References to archives are a pronounced influence on contemporary artistic production. Such links back to the past come into play in a host of different ways – approaching historical references through the prism of reconstruction or transformation, inscribing these into particular genealogies, or explicitly opting to work on material from previously inaccessible or overlooked archives. It could well be claimed that archive work has become an essential prerequisite for contemporary creation, whilst at the same time constituting the most significant constraint upon such production.
For »Living in the Archive«, to cite the title of this edition, is highly ambiguous. This is not merely because the constantly growling conglomerate of archives, for which no-one has an all-encompassing map any longer, is a shifting framework, within which our understanding of art is also perpetually changing. In addition, it gives rise to a still more fundamental question; might this network be growing more, rather than less, restrictive due to its density and completeness? Does the cornucopia of archived material perhaps leave less and less space to find one’s own individual niche in the mesh of historical content that has been handed down? Might the prolific growth of archives increasingly threaten to smother articulation of ideas in the present?
»Living in the Archive« is therefore a notion that describes the ambivalent task we all face today: on the one hand, finding a modus operandi that enables us to handle this surfeit of information, whilst on the other hand making this modus productive enough to ensure it does not degenerate into a strangely obsessive retromania. The pieces in this edition approach this nexus of problems from various points of view. In our conversation with Nata_a Petre_in-Bachelez, a curator who also runs an art space, she identifies two conflicting impetuses in archive work; a nostalgic – and frequently also romanticising – approach, and, in contrast, the struggle to ensure memories are not repressed and forgotten, more in the spirit of a historic-critical culture of remembrance. In order to counteract the threat of a reifying approach, which would in a sense mummify history, Petre_in-Bachelez stresses that recipients must also seek over and over again to engage in a process that activates these memories, bringing them to life in the present day
The »mal d\'archive«, archive fever, which philosopher Jacques Derrida once identified as a (psycho-)analytic element, is manifested in a whole range of symptoms. One of those relates to the power to define and interpret what can be considered as legitimate archival material in the first place. By way of example, Simon Sheikh points to the example of art history, which for a long time acted as gatekeeper, deciding what should be selected, which cross-references were valid and what additions were permitted to its most intrinsic units of discourse – namely works of art that are considered to be of value. Through the example of possible encounters between artists (which however never actually occurred), Sheikh attempts to fathom the merits of a fictitious constructed history based on the raw material of the archive, which needs ongoing processing and must constantly be constructed anew. Cédric Vincent articulates a similar position in respect of the history of the »Pan-African Festival«, held three times between 1966 and 1977. Vincent argues that the official documentation of these events is not enough to convey the vital impulse of this groundbreaking encounter; instead official, non-institutional and above all personal sources need to be used and activated. Individual case studies complement the more general overview of the problems addressed in this edition. In her exploration of the work of Peruvian artist Teresa Burga, Nanna Lüth refers to an important aspect of the archive fever that is doing the rounds: to a large extent this adopts a Western focus, offering only limited scope to consider non-Western archives – viewed as lower-ranking - on an equal footing. Against this backdrop Lüth highlights how, in contrast, Teresa Burga has constantly updated her archive focusing on life-worlds in her artistic work; indeed her entire practice exemplifies the extent to which it is possible to counteract hegemonic archival thinking. The situation for work concentrating on historical reconstruction is similar. In his essay on two Yugoslavian Modernism projects, Jochen Becker emphasises that these projects work through the issues in a process that encompasses much more than their actual subject-matter, extending right into the present. He stresses too that the project of »uncompleted modernisation «, which came into being after the Second World War and has since filled the archives, perhaps by definition remains an endeavour that can never be concluded. Case studies like this, along with the other pieces in this edition, demonstrate that the problem of archives is a burning issue in a series of very different fields nowadays and that it is not possible to attain premature »closure« here.
Taking as the point of departure the omni-availability of information that worldwide electronic repositories offer us nowadays, the following pressing question emerges: how should we live in a world that is thoroughly archival, yet also increasingly forgetful of history, a world in which everything appears to have been pre-empted, where everything already seems to be suffused with historical density? How can we breathe new life into the archive, opening up the possibility of dynamic feedback to the present?