Roundtable on the Critical Archive

'This roundtable article investigates the “critical archive” as a material concept in the fields of artistic production, art historiography, curatorial practice, and criticism. Twelve critics, artists, art historians, and curators respond to a series of questions related to the idea of the archive as a critical agent in the field of art. The roundtable examines different historical and institutional permutations of conceptions of a (self-) critical archive and its possible impact on our understanding of the relationship between art and historical evidence.' Spieker and Danbolt 2014 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTM_a_00091

Archivo Papers: Journal of Photography and Visual Culture, 2024

This essay proposes that selected artworks by Katarina Pirak Sikku, Kader Attia, Michael Rakowitz, and Kajsa Dahlberg exemplify a set of approaches within contemporary artistic practices that operate in ways that simultaneously align with and deviate from the main tenets of the “archival turn” in contemporary art. The author suggests that these artworks involve indirect reconsideration of what critical archival practice can involve. All four artists deal with specific instances of conflict, marginalization, and forms of oppression by actively reframing the confrontational, suspicious and undermining strategies that has characterized some archival discourse. The essay shows how these artistic practices stress notions of care, repair, empathy and permeability in ways that have specific methodological and conceptual consequences. By doing so they invite a rethinking of critical archive theory in the face of specific question and concerns of the current moment such as how to handle remnants of racist histories in present-day archives; the need for recycling and repair in the face of the environmental effects of rampant consumption; how to address those who hold diametrically opposed political position from oneself; and how to take serious people whose bodies operate in ways that tend to marginalize them as non-productive in the face of neo-liberal values like professional success and self-sufficiency.

Titled Archival Practices in Contemporary Visual Arts: A Model and a Source, the conference aims to gather contributions on archival art and archival research for contemporary art, considering them as two complementary aspects of a broad and complex field of investigation. On one hand, the archive serves as a structural model for artists from diverse backgrounds and engaged in various fields. On the other hand, authors' archives provide essential resources for historiographical studies on contemporary art, offering valuable information and direct testimonies. This dual focus necessitates engagement not only with the present but also with a relatively short historical span. The 5th edition of the International Conference Reframing the Archive invites scholars at any stage of their careers, as well as visual artists and other professionals in the field of visual arts, to reflect on contemporary archive-based visual arts and contemporary archival sources and collections. We welcome proposals for 15-minute theory and practice-led presentations (followed by 15-minute panel discussion) from various disciplines, including: photography, cinema and new media, art history and theory, anthropology, museology, philosophy, cultural studies, visual and media studies, and fine and graphic arts. These presentations should offer an in-depth investigation into the conference topic.

International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 2015

The will to archive continues to be a powerful impulse in contemporary culture (Featherstone 2006). This literature review critically reflects on literature on the topic of the Archive and the engagement of contemporary artists with ideas about archives and archive-making, including the author's concept of the future archive. A refrain heard in the course of this review was a contemporary preoccupation with memory, particularly with the advent of a possible new age of forgetting as global digital connectivity promotes an unprecedented externalisation of personal and social memory into the virtual memory spaces of the Internet. Selective artistic responses entering and exploring this site of ephemeral potential and emergent creativity are introduced. Publication: 2015, International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science | KEYWORDS: Archive, contemporary art, forgetting, counter-archive, material trace, sound archive, ephemerality, future archive

CRiSiS - 7th Biennial Conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, University of Leuven, Belgium, 17-19 Sept. , 2020

