Contesting the Archive

I thought this section of writings was particularly interesting because the archive is now being questioned, reworked, reinterpreted- contested- by artists. Up until this point, I think we have come to the conclusion that archives are a way of preserving identity, be it an institution or an individual. However, we have also never given the archive full credit, always a bit skeptical and rightfully so, as the archive possess the bias and re-accounts the history of whoever is constructing it. What do you take as truth? Paul Ricoeur writes, “. . . the most valuable traces are the ones that were not intended for our information. Historians’ interrogations are guided by the theme chose to guide their inquiries.” I think that artists, by reordering and reworking certain archives are attempting to shed light on the information that has intentionally or conveniently been left out, or thought of as irrelevant. By questioning the validity of the archive in their work, they are asking the public to do the same. Catlin Dan and Josif Kidaly write in Politics of Cultural Heritage, “Because that is the very source of the archive phobia manifest in Romanian society: fear. Fear of interpretation and judgment, fear of exploration and analyses that might uncover hidden truths about the other but also about the self.” So, just as archives contain and preserve information about the past, we explore them as a way to uncover and understand our own identity and being in relation to that past.

After reading, I’m not sure if it is safe or right to say that the archive is infinite- it is definitely not finite. I would say, a bit hesitantly, that archives are infinite because once they are viewed and uncovered, they are open and subject to interpretation and exchange. Archives are no longer taken at face value- “what is, just is,” no longer flies. Artists are playing with this notion and questioning it. Hal Foster writes, “Again, this not a will to totalize so much a will to relate- to probe a misplaced past, to collate its different signs.” And, what are signs if they cannot communicate what it is they signify? By taking the archive and rearranging it, ultimately reinterpreting it, the meaning continues to change and to be questioned. If anything artists are making it know that it is important to question and contest information in an archive.