The Archive (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)

The significance of the archive in modernity and in contemporary art; writings by Sigmund Freud Michel Foucault Hal Foster and others and essays on the archival practice of such artists as Gerhard Richter Christian Boltanski Rene Green and The Atlas Group. In the modern era the archiveofficial or personalhas become the most significant means by which historical knowledge and memory are collected stored and recovered. The archive has thus emerged as a key site of inquiry in such fields as anthropology critical theory history and especially recent art. Traces and testimonies of such events as World War II and ensuing conflicts the emergence of the postcolonial era and the fall of communism have each provoked a reconsideration of the authority given the archiveno longer viewed as a neutral transparent site of record but as a contested subject and medium in itself. This volume surveys the full diversity of our transformed theoretical and critical notions of the archiveas idea and as physical presencefrom Freuds "mystic writing pad" to Derridas "archive fever"; from Christian Boltanskis first autobiographical explorations of archival material in the 1960s to the practice of artists as various as Susan Hiller Ilya Kabakov Thomas Hirshhorn Rene Green and The Atlas Group in the present. Not for sale in the UK and Europe.