MISHANDLED ARCHIVE (since 2017) is a cross-disciplinary project that challenges our understanding of history, personal archives and itinerancy using participatory dance, photography, writing, social media, site-specific art, storytelling and performance. Starting as a yearlong series of daily site-specific actions, during which Tara dispersed copies of photographs and documents from a self-proclaimed family archive, the project resulted in 365 new photographs, 365 textual dance scores, several performances, lectures, workshops, conversations, and a book. The project proposes mishandling as an alternative way of caring for an archive.

'A form of care that while being vital, questions what it means to give care to the histories, bodies and places that are entwined in many unnamed or unattended archives. This care embraces the rain, the cold, the heat, the fold, the crumple, the fire, the erasure, the tear and the disappearance. It creates new connections and futures through these. After the fire, an archive whose domicile, whose house, whose arkheion is burnt down, is forced to travel.'

Text appears as scores for dance, narrative hashtags, performance dialogue, spoken word, songs, and creative-critical writing. (project website)