RTRR: Foster, Hal. An Archival Impulse.

RESEARCH TABLE [WEEK #5]

Citation: Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (2004): 3-22.

Research Table:


-Observation:

Hierarchy in art is implicit.

-Location:

Frequently they [archival artists] use its [found objects’] nonhierarchical spatiality to advantage—which is rather rare in contemporary art. (4)

-Interpretation:

Traditionally in art there’s a hierarchy, since art production was depended upon the rich and elite classes. Today, art can break the walls of hierarchy and rebuild alternative cultural structures through found objects (specifically, their spatiality).


-Observation:

The three artists that Foster focus on in his essay, produce very different forms of archives. Some are reconstructions of formal information, some merge between true information and fiction, new and old, public or personal. According to Foster, the artist disassembles and reconnect information. This  shifting of the context, communicating different types of information, allows the audience to interpret and review an idea from a new point of view.

-Location:

“not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well, and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private” (5)

“A will to relate—to probe a misplaced past, to collate its different signs…to ascertain what might remain for the present” (21)

-Interpretation:

In an essay we read for Seminar class, from “The Personal Archive as Historical Record,” the author discusses the importance of combining formal and informal information, as well as public and private information. The project presented in the essay, is an archive of historical record of families with disabled children from a certain time and place in recent history. By presenting private, informal stories and imagery of families, together with official records, the project not only shed light on the historical narrative, but also revealed how society’s perception of disabled people was shaped according to the systematical way of official archives to record information. In this case, it helped creating an atmosphere of misunderstanding and discrimination towards people with disabilities, not only in the past, but in many aspects to this day.


-Observation:

Relating to Thomas Hirschhorn’s archive art, which is mainly made out of installations, dealing with historical ideas and figures,  Foster refers to how the personal relationship of the artist to the objective matters is part of what makes it powerful, letting the viewer experience alternative archives.

-Location:

“This attachment is both his motive and his method: “To connect what cannot be connected, this is exactly what my work as an artist is.” (10)

-Interpretation:

I find it interesting, not only in relation to archive-art but in any form of art. As I see it, in the age of digital disruption and mass (post) production, pure originality loses some of its relevance and is replaced with other forms of originality, such as combining ideas and visuals in new ways. 

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