The Art of Memory - 10

Archival impulse: The artist as historian

Readings:

Roelstraete, D. "The way of the shovel: on the archeological imaginary in art", e-flux, no. 4, March 2009. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/51

Stewart, s. "Wunderkammer: An after as before", Deep storage. New York/Munich, 1998.

"Who doesn't like both locks and keys?" Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1969.  I whole heartedly agree. A lock without a key is frustrating (delayed gratification) whilst a key without a lock is a source of imaginary possibilities (that can never be proved wrong)

"The way of the shovel" links some aspects of the artistic practice to that of the archaeologist, which got me to wondering about how many artists do the opposite ..create a future? or is that to be left to sci fi writers and popular block buster movies? Then I though of the Modernist artists who were convinced (or did not want) that their work had nothing of the past in them...then I had a closer look at the Goshka Macuga work, which made me laugh (because it looks like a stone age 'recreation').

Goshka Macuga, When Was Modernism, 2008.

Roelstraete's tone in "Way of the shovel" seems rather derisory of 'Art' being Archeological

as though the artist can only function with inspiration from the past..unable to create a future..