Performing the archive
Subtitle: the transformation of the archive in contemporary art from repository of documents to art medium
By: Simone Osthoff
Series: Think media; Think media
Publisher: Atropos Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 203
ISBN-13: 9780982530900
Subjects: Archives in art; Art criticism; Art appreciation; Documentatie; Archieven; Kunsttheorie; Konstkritik; Konstuppfattning; Konsthistorieskrivning
Description: Instead of smoothing over contemporary art's violent and iconoclastic dimensions, instead of sanitizing and making complex artworks docile in terms of archival possibilities, this book suggests we abandon our fantasy of mastery over representation and respond in kind to the archive-as-artwork, to "living" archives, and to reenactments of history with their seamless connections between fiction and non-fiction. Among the concepts examined are Vilem Flusser's techno-imagination, Lygia Clark's and Helio Oiticica's participatory aesthetics, and Paulo Bruscky's and Eduardo Kac's literal performances of the archive. They contribute to the erosion of the archive's former boundaries, stability, function, and meaning. Writing alongside the artists as much as about them, Osthoff examines the archive mise-en-abyme, as it grows increasingly recombinant and generative.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-203).
Table of contents: title: Elsewhere in contemporary art : topologies of artists' works, writings, and archives; title: When documentation and memory refuse to settle, is the archive alive?; title: Vilém Flusser's archive : a topology of translations without foundations; title: Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica : legacies and archives of participatory art; title: Paulo Bruscky : from mail art to the archive as installation art; title: Eduardo Kac : networking, implating, and remixing the archive.