Practices related to the archive in contemporary art in Europe have become prevalent in the last decade. The concept of the archive in contemporary art has undergone radical and experimental changes after the 1960s and 70s by affecting artists such as Hans Haacke, Goshka Macuga and Ilya Kabakov. Later on curators, institutions, audiences, memory, and the internet are also affected by archival trends and today bring out a new network of relationships. The production possibilities in archiving practices of artists in contemporary art are endless and open-ended. Artists such as Walid Raad who established the Atlas Group’ (1989-2004) project and Akram Zaatari who archived the photographic history of the Arab World commonly use documents (images, texts, objects) as a part of the artwork for many different reasons. The relationship between contemporary art and the archive presents archive materials related to artworks or other cultures and differentiates from other disciplines that utilize documents such as human rights. The archive in contemporary art has no critical function to judge the perpetrators of human rights abuses in post-conflict governments. However, it can create an open space for discussion to re-evaluate critical issues by pushing people into questioning and thinking. Thus, it can become a tool for conflict prevention and reconciliation. How do artists reactivate the archive in their archiving practices? How do the archiving practices affect actors (e.g. the effect on institutions, internet, society…)? What factors support or constrain their development? The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of archiving practices of artists and their challenges in the art environment.

Digithum, 2013

In this article, I argue that contemporary art has played an essential role both in the transformation of contemporary archives and within the framework of the archival turn (for example, anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler discusses the archival turn in the context of colonial studies, and authors such as Terry Cook and Eric Ketelaar use the term in the field of archival science). More specifically, I will explore this influence from the viewpoint of different artistic movements before concluding with visual art and a case study of the installation Arxiu d'arxius (Archive of archives, 1998-2006), a personal archive by the Catalan artist Montserrat Soto. The aim is to analyse how art has both changed how documents are created and displayed and provided new ways of organizing information and transmitting cultural memory, especially with regard to documenting aspects of history associated with pain, oppression and war (generally drawing on oral memory) and with certain groups (women, slaves and minority indigenous communities) that have been excluded from the documentary repositories of traditional archives, whether due to institutional neglect or because they were inevitably silenced and censored. To this end, I will first offer a brief overview of the origin and evolution of the concept of archive up to the present day, highlighting the main transformations it has undergone. I will then argue that contemporary art has engaged intensively with the idea of document storage and memory. Finally, building on these premises, I will analyse the three archives included in Arxiu d'arxius that are based on oral memory: the archive of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War; the archive of American slavery; and the archive of the Aboriginal Australian community.

The paper focuses on the difference between what I am terming *horizontal and vertical archives* and on art practices for which conventional archival taxonomies may no longer be adequate.

The purpose of this essay is to define the topic of narrative and explore the various notions of the archive within contemporary artistic practice. I will do this by commenting upon famed contemporary theorist TJ Demos; artists Walid Ra’ad, Gerhard Richter, Paul Graham and Broomberg & Chanarin. Using a range of case study examples, to display both truthful and fictional narrative from artists working in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. I will attempt to form a well-balanced hypothesis on these selected artists and why they have chosen to work within these uncomfortable yet, common, themes that have been experienced on a global scale.

But because archive-based art essentially reuses physical traces, the extent to which much of it truly and fundamentally threatens the ubiquitous power of the archive is questionable. While it provides a much-needed counter memory and plays an essential role in analyzing historical discourse, questioning problematic representations and attracting the spectator’s attention to illusions of credibility and completeness, it simultaneously asserts the power of the archive by positioning itself in relation to it, dwelling within its aesthetic, and reacting to its narratives.

2020

The following thesis surveys artistic utilizations of the archive and underscores its role as a tool for knowledge disruption. Fluctuating between theoretical meanderings, autobiographical reflections, and the analysis of artwork, I propose one avenue in which to reinvigorate conversations around the archive began by Derrida in Archive Fever and by Hal Foster in “Archival Impulse.” Approaching the archive as both a theoretical container and as a charged artist medium, I argue for a new archival impulse — one that embraces opaqueness and mess over clarity and order. Comprised of eight individual sections, and a parallel dialogue presented in the form of extended footnotes, the thesis borrows formal and stylistic strategies from arenas of creative non-fiction, diaristic writing, and art historical analysis. Archive scholars — Derrida, Foster, Michel Foucault, Annet Dekker — are cross-examined with thinkers in fields of queer theory, ecology, art history, philosophy, media studies, per...