Bookperformance: Manuscript Research documents Çiğdem Mirol's research conducted in manuscript collections, archives, libraries, and special collections worldwide. These visits form an integral part of Bookperformance's philosophical and artistic inquiry, where manuscripts are approached not merely as historical documents but as living sites of knowledge-making. Rather than studying manuscripts solely for their textual content, this research attends to their material presence, revisions, marginalia, visual organization, and conditions of transmission. Each archive offers another way of understanding how writing lives, changes, and continues to unfold across time. Bookperformance demanded archival research that reveals its genealogy. Although the concept was named by Mirol in 2011, the research traces the manifold ways in which writing has always existed as performance: in drafts, notebooks, letters, musical scores, codices, annotations, and other manuscript forms that exceed the printed book. In this sense, Bookperformance recognizes and gives a name to a mode of being already present throughout the history of writing. At the same time, manuscript research informs the ongoing formation of the Bookperformance archival-field. While historical manuscripts reveal past acts of writing, each Bookperformance generates new manuscript traces in the present through collective writing, drawings, annotations, scores, letters, and other material enactments. The archive therefore unfolds in two directions simultaneously: receiving the inheritance of manuscript cultures while continuously creating new ones through lived participation.
National Library of Ireland
James Joyce manuscripts. Dublin, Ireland. 2025.
Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Friedrich Nietzsche manuscripts. Weimar, Germany. 2024.
Samuel Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading
Samuel Beckett manuscripts. Reading, United Kingdom. 2024.
Goethe and Schiller Archive, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe manuscripts. Weimar, Germany. 2024.
McGill University Library & Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Leonard Cohen manuscripts. Montréal, Canada. 2024.
National Library of China
Du Fu: textual transmission, anthology culture, and manuscript-to-print traditions. Beijing, China. 2023.
Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies
Old Norse–Icelandic saga manuscripts. Reykjavík, Iceland. 2023.
Royal Conservatory / Musical Instruments Museum (MIM)
Research on sonic materiality and instrument-based perception (harpsichord collections), Brussels, Belgium. 2023.
University of Sussex, Special Collections
Virginia Woolf manuscripts. Brighton, United Kingdom. 2019.
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Uffizi Gallery, Royal Library of Turin
Leonardo da Vinci notebooks, manuscripts, and drawings. Milan, Florence & Turin, Italy. 2019.
The Morgan Library & Museum
Albert Einstein manuscripts and correspondence; the Morgan Bible. New York, USA. 2018.
Biblioteca Nacional de España
Early editions and documentary records of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, Spain. 2017.
Konya Manuscript Library, British Library
Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī manuscript tradition (Masnavi and Divan-e Shams). Konya, Türkiye & London, United Kingdom. 2017.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
Gertrude Stein manuscripts. New Haven, USA. 2016.
Trinity College Dublin Library, National Library of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy Library
Medieval and Early Modern Irish manuscripts. Dublin, Ireland. 2016.
IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine)
Jacques Derrida manuscripts, working papers, and archives. Caen, France. 2015.
University of California, Irvine, Special Collections
Jacques Derrida personal papers, lecture notes, and correspondence. Irvine, USA. 2015.
Topkapı Palace Museum Library
Early Qur'an manuscript traditions (Topkapı Codex and Kufic manuscripts). Istanbul, Türkiye. 2014.
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center
John Coltrane archival collections. New York, USA. 2013.
British Library
Medieval Hebrew manuscripts and Masoretic biblical traditions. London, United Kingdom. 2013.
State Museum of Leo Tolstoy, Russian State Library, Dostoevsky Museum
Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky manuscripts. Moscow, Russia. 2012.
Dār al-Kutub, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Al-Azhar University
Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic manuscript traditions. Cairo & Alexandria, Egypt. 2012.
National Library of Greece, Mount Athos Monastic Libraries, Gennadius Library
Ancient, Byzantine, and Post-Byzantine Greek manuscripts. Athens & Mount Athos, Greece. 2012.