site where visibility, disappearance, classification and transmission are continuously negotiated. The archive is never neutral. It is produced through systems of selection, omission and material persistence that determine not only what survives history, but also what history itself becomes capable of remembering. The studio originates in the convergence of two distinct yet inseparable experiences of loss. The first belongs to the longue durée of Haitian history, where colonial violence, the dispersal of cultural heritage, the destruction of documentary infrastructures and the 2010 earthquake profoundly altered the material conditions through which memory could endure. The second belongs to the artist's own history: the disappearance of family photograph albums, interrupting access to a visual genealogy and revealing the extent to which personal memory depends upon the fragile persistence of its physical supports. These histories are not invoked as narratives of origin, nor as claims to identity. They constitute the epistemic ground from which the studio operates. Rather than restoring what has disappeared, Mackenzy Bergile Studio proceeds from the assumption that absence is itself a productive condition. Every archive is incomplete. Every archive remains under construction.
II — Documentary Choreography
Mackenzy Bergile Studio develops the concept of Documentary Choreography to describe a practice in which choreography extends beyond the organisation of movement to encompass the production, classification, conservation and activation of documentary forms. Within this framework, choreography no longer resides exclusively in the performing body. It unfolds through an expanded constellation of materials and operations: garments, scores, moving images, sculptural objects, editorial publications, rehearsal protocols, anatomical observations, medical reports, correspondence, technical drawings, administrative documents, prototypes and archival records. These materials are not secondary witnesses to artistic production. They constitute the work's documentary condition. The artwork is therefore understood not as an autonomous object subsequently documented by the archive, but as one manifestation within a broader documentary field through which gestures, objects and memories continuously acquire material persistence.
III — The Body as Documentary Territory
The body is approached as the studio's first documentary territory. Rather than functioning as the privileged site of expression, it becomes a surface upon which forms of knowledge are continuously inscribed, transformed and transmitted. Gesture, fatigue, repair, injury, endurance, training and physiological adaptation are understood as documentary events in their own right. Medical examinations, osteopathic reports, blood analyses, anatomical observations and choreographic notation are preserved according to the same documentary status as sculptures, garments, scores or films. The body is not simply documented. It documents.
Founded in 2016 by Mackenzy Bergile, Mackenzy Bergile Studio emerged from an inquiry into the conditions through which memory becomes materially transmissible. Rather than understanding the archive as the passive repository of an already constituted past, the studio approaches it as a site where visibility, disappearance, classification and transmission are continuously negotiated. The archive is never neutral. It is produced through systems of selection, omission and material persistence that determine not only what survives history, but also what history itself becomes capable of remembering. The studio originates in the convergence of two distinct yet inseparable experiences of loss. The first belongs to the longue durée of Haitian history, where colonial violence, the dispersal of cultural heritage, the destruction of documentary infrastructures and the 2010 earthquake profoundly altered the material conditions through which memory could endure. The second belongs to the artist's own history: the disappearance of family photograph albums, interrupting access to a visual genealogy and revealing the extent to which personal memory depends upon the fragile persistence of its physical supports. These histories are not invoked as narratives of origin, nor as claims to identity. They constitute the epistemic ground from which the studio operates. Rather than restoring what has disappeared, Mackenzy Bergile Studio proceeds from the assumption that absence is itself a productive condition. Every archive is incomplete. Every archive remains under construction.
II — Documentary Choreography
Mackenzy Bergile Studio develops the concept of Documentary Choreography to describe a practice in which choreography extends beyond the organisation of movement to encompass the production, classification, conservation and activation of documentary forms. Within this framework, choreography no longer resides exclusively in the performing body. It unfolds through an expanded constellation of materials and operations: garments, scores, moving images, sculptural objects, editorial publications, rehearsal protocols, anatomical observations, medical reports, correspondence, technical drawings, administrative documents, prototypes and archival records. These materials are not secondary witnesses to artistic production. They constitute the work's documentary condition. The artwork is therefore understood not as an autonomous object subsequently documented by the archive, but as one manifestation within a broader documentary field through which gestures, objects and memories continuously acquire material persistence.
III — The Body as Documentary Territory
The body is approached as the studio's first documentary territory. Rather than functioning as the privileged site of expression, it becomes a surface upon which forms of knowledge are continuously inscribed, transformed and transmitted. Gesture, fatigue, repair, injury, endurance, training and physiological adaptation are understood as documentary events in their own right. Medical examinations, osteopathic reports, blood analyses, anatomical observations and choreographic notation are preserved according to the same documentary status as sculptures, garments, scores or films. The body is not simply documented. It documents.
IV — Collection as Process
The Mackenzy Bergile Studio Collection does not preserve completed works. It preserves evolving conditions. Research files, unfinished constructions, working garments, editorial fragments, prototypes, conservation notes, photographic surveys and suspended investigations remain fully integrated within the collection without distinction of status. Completion possesses no privileged position. Transformation itself constitutes a documentary category. The collection therefore records neither finished objects nor definitive events, but the successive material states through which research becomes publicly legible.
V — Conditions of Access
This catalogue provides access to only a portion of the studio's holdings. Certain collections remain under cataloguing, conservation, editorial development or ongoing research. Others remain intentionally inaccessible until the documentary conditions of their public activation have been established. Access is not understood as a permanent state but as one possible stage in the life of a document. An archive does not become public simply because it exists. It becomes public when the conditions of its transmission have been met.
VI — A Living Documentary Institution
Mackenzy Bergile Studio should not be understood as an artist's studio in the conventional sense. It operates as an evolving documentary institution dedicated to the production, classification, conservation and transmission of artistic knowledge across choreography, sculpture, moving image, garments, writing, publishing and material research.
It exists not to preserve a finished past, but to sustain the continuous production of memory.