12/12/2013
PRÓXIMO SEMINARIO Art Globalization Interculturality
Documenting Global Art 2013.
Theories, Databases, and Experimental Research Tools
Organized by:
Art, Globalization, Interculturality (AGI)
Department of Art History, University of Barcelona and Institut national d'histoire de l'art, Paris.
16 December 2013
16.30-18.30 Aula 222, 18.30-21.30 Aula 207
Facultat de Geografia i Història, 2nd floor
Universitat de Barcelona
BARCELONA
Under the umbrella of a three-year collaborative project between the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art-Paris (INHA), the research groups Art, Globalization, Interculturality (UB) and Arts et architecture dans la mondialisation (INHA) have organized a series of annual seminars entitled Documenting Global Art. Theories, Databases, and Experimental Researching Tools that have taken place in Barcelona through the years 2011 and 2012.
The third installment of Documenting Global Art in 2013 will focus on a critical approach to the archive as an epistemological technology for the production of knowledge in the context of postgraduate research. Evoking the concept of archive as developed by Michel Foucault (1969), the archive can be understood as a collection of the material traces left behind by a particular historical period or culture through its collection and systematization of statements and objects. As Foucault contends, the archive encompasses “all the systems that establish statements as singular events or things by defining their conditions and domains of appearance as well as their possibilities and fields of use” (1969, 171). Consequently, the configuration of the archive is the result of certain conditions of emergence for particular statements as determined through specific institutional practices and techniques.
In the context of global art, the archive of art and art history can be understood as a “willed fiction” whose goal is to constitute a “coherent ‘representational’ uni-verse” (Preziosi 1998: 521). The inclusion, exclusion, taxonomization, and visibilization of particular objects and documents over others implies that the art historical archive is more than a “passive storehouse or data bank” (Preziosi 1998: 517). It is, in fact, a critical instrument that calibrates, grades, and accounts for variations in continuity as mediated by power and knowledge. It legitimizes a series of paradigms that are central to the social and political formation of the nation, such as ethnic authenticity, cultural uniqueness, the production of an imagined other, to name a few (ibid.). However, in more recent considerations of the archive, its role in the production of national identities and national cultures comes under question. Is it possible to think of an art historical archive in a world of global art? How has digitalization and online access impacted the epistemic role of the archive? What new possibilities does the global condition offer the archive and vice versa?
Within this conceptual framework, Documenting Global Art 2013 will address the topic of the archive as a source of data for postgraduate research. Doctoral candidates from the University of Barcelona and the Institute National d’Histoire de l’Art will be invited to discuss the importance of the archive in their research work. Specifically, two thematic roundtables will be held in order to discuss 1) the archive and its limits and 2) what does/will a global archive look like? The aim is to hold an inter-institutional, interdisciplinary discussion of the uses and limits of the archive for the study of global art.
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PROGRAMME
Monday, 16 December
12.30 – 14.00 Workshop at the Centre d'Estudis i Documentació MACBA
14.00 – 16.30 Lunch Break
16.30 Welcome
Anna Maria Guasch, Universitat de Barcelona
16.45 Activist archiving: the case of the 15M Archive
Julia Ramírez Blanco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
In May 2011, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol activist camp became the first Western example in the wave of protest camps that occupied central squares of cities all around the world. At an early point during the 25-day camp, an archive working group set up its own stall. Archivo 15M asked for materials related to the encampment and documented what was happening at the very moment that it took place. History was thus told as a work in process.
Archivo 15M has continued after the encampment disappeared,carrying out its work in social centres in squatted buildings. It stores a compilation of audiovisual material (photographs and videos), as well as a great variety of physical elements: press cuttings, dummies, posters, pamphlets, signs, letters, objects, organizational documents (assembly records, maps, charts) and – especially fascinating – thousands of banners. All these materials are classified, restored and digitalized, with high-quality photographs taken of of each banner. The 15M Archive is self-organized and self-financed by its members. Its functioning is horizontal, with decisions taken through assemblies based on consensus. In every sense a part of the 15M social movement, it is not only an archive about activism but also an activist archive.
Studying the 15M Archive raises questions about how a social movement can archive itself. Its strong particularities reveal the contradictions, problems and capacities of a counter-hegemonic archive that tries to reconcile archivist means with activist ends. Its materials are highly important both as history and as iconography of protest. The 15M Archive holds the records of the surge of collective creativity that took place in the Madrid camp in May and June 2011.
17.15 Une archive globale ou une contre-archive ? Le cas des archives orales des Grupos Annabela Tournon, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
Notre intervention propose d’aborder la question des enjeux et des limites des archives à partir des archives orales, en étroite relation avec un cas spécifique : celui des Grupos (collectifs d’artistes, de théoriciens et de militants actifs à Mexico dans les années 1970 – ma thèse porte sur leur histoire).
Une majorité de ces archives orales sur les Grupos ont été co-produites par des chercheurs, ce qui fait d’emblée des archives orales une voie d’accès non seulement à leur histoire, mais à leur historiographie. Étant donné que ces chercheurs proviennent du Mexique, des États-Unis, de France et d’ailleurs, les archives orales posent de manière privilégiée la question d’une archive à échelle globale, à la fois fragmentaire, déterritorialisée et non-institutionnelle.
En essayant de tenir ensemble la question des enjeux matériels et celle des enjeux méthodologiques et historiographiques, nous essayerons d’apporter quelques éléments à la question des enjeux archivistiques de l’art global.
17.45 Discussion
18.15 Coffee Break
18.30 Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art, Digital Archive Publications Project
Luz Muñoz, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Lanzado en 2004, Documentos del siglo XX de arte latinoamericano y de origen latino en los EE.UU. es un proyecto a largo plazo cuyo propósito es recuperar y publicar fuentes primarias y críticas para el estudio de las prácticas artísticas tanto en Latinoamérica como en las comunidades latinas de los Estados Unidos. Un proyecto iniciado por la Dra. Mari Carmen Ramírez —curadora Wortham de arte latinoamericano del Museum of Fine Arts, Houston y, a su vez, directora del ICAA (Centro Internacional para las Artes del Continente)— y una Junta Editorial constituida por diecisiete destacados especialistas, del continente americano, esta iniciativa pretende subsanar una laguna endémica en el ámbito de la historia, de la investigación y de la enseñanza de este arte al brindar acceso directo a los textos de artistas, movimientos artísticos, críticos, teóricos y curadores de México, América Central, el Caribe, Sudamérica y los Estados Unidos. Bajo la coordinación del ICAA, Dirigido por Maricarmen Ramírez, el proyecto es dirigido actualmente por María Gaztambide.
El proyecto ha inaugurado su sitio web http://icaadocs.mfah.org, al público en enero del 2012.
19.00 Les revues d’art dans les collections modernes du Musée National d’art Moderne / Centre Pompidou, entre 1905-1970
Michaela Gherghescu, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Organisées en réseaux, structurées comme « plateformes », témoignant simultanément de différentes formes d’échange et d’émancipation internationale et de violents replis identitaires strictement localisés, les revues représentent l’un des outils herméneutiques privilégiés pour comprendre la dynamique plurielle et souvent transnationale des politiques culturelles et des pratiques artistiques. Il s’agit d’une dynamique synchronique incluant une multitude générique, faite de plusieurs histoires intellectuelles superposées, de différentes formes de syncrétisme esthétique et d’invention technologique, de différentes communautés, de différentes inflexions idéologiques où les transitions entre les discours radicaux et les variables de la modernité artistique se déclinent sur des registres complexes. L’étude de la production éditoriale et, plus particulièrement, des revues d’art s’est avérée un domaine de recherche pertinent dans le cadre du nouveau projet d’accrochage des collections modernes du Musée National d’Art Moderne/ Centre Pompidou sur le segment temporel de la première modernité historique, entre 1905-1970. Notre approche méthodologique, essentiellement contextuelle, interrogeant la construction des relations artistiques et la circulation des discours et des pratiques à travers ces vecteurs culturels foncièrement ouverts et fédérateurs se trouve au cœur de la réflexion sur la constitution des modernités artistiques au moment de la première mondialisation. Cette nouvelle valorisation des périodiques soulève de nouveaux questionnements sur la dynamique relationnelle des transferts culturels, mais elle confronte aussi les différentes stratégies de recherche et de construction du discours critique dans le cadre pragmatique du musée.
19.30 Roundtable: The Global Archive and Its Limits
Presentations by:
Marta Dahó, Universitat de Barcelona
Nasheli Jiménez del Val, Universitat de Barcelona
Diana Padrón Alonso, Universitat de Barcelona
20.30 Discussion
21.00 Closing Address
Zahia Rahmani, Arts et architecture dans la mondialisation research programme, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
21.30 Event Dinner
