Productive Archiving: Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities
Various Authors
Valiz
English
Edited by Ernst van Alphen.
Softcover
272 pages
240 x 170 mm
2023
ISBN 9789493246164
Productive Archiving discusses a variety of problems archival organisations. It mainly focuses on the following three issues with archival organisations that are usually overlooked: first, the question of inclusion in or exclusion from the archive; second, the loss of individuality and specificity in the archive, the danger of homogenisation; and third, that archiving may become a form of pigeonholing, boxing specific identities into a confined space.
Avoiding the archive because of these problems is not an option, because archival organisation is a basic symbolic mode on the basis of which we organise our lives, the past, the present and the future. What this book suggests is that it is best to explore constructive and creative solutions for these problems. Especially artistic archives seem to be able to develop these possible solutions, because they offer speculative, unexpected ways to order, select, and narrate specific information, and bring about new connections and archival organisations.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/collections/latest-arrivals/products/productive-archiving-artistic-strategies-future-memories-and-fluid-identities)
About the Editor
Ernst van Alphen is a professor emeritus of of Literary Studies at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
(source: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/ernst-van-alphen#tab-1)
About the Publisher
Valiz is an independent international publisher on contemporary art, theory, critique, design and urban affairs based in Amsterdam. Their books offer critical reflection, interdisciplinary thinking and often establish a connection between cultural disciplines and socio-political questions.
valiz.nl
(source: https://www.valiz.nl/en/#about_valiz)