부산대학교 도서관

Art and research are connected in three distinct ways in the years surrounding the turn of the twenty-first century. Artists are compared to researchers in terms of the methodology they use and the themes they investigate, and artworks visually resemble research activities or research results. During this period there is also a significant increase in studio-based PhD programmes, which means that artists literally become