Reading #4: Hal Foster (archive): An Archival Impulse

Personal practice and environment shape artistic creativity with a particular figures, objects and events that reflects in archiving. Archival field and practices support the liberate activity in art. Archiving generally evoke photography and writing however, there are numerous methods such as: photographs, sound, illustration, drawing, writing, video which become a passage to history, culture and psychology. Most of the time archives investigate and revisit us- individuals, histories, memories and sometimes incomplete desires, journeys in ourselves redirect the archives around us. Thus, meaning of archives and making archives develop over time; Foster highlights the history roots of “archival impulse” rather than allegorical impulse. The structure of archiving and art in the pre-war era and the post-war (post-production) era with Independent Group. In a contemporary art today, these impulses are reflected by electronic archiving. Mega archive is considered as an internet which blocks the real interactivity, a relational art. Despite the fact that a genre archival art is an institute in rising contemporary art, I still prefer archival art than virtual art. The physical art and archives are much powerful tools for community. Not all but artists such as Zoe Leonard, Ruth Maclennan and exhibition, ‘Threads of Feeling’ (where fabric swatches tell stories, separations of mothers and babies at the Foundling Hospital in the 18th century) affects our senses, perspectives towards archives and art.

Archive is an only evidence; a truth for past. As a printmaking student my relationship with archives has recreated and supported my artwork on this path towards the major project. I designed a personal journal sketchbook which contains researches, images, visited events, drawings, writing, plans etc. (Figure 1) Every page on my journal book and sketchbooks are documents, archives (Figure 2). They are part of my work as I being a part of my work too. I may not exhibit my journal book or sketchbooks in galleries or museums as many artists do, I would love to visit and physically observe and see the discovered Van Gogh’s seven surviving sketchbooks at Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum. Even its famous artists like Van Gogh or unknown artists or students (like me) documents of artists still hold a magnificent development and self-identity. Therefore, every archive is telling a story of self-development and not comparable.

Fig 1. Genc, O. Journal Book 2018

Fig 2. Genc, O. Two pages from my Journal Book 2018

Bibliography:

Book:

Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age, editors: Anna Maria Guasch Ferrer, Nasheli Jimenez Del Val , publish: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 11-12. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk

Journal:

Big Archives and Small Collections: Remarks on the Archival Mode in Contemporary Australian Art and Visual Culture by Martyn Jolly http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj/article/view/3823/4605

Art, Work and Archives: Performativity and the Techniques of Production by Jane Birkin http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/art-work-and-archives/

Art in the Archives: An Artist's Residency in the Archives of the London School of Economics. By Sue Donnelly. http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/7295

Website:

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/09/perspectives-negotiating-the-archive

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/02/van-gogh-sketchbooks-secret-museum/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/oct/09/foundling-hospital-museum-threads-feeling