Art/Archaeology: the Ineligible project (2020) - extended book chapter (original) (raw)
Ineligible: A Disruption of Artefacts and Artistic Practice - Conference volume (2020)
2020
This volume of essays derives from the conference held in March 2020 at the International Museum of Contemporary in Portugal in association with the exhibition, "Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology". Archaeology normally sees artifacts as art objects for us to examine and interpret. Conference participants asked if there is any fresh territory available to work in beyond the well-worn paths taken either by contemporary artists who play with archaeological materials to make their museum and gallery installations, or by archaeologists who look to modern artists for new ways to explain behavior and patterns in the past. This book suggests that one way forward is to explore the potentials of an art/archaeology. The proposal is that we should move beyond traditional efforts to explain or interpret the past, and that we do this in a creative way that has impact on contemporary societies.
Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology - Exhibition Catalogue (2020)
2020
Art/archaeology, a new transdisciplinary practice has fractured traditional perspectives on the relationships of art and archaeology, and the exhibition "Creative (un)makings" brings that disruption to the museum world for the first time. This book is the catalogue from the exhibition at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Portugal (March-September 2020) Seen from the standard perspective of traditional academic and cultural subjects, art and archaeology have comfortable relationships: collaboration, co-inspiration, shared aims to advance knowledge of human behavior and thought. Art/archaeology argues that writing and thinking about the past should move beyond existing boundaries of both disciplines, and that creative work should replace written texts and lectures. Art/archaeology opens a new space where creative work, thought, and debate expand in unexpected directions, and where we find innovative potentials for objects from the past.
Art // archaeology // art: letting-go beyond (2013)
Published in I. Russell and A. Cochrane (eds). Art and Archaeology: Collaborations, Conversations, Criticisms, pp. 231-50. New York/Dordrecht: Spring., 2013
In this text chapter, Professor Bailey investigates the articulations of art and archaeology. He argues that while recent influences of contemporary art have expanded archaeological interpretations of the past, more provocative and substantial work remains to be done. The most exciting current output is pushing hard against the boundaries of art as well as of archaeology. Bailey’s proposal is for archaeologists to take greater risks in their work, and to cut loose the restraints of their traditional subject boundaries and institutional expectations. The potential result of such work will rest neatly within neither art nor archaeology, but will emerge as something else altogether. The new work will move the study of human nature into uncharted and exciting new territories.
Ineligible (2020) - short catalogue essay
In D.W. Bailey, S. Navarro, and Á. Moreira (eds) Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology, pp. 28-50, 65-91. Santo Tirso: International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture., 2020
In this brief essay from the 2020 catalogue for the exhibition "Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology" at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, in Santo Tirso, Portugal, Professor Bailey introduces the "Ineligible" project and discusses each of the works installed in the show. (Readers interested in the "Ineligible" project should also read the much fuller account: Bailey, D.W. 2020. Art/archaeology: the Ineligible project. In D.W. Bailey, S. Navarro, and Á. Moreira (eds) "Ineligible: A Disruption of Artefacts and Artistic Practice", pp. 11-26. Santo Tirso: International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture.)
Art archaeological interactions (2024).
2024
Bailey, 2024. Art archaeological interactions. In A. Gago, J. Amorim, and N. Moura (eds) [e]motion, pp. 11-25. Porto: UCP. This chapter is the result of Doug’s keynote at the 2021 [E]motion Conference on Science and Technology in the Arts coordinated at the Center for Research in Science and Technology of the Arts, of the School of Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto. One of the important archaeological conversations taking place today surrounds this important question: what are the creative potentials for collaborations between artists and archaeologists? The content and potential of these conversations are fresh and exciting, to the extent of even challenging standard traditions of work between the two disciplines.
Beyond archaeology: disarticulation and its consequences (2023)
2023
In H. Barnard (ed.) Archaeology Outside the Box, pp. 9-18. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute. In this chapter Doug Bailey describes and discusses his controversial destruction of an amphora at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (USA) sessions in 2019 at Syracuse University (with apologies to Ai Weiwei). Issues of interest include the following: the creative power of destruction, art/archaeology, visual archaeology, and questioning the basis of archaeology and historical conservation. In addition, Doug discusses his "Ineligible" project exhibited in Portugal at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture (Santo Tirso) and Carpintarias de São Lázaro (Lisbon) in 2020 and 2021.
