Visual Fictions and the Archive of the Spanish Civil War (original) (raw)
Related papers
The influence of contemporary art on the modern notion of archive
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.
Archive-based Art: Destabilizing the Power of the Archive while Declaring its Victory
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.
XIV Symposium of Mexican Students and Studies. "Knowledge into Solutions", 2016
We review the role of Book-art in Mexico in the XXIst century as a collective memory preservation device. This means several artists use it to narrate events related to Prehispanic tradition, History, violence, impunity and corruption. In order to support this thesis we use two main concepts: Marc Auge's Ruin (Auge, 2003:158) and Ana Maria Guasch's Art as Archive (Guasch, 2011:43). Finally, we present three cases in which Book-art becomes collective memory: Juaritoz magazine (Ciudad Juarez), Leñateros workshop (Chiapas) and Zafarrancho Tales (Michoacan).
At work in the archive: introduction to special issue
In the last two decades, an increasing number of artists have engaged the spectres of colonialism that continue to haunt us in our postcolonial present. Interrupting established historical narratives of colonial domination, artists have started to address the legacy of imperialism by examining the colonial archive. At work in the archive, these artists examine the possibilities of decolonialising colonial subjectivities. Through the return, recuperation, and re-enactment of archives, archival art points to the potential of forgotten pasts and unanticipated futures lingering in the imperial archive. As the articles in this volume demonstrate, such archival interventions often serve an emancipatory agenda.
The study and research of historical phenomena faces a very difficult and awkward obstacle in its use and production of the archive, which in itself is engulfed in its own specific power relations involving that of institutionality, ideology, and a justification for its further cultural production.
Introduction to (W)archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2020)
2021
Digital and data technologies are actively transforming the archives of contemporary warfare. Bringing together a range of scholarly perspectives and artistic practices, (W)archives investigates digital archiving as an integral technology of warfare and how artists respond to these changes. Throughout the book, the (w)archive emerges as a term to grasp the extended materiality of war today, wherein digital archiving intersects with images, bodies, senses, infrastructures, environments, memories, and emotions. The essays explore how this new digital materiality of war reconfigures the archival impulses that have shaped artistic practices over the last decades, and how archives can be mobilized to articulate political demands, conjure new forms of evidence, and make palpable the experience of living with war. Contributions by DANIELA AGOSTINHO, HEBA Y. AMIN, ARIELLA AZOULAY, SVEA BRAUNERT, ANTHONY DOWNEY, SOPHIE DYER, ANDERS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, SOLVEIG GADE, CRISTIÁN GOMEZ-MOYA, SOFIE LEBECH, AIMÉE ZITO LEMA, KATHRIN MAURER, KEVIN MCSORLEY, DIMA SABER, ORAIB TOUKAN, SARAH TUCK, LOUISE WOLTHERS, ARKADI ZAIDES https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/warchives/
In recent decades, and on the basis of what is called the "archival turn", different theoretical and methodological reflections have been made about the archives, their origins, configurations and uses. On the one hand, other types of archives have begun to receive attention. Thus, outside imperial, state or official repositories, the analysis of family or personal records, as well as that of peasant and indigenous communities, have been brought into focus in studies which intensify the oppositions between the public and the private spheres, orality and writing, paper documents and other types of material media. Taking these contributions as the starting point, and within the framework of our own research studies about indigenous peoples, we set forth from the dilemma we face when reflecting upon the dialogues and tensions generated around the construction of the past, when those who engage in dialogue and dispute are actors with dissimilar experiences, interests and power (indigenous people, academicians, state agents). On the basis of the idea put forth by Fabian about a theory-and praxis of-coevalness, understood as a condition for the existence of a dialogic encounter between people and societies, and accepting this author's invitation to "share our pasts", the aim of this article is to provide some methodological notes on the place of the "archive" as a possible point of intersection and dialogues. Therefore, our main objective is to rethink/question the "archive", considering it, as Stoler does, not only as a site of knowledge retrieval, but essentially as a place of knowledge production.