Some thoughts related to the potentiality of the archive/document of the works of emerging artists
Where ever you are, be it in deep Sweden orin the middle of the Atlas, what you may experience related to the notion of archive depends on your capacity of valorizing the potentiality of the archive, the document or its absence.
The notion of archive designs a corpus of traces left by individualities and of the collectivity. Accessing to its meaning is the most of the time responsability of it’s legitimate mediators : archivists, theoricians or its close family. Choosing is therefore the next step justifying the conservation of the pieces that are relevant to the eyes of these mediators.
Artists have their words on this, as active actor of civil society. If the notion of archive is subject to be a potential element of emancipation, it also has to proceed from a methodology which allows this constructive approach for its contemporaries.
In their phase of activity, the documents act as a comunication tool, therefore its coeficient of revelation is limited toit’s potential transaction. Establishing a protocol like the one of Andy Warhol with it’s « Time Capsule » from 73-till his death proposes elements of possible projections and unlimited fictions around it.
What will be today’s « Timecapsule » experiences related to the document and how can we question this notion of active transaction between tangible, social network or virtual documentation ?
For your information, here are the web links of the artist’s projects shown on Monday 10th. dec. 2012
• www.katiakameli.com
• www.otobongnkanga.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddy_Leye
• www.mohssinharraki.com
• http://www.atwork27.org/
• www.oriol-vilanova.com
• http://www.theotherjamesweb.com
• http://www.andreastultiens.nl
The„Document“ in the Absence of Tangible Archives
The focus of this two day seminar on thequestion of made and found documents is to be read in the light of both the efforts of complete digital coverage of historical documents (such asGoogle-books and Corbis) as well as the postcolonial and particular complex. situations in contexts like Africa and the Arabic world, where archives are either simply absent or have been exposed to destruction or manipulation. How do artists working in such contexts currently deal with these problematics?Cecile Bourne, who has been curating several project with emerging artists from the Africa continent, will present the practises of, amongst others, Katia Kameli, Grace Nitridu, Andrea Stultiens and James Webb, and further discuss the key questions with the seminar participants in relation to their practices.