Introduction: Artistic Practices and Archaeological Research
Artistic practices and archaeological research, 2019
Printed ISBN 9781789691405. Epublication ISBN 9781789691412. Artistic Practices and Archaeological Research aims to expand the field of archaeological research with an anthropological understanding of practices which include artistic methods. The project has come about through a collaborative venture between Dragoş Gheorghiu (archaeologist and professional visual artist) and Theodor Barth (anthropologist). This anthology contains articles from professional archaeologists, artists and designers. The contributions cover a scale ranging from theoretical reflections on pre-existing archaeological finds/documentation, to reflective field-practices where acts of ‘making’ are used to interface with the site. These acts feature a manufacturing range from ceramics, painting, drawing, type-setting and augmented reality (AR). The scope of the anthology – as a book or edited whole – has accordingly been to determine a comparative approach resulting in an identifiable set of common concerns. Accordingly, the book proceeds from a comparative approach to research ontologies, extending the experimental ventures of the contributors, to the hatching of artistic propositions that demonstrably overlap with academic research traditions, of epistemic claims in the making. This comparative approach relies on the notion of transposition: that is an idea of the makeshift relocation of methodological issues – research ontologies at the brink of epistemic claims – and accumulates depth from one article to the next as the reader makes her way through the volume. However, instead of proposing a set method, the book offers a lighter touch in highlighting the role of operators between research and writing, rather entailing a duplication of practice, in moving from artistic ideas to epistemic claims. This, in the lingo of artistic research, is known as exposition. Emphasising the construct of the ‘learning theatre’ the volume provides a support structure for the contributions to book-project, in the tradition of viewing from natural history. The contributions are hands-on and concrete, while building an agenda for a broader contemporary archaeological discussion. http://archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={BAAF7F21-9F73-4A38-AACC-AD0DD3A5B31C}
2021
In the autumn of 2019, Brown University hosted a major exhibition by the world renowned Haitian, Miami-based artist Edouard Duval-Carrié (b. 1954), curated by Brown's Professor of Humanities and Africana Studies, specialist on Haitian history and art, Anthony Bogues. The title was 'The Art of Embedded Histories'. As the title of the exhibition indicates, and as even a cursory look at this work could show, Duval-Carrié's practice and output speak to material and visual culture specialists, and to anthropologists and archaeologists of art, as well as to art historians and scholars of postcolonialism. In this conversation, we engage with both the artist and the curator. Edouard Duval-Carrié deserves to be known more widely amongst material culture specialists, and we hope that the fascinating dialogue that follows will contribute to this.
Internet Archaeology, 2020
This article presents the emerging transdisciplinary practice of Experimental Heritage as performed within an ongoing Irish-Swedish research project involving artists and archaeologists. The project is undertaken simultaneously in western Ireland and south-eastern Sweden. It explores the chosen Irish and Swedish landscapes of Clare and Öland, their similarities and differences, with the aid of combined and integrated artistic and archaeological practices. The starting points for common explorations are: stone and water, movement and time/the multitemporal, and the tangible and intangible aspects of landscape experience. In a transdisciplinary process, we explore new ways of combining art, archaeology and heritage within and between these landscapes. One path towards fulfilling the aims is to explore art, archaeology and heritage through the senses. A phenomenological landscape perspective and an eco-cultural approach is combined with Performance Studies and movement-based practice. These perspectives and methodologies are paired with artistic and archaeological approaches to research, such as those conducted through poetry, music, performance, visual arts, physical surveys, mapping and excavations. Methods of working have developed from walking in the landscape to sketching, through visuals, sound and movement, group dialogue, team building and exploring the materiality of making. Group movement-based workshops are used to support receptivity and inner listening for decision making through somatic principles and the senses. The project encourages transdisciplinary as well as translocal practice to arrive at new approaches and perspectives on how the past matters to us in the present and how it might have an impact on the future. To achieve both transdisciplinary and translocal ways of working through art and archaeology/heritage, we need to expand beyond conventional art and archaeology/heritage research, communication and presentation within the well-known framework of universities, cultural history museums and art institutions. The constraints of these conventions are substituted by alternative settings in the landscape. This landscape-based practice includes method development across disciplines, times and geographic distances. It also includes collaborations with people from local communities that can contribute their perspectives, experiences and stories to the explorations. The advantage of Experimental Heritage as practice in the landscape is its ability to challenge our current worldview to better understand other times and cultures as well as our own. This in turn provides us with new tools to create alternative futures resting on care and respect for the need for diversity and breaking not only with boundaries set up between nature and culture but also hierarchies of centre and periphery. We intend to find out more about the multitemporal layers in the landscapes surrounding us and how they relate to our inner landscapes of multitemporal perception. The combination and equal roles of artists and archaeologists as well as the contributions of researchers and members of the local communities in this work is crucial. Equality and diversity encourage transdisciplinary knowledge development.