Joanne
Stowell
MFA
Paper #2
Critical
Theory
August
28, 2014
Archives are used to construct a
history. They are made up of many items, a physical body of material, that show
the evidence of what has passed. The work of many artists is connected to this
concept of an archive in one way or another. Some artists create an archive as
their work, while others may use an existing archive to create work based on
this existing archive. Still others gather their own information to create
their own archive and then create their artwork based on their own archive of
information, which is most similar to my own work. There are several readings
which cover this idea of art and the archive. Two of these readings are Research and Presentation of All That
Remains of My Childhood by Christian Boltanski and The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away by Ilya Kabakov.
Christian Boltanski is an artist
whose work focuses on photography, sculpture and installation. For some of his installations
he uses found photographs to create memorials dedicated to different people and
events, which are based on the ideas of memory and loss. In Research and Presentation of All That
Remains of My Childhood, Boltanski writes about his desire to overcome
death. He writes about how he views death, specifically his death, to be both
inevitable and even shameful. It is because of this odd view of death that he
feels he must find a way to solve this problem. In his own words he writes that
“preserving oneself whole, keeping a trace of all the moments of our lives, all
the objects that have surrounded us, everything we’ve said and what’s been said
around us, that’s my goal (The Archive,
pg. 25).” He seems very upset at having lost all of the physical remains of his
childhood and comes up with the plan to find and gather everything he can find
that documents his life, thus creating an archive of himself. Later on he
discusses he plans for ensuring that everything he finds is organized and
labeled so that he could essentially be put back together from the physical
evidence and, therefore, never truly die. I found this reading to be especially
interesting because it shows that Boltanski believes that by creating an
archive of himself, his stuff can actually replace him as a person. Many people
take photos and records of those that they love in order to remember that, but
this reading takes it to a whole new level and shows just how deep the fear of
being forgotten after death can become. Another interesting aspect if this
reading is that in order for the writer to focus all of his energy on
preserving the past, he must essentially give up his future.
The next reading, which I found to
be equally as interesting, is Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away. This reading, like the last,
is about someone creating an archive of themselves. However, The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away is
the story about characters invented by Kabakov to go along with an installation
that he created. In this installation Kabakov filled three rooms full of
organized garbage to represent the life of his invented character. In the story
it does not talk about the installation and some people may never realize that
Kabakov created an archival installation to go along with this story. In this
reading Kabakov writes about what is found in an apartment of one of the
characters; a mysterious plumber. This man was evidently a hoarder, and yet was
incredibly organized. He had piles of papers, files and storage boxes filling
his entire apartment and everything was obsessively labeled. Most of what was
saved and labeled would be considered useless by most people, such as an empty can
of tomato soup and an old needle with thread, but to this man everything had a
story and was connected to a memory.
The two main parts of The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away are what is written in two of
the manuscripts found in the apartment.
The first note entitled “Garbage” discusses how this plumber viewed the
sorting of what is important or not to be impossible. Most people can easily
sort through paper and determine what is important and throw out the rest, but
to him everything was of value. Kabakov writes, “In our memory everything
becomes equally valuable and significant. All points of out recollections are
tied to one another. They form chains and connections in out memory which
ultimately comprise the story of our life (The
Archive, pg. 33).” Overall it talks about what we chose to give value to is
what defines us, and this man chooses to give value to everything because he
views all memories as important, not just a select few. In the second
manuscript entitled “A Dump,” Kabakov has his character write about a much
broader picture. This manuscript discusses the vast amount of “trash” that
fills up our world. This character views this trash as traces of our culture
and reminders of our past. He says that there is no escaping this past since
out trash never fully disappears, it just moves to a new place. With these two
imagined manuscripts Kabakov shows how everything that we leave behind creates
an archive of ourselves as well as an archive of our culture.
I choose these two reading because they both show
how an archive can be created to capture the history of a particular person,
which I believe relates to my own work. First of all, some of my work may not
look as though it has much to do with an archive since an archive is not my
final product. However, even though creating a visible archive is not my goal
and an archive is not shown in my work I do, in a sense, create my own personal
archive which I then use to help with the ideas behind my paintings. My archive
is created based on moments and events with my children that inspire me and
that I wish to remember when I begin painting. I document these moments by
taking multiple photos and also making journal entries about the moment and how
it makes me feel. These photos and writing may not end up visible anywhere in
my work, but they are an essential part of my process.
In addition to my archival process, the idea of a
trace has also become increasingly important with my recent work. Both
Boltanski and Kabakov’s writing talk about the significance of the traces left
behind. They discuss these traces as important parts of creating an archive of
a person. Some of my new work is now trying to capture the traces left behind
by my children. I may not be incorporating the actually physical trace into my
paintings, but I have been creating paintings based on the multiple objects
that my children leave behind on a daily basis, such as shoes, toys, and
scribbles. I feel that these traces help to describe then as people since these
left-behinds are all objects of importance to them, even though they have been
temporarily discarded. With the idea of documenting these traces of my children
as well as the numerous photos and writing it could be said that I am creating
an archive of my children, although this may not be obvious to anyone who does
not know the thoughts and processes behind my work.
Sources:
·
Boltanski, Christian. "Research and
Presentation of All That Remains of My Childhood 1944-1950 (1969).” The
Archive - Documents of Contemporary Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. Pg. 25.
·
Kabakov, Ilya. "The Man Who Never Threw
Anything Away (c. 1977)." The Archive - Documents of Contemporary Art.
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. Pg. 32-37.
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