Redirecting the Archive. Transgressive Archival Practices

aka/ifk Lecture

Since the 1960s archival principles have increasingly been used by visual artists to structure their works. Their aesthetic practices consist of archival inquiry or construction, and the works are built out of archival materials. This use of the archive for artworks does not, however, imply an unreflected instrumentalization of the archive as artistic medium. On the contrary, these art works interrogate the principles, claims, potentials and effects of the archive. They usually interrogate the self-evidentiary claims of the archive by reading it against the grain. The interrogation by these artists may take aim at the structural and functional principles underlying the use of the archival document; or it may result in the creation of another archival structure as a means of establishing an archaeological relationship to history, evidence, information, and data that gives rise to its own interpretative categories. The talk will examine archival issues like what is being included and excluded from the archive, and the function of the archive. Because it is not only what is being stored in the archive that matters, but also how that archive is being organized and used.

Ernst van Alphen is a professor emeritus of Literary Studies and Cultural Analysis. His research focuses on modern and post-modern literature—and its relation to visual arts. Recent book publications are: Productive Archiving. Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities; Seven Logics of Sculpture. Encountering Objects Through the Senses; and Shame! and Masculinity.