The Mutable Archive

Main Performance: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Matinee Performance: Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, 1 – 2 p.m.

Patricia Olynyk’s The Mutable Archive is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary multimedia installation that asks what an unstable narrative can reveal about truth. The project draws on photographs from anatomical museums — including the Narrenturm in Vienna and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia — where skulls marked by post-mortem inscriptions are paired with archive cards containing only fragmentary details about the person. Working from these partial records, Olynyk invites collaborators across fields to write and perform speculative narratives, foregrounding how assumption and subjectivity shape what we accept as knowledge.

On Feb. 12 (5:30 – 7:30 p.m.), UCI Illuminations and the UCI Center for Medical Humanities will host The Mutable Archive at the UCI Arts Experimental Media Performance Lab. A reception at 5:30 p.m. will welcome attendees into the installation environment. A live performance at 6 p.m. — by The Mutable Archive cinematographer Adam Hogan — will activate the video projection, spatialized sound and narrative monologues. A panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. will bring the artists together with invited UCI respondents to consider archives, evidence, ethics and interpretation, inviting audiences to experience the work and then unpack its questions in dialogue. A further matinee performance will be held on Friday, Feb. 13, 1 p.m., followed by an informal Q&A with Olynyk and Hogan.

The Mutable Archive is significant for how it connects the history of anatomical collecting and medical display to present-day debates about colonial violence, race, gender, class disparity and cultural bias. Rather than treating archives as neutral, the work highlights uneven documentation and the lasting effects of taxonomic thinking, including early eugenic frameworks. In the spirit of Illuminations — creating meaningful arts experiences for students across majors — this event demonstrates how creative practice can sharpen critical inquiry, and how the arts can help us approach institutional records with greater care, empathy and accountability.