The Artist as le nouvel archiviste: Archive, History and Contemporaneity

Abstract

The text asserts that some of the contemporary artists interested in the «archival» paradigm could be described as «new archivists» (in the same way that Deleuze baptized Foucault as le nouvel archiviste), in the sense that their interest in the past and in history is not expressed through a set of propositions but through statements, multiplicities devoid of any regular linguistic construction. Artists such as Antoni Muntadas, Hans Peter Feldmann, Alfredo Jaar, Francesc Abad or Stefanos Tsivopoulos understand archives as places to organize counter-narratives and show their interest in different historical processes linked to civil wars, dictatorships, social injustices, censorship, environmental sustainability, etc. They all assume the abandonment of interpretive processes and a gradual disinterest in subjectivism, but in no case they give up the creation of narrative forms and future scenarios.