Reflecting on Practice: Artists’ Experiences in the Archives
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_C0082
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Engaging with Records and Archives: Histories and Theories
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN
- 9781783301607
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This interdisciplinary research critically examines how archives have been theorized through the engagement of artists with archive collections and where the subject matter itself is art. This research identifies what professional archivists can learn in terms of theory and practice from creative activations of these archives. The archival profession is responding to a generation of artists for whom the archival impulse in contemporary art has prompted active consideration of legacy. This research, therefore, situates the focus of artists on archive-creation and self-conscious mediation of legacy as part of a wider archival trend towards participatory practice and community-based archiving. The research identifies the tensions that can exist when artists are simultaneously the subject, object and interpreters of the archive and how these tensions might be productively navigated. This work challenges archivists and archival theorists to rethink their expectations of artists in relation to affect, the imaginary and the manner in which artistic practice can surface questions in disruptive fashions that place these questions not just into a professional discourse but also public understanding.
The work used observation and interviews for two case-studies (Bob and Roberta Smith‘s ‘Epstein Archive’ project and ‘Brixton Calling!’) and contextualised it by reference to other examples. The research engaged with the literature of contemporary art and, significantly, extensively with archival science and its disciplinary writing—both the traditional sources of theory and professional practice and contemporary postmodernist critiques of archival thinking.
The findings were initially presented at ICHORA7, an international conference on the history of records and archives (Amsterdam, 2015). The chapter was subject to double-blind peer review. Its significance is underscored by inclusion in a Facet Publishing volume (the key academic publisher for information professions worldwide) alongside contributions by internationally renowned scholars in the fields of archival science and digital humanities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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