Archivo Papers

Archives and Contemporary Art

Annalisa Laganà — 2025-07-01

By employing tools of collection, classification, and indexing borrowed from archival theory and practice, artists have been exploring artistic languages capable of transcending the objecthood prevalent in post-World War II art. This exploration led to the development of an expressive form that remains relevant today and is mostly based on conceptual art practices, generally referred to as archival art.
While the archive has being serving as an artistic model, its contemporary incarnation as an institution offers a formidable resource for reconstructing recent art history. Research efforts are expanding to develop criteria for the conservation and administration of contemporary art archives, describe case studies on the acquisition or museamisation of art document collections, and critically reinterpret artistic and artists’ documents sourced from their archives.
In what perspective, and according to what possible definitions or counter-definitions is it possible to historicise or reinterpret archival art today?
How do archives speak about contemporary art? What approaches can be taken to utilise visual and documentary archives as sources for art history?

An Archival Impulse

Rita Cêpa — 2025-07-01

This year [2024] marks the 20^th anniversary of An Archival Impulse. In it, Hal Foster introduces the artist-as-archivist, noting that it has gained a renowned impetus as a critical response to the current saturation of stimuli and the search for new ways of thinking on past, present, and future.

At one point, he suggests that the ideal medium for archive-based art might be the web - yet emphasising that most artists still prioritise materiality and human interpretation over complete virtualisation and automation. We mustn’t forget that Foster referred to coeval artists and that, nowadays, his observations no longer fully capture the current landscape. Increasingly, artists are making fruitful use of digital tools, using the internet, or taking advantage of machine learning algorithms to process vast datasets. This raises questions about whether the fundamental principles of archival art have changed, the challenges its facing, and the insights these emerging practices can provide. This paper will reflect on this discrete category expansion.

Performing the Photothek

Costanza Caraffa — 2025-07-01

Photographic archives have been the laboratories in which scientific and scholarly methodologies have been cast over more than a century, not only for the history of art. The advent of digital technologies seemed to consign them to obsolescence, but it also started a process of reviewing their function and value in research and contemporary societies. Since 2007, the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz has been contributing to this international, transdisciplinary debate. Rooted in the notions of photo-objects and photo-archival ecosystems, its approach challenges traditional art-historical hierarchies and shifts attention to materiality and archival practices. New reflections on the systems of value that govern (and are produced by) photographic archives emerge especially in collaborations with artists. This paper will present some projects and strategies of the past few years that bridge a historical perspective with present-day issues. A focus will be on the hands and bodies of archivists performing archives and communicating their value.

Contemporary art practices and art historiography facing the question of archivability

Francesca Zanella — 2025-07-01

The multiplicity of contemporary art practices makes us reflect on their archivability, on the role of “institutions”, and of a differentiation of creation and production contexts which today constitute the contemporary art field. The temporal dimension, between generative and growth processes, memory, forgetting and removal, and that of the ephemeral, and the transformative, emphasized by the role of media as “sensitive environment” is transforming the archive which should embrace the complexity of the documentary flux, its continuum and “materiality”.

The paper, starting with a mapping of the debate on art and archive, aims to reflect on the interrelations between artists, institutions as museums, formal and informal communities involved in participatory-based projects, just to verify, starting to the specific contexts, how the changing panorama of artists’ practices is modelling the archive and viceversa, and if such conditions could induce historians to question the archival principles of evidence, provenance, integrity, authorial.

The archive and the atelier, almost a hendiadys

Massimo Maiorino — 2025-07-01

Marked by the inescapable knot that connects order and chaos, presence and absence, thought and classification—as Georges Perec recalled—, the atelier and the archive are two increasingly relevant places in the art system and constitute a fascinating and indivisible machines à penser with variable boundaries and evanescent perimeters. If the archive is a closed and open place, a labyrinthine and secret space of beginning (Derrida, 1995), but also a model of an artistic practice that finds self-nourishment for its own reflection in the continuities and discontinuities of the scattered traces, the atelier is the undisputed protagonist of the activation of trajectories of the archive, constituting both the premise and the outcome. Space of life and creation, «archive dense with matter and thought, laboratory and exclusive showcase but also secret place of privileged intimacies and intense negotiations» (Zuliani, 2013), the atelier welcomes a mobile plurality of times condensed into portions of past, present and future (O’Doherty, 2007), thus revealing itself as a device that welcomes and reflects the functions and geometries of the archive. This proposal, reflecting on the conceptual fabric of this hendiadys which marks the panorama of recent art, will review some exemplary cases on the Italian map, among which we recall the Vincenzo Agnetti Archive, the Giulio Paolini Archive, the Hermann Nitsch Archive Museum, all united by this double and inseparable nature.

Restoring History, Recreating the Past

Gabriela Sá — 2025-07-01

This essay explores the notion of a performative dimension of the archive, activated by artists who present performance-lectures through the weaving of narratives using photographs, films, documents, letters, fragments of diaries, and other memorabilia. In conjunction with these materials, artists such as Egyptian Heba Y. Amin, Brazilian Mabe Bethônico and Portuguese Joana Craveiro employ spoken word to speculate through archival gaps, producing alternative readings of historical events. Positioned at the intersection of art, history, and literature, these artists draw on their discoveries to reflect on the notions of narrative, power, and memory. By intertwining archival research with performance, they create spaces where the past is questioned and reinterpreted, opening up new possibilities for contesting hegemonic discourses. By examining Amin, Bethônico and Craveiro’s works, I aim to illuminate how their performance-lectures reveal the performative potential embedded in archival materials, underscoring the need to revisit and reimagine our historical narratives.

Mediating the Past, Making (in) the Present

Defne Oruç — 2025-07-01

On September 6, 1955 organised mobs attacked businesses, houses, and other sites belonging to Greek and minority residents in cities across the Turkish Republic. Photographs documenting acts of violence were confiscated by the government and remained heavily censored until the 2000s. The pogrom’s remembrance today as a practice lived and contested in material ways instigates a crisis within given regimes of historical truth. This article examines the changing status of photographic material related to the pogrom, including two interventions and reworkings of archival imagery within the field of contemporary art. It mobilises the civil gaze as theorised by Ariella Azoulay to bring together anonymous images from Fahri Çoker’s collection with Dimitrios Kalumenos’ photographs, the 2005 exhibition of Çoker’s photographic collection by Karşı Sanat, and a virtual reality reconstruction of the pogrom. While aiming to contribute to a larger archive to come, it interrogates the visibility of violence and how artistic practices re-stage processes of witnessing.

The Role of Archives in Preserving Artistic Memory

S. Nesli Gül Durukan — 2025-07-01

Preserving artistic memory through archives either in a museum or in any kind of art institution plays a critical role in understanding the influence and legacy of artists on the contemporary art scene, especially within the context of migration and cultural exchange. This article investigates the significance and possibility of the archives in safeguarding artistic memory, with particular attention on visual artists from Turkey who have relocated to the Netherlands since the 1960s. Through specific case studies, the article underscores the urgent need for institutional archives to embrace more inclusive practices, moving beyond mere preservation to active curation and accessibility. The article argues that by interpreting these records beyond making them visible and by engaging with the experiences, histories, and identities of migrant communities, archives can ensure that diverse narratives within contemporary art are fully represented, thus broadening public understanding.

"Dialectical Contemporaneity" at the University of Porto

David Lopes — 2025-07-01

Georges Didi-Huberman (2013) distinguishes between archives and atlases, arguing that transforming archives into atlases allows for a more complex understanding of history. Inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne, which juxtaposes images across time and context, Didi-Huberman challenges traditional power structures and reinterprets the atlas beyond its mythological burden. Drawing from Claire Bishop’s (2013) concept of "dialectical contemporaneity," I develop art projects using the University of Porto’s historical collection. As a printmaker, I research historical maps to explore the atlas as a cartographic metaphor, creating two installations based on the University’s terrestrial and celestial globes. These installations, composed of printed metal-work resembling flattened globe sections, reflect personal histories: one references the Portuguese Colonial Wars in Lusophone Africa, where my father served; the other addresses my grandmother’s experiences of early 20th-century Portuguese poverty.

Aligned with Claire Bishop’s (2013) concept of "dialectical contemporaneity," I developed art projects based on the University of Porto’s historical collection. My intention is to transform archives into atlases through my personal perspectives. As a printmaker, I researched historical maps to explore the atlas as a cartographic metaphor, creating two installations based on two large globes from the University: a terrestrial and a celestial globe. The installations involve metalwork with prints, cut to create a planar surface of a sphere. One installation explores the atlas as a metaphor for war, referencing the Colonial War in Africa during the 1970s, to which my father was sent to in his 20s. The other focuses on my grandmother, who lived in early 20th-century Portugal, and the poverty she endured. These installations will be presented in the University of Porto’s historical archives in the fall of 2024.

From fluid art to fluid archive

Annemarie Kok — 2025-07-01

This article is concerned with the question of how to make participatory and ephemeral art projects last, without limiting or stabilising them. I argue that such art projects, like the inflatables Cushion and Dragon initiated by the Eventstructure Research Group in the 1960s, can be considered forms of fluid art, that ask for fluid practices of documenting and archiving. To this end, the notion of the ‘fluid,’ as defined by the actor-network theory-inspired scholars Annemarie Mol and Marianne De Laet, is mobilised. Moreover, I will discuss the Art Action Academia project, launched by artist, activist and archivist Tjebbe van Tijen, as an example of a fluid archive concerned with ephemeral heritage from the 1960s onwards, and will evaluate its potentials and challenges. By analysing specific practices of fluid art and archiving, which are not broadly known, and by introducing the theoretical perspective of the fluid actor, I aim to contribute to the debate on care for ephemeral forms of art and heritage.

Rewilding the Digital Archive

Martina Denegri — 2025-07-01

In “Moths Dreaming of Electric Waters”, artist duo Fadi Houmani and Ster Borgam created a digital ecosystem inhabited by cyber-bugs to challenge the anthropocentric worldviews and digital technologies implicated in colonial and extractivist systems. I engaged in in-depth conversations with Houmani and Borgman and complemented these dialogues with eco-feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous epistemologies. Drawing out a theoretical frame from the artwork, I invite the bug into the digital archive as a means of rewilding. The bug embodies complementary roles: a glitch, a hybrid, and a perspective. Theorizing these roles, I draw principles that can guide the (re)construction of a decolonial digital archive: decentralization, reciprocity, fluidity, and connectivity. Rewilding the digital archive is an invitation to envision new ways of relating with nature, technology, and each other. To build a world worth preserving.

“Adwa” and the Oral Turn

Livia Dubon — 2025-07-01

While scholarship has explored the need to decolonize museum practices for over four decades, sight-based methodologies continue to be central to these institutions. Drawing on Nicholas Mirzoeff's analysis of “white sight,” this paper examines the risks associated with uncritically displaying colonial visual material in museum and archive practices, proposing an alternative methodology grounded in orality.

Departing from Black feminist and the work of African scholars such as Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, and Amadou Hampâté Bâ, this approach emphasizes the power of oral traditions to challenge dominant narratives and counter ocular-centrism bias. Through the practical application, an oral museum interpretation titled Adwa, developed as part of my practice-based PhD research, this methodology demonstrates how storytelling fosters deeper connections between audiences and historical events, promoting a more compassionate understanding of the past.

This paper intersects visual culture and postcolonial museum studies, advocating for a decolonized approach that positions museums and archives as agents of change and care.

Dayanita Singh’s Museum Bhavam

Annalisa Laganà — 2025-07-01

Dayanita Singh’s portfolio questions the multimedia function of the photography museum. By gathering a collection of photographic works in the same “portable” display, the artist intends to show their significance as museum and archival pieces, able to construct a narrative that is both artistic and historical. In this context, photographs are not only works of art, but documents that bear witness to a story to be told and preserved, over and over again.

How to Look at a Camera

Linda Fregni Nagler — 2025-07-01

This visual essay explores a body of works entitled “How to Look at the Camera”, which highlights two central aspects of the medium of photography: looking and being looked at, visibility and invisibility. By translating vernacular images from the nineteenth century into contemporary images, which are freed from their original context of meaning, she uses them to inquire into the nature of photography.

This body of work has been recently put in relation with photographs from the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G, Hamburg), in a show called “Reconsidering Photography: The Staging of the Gaze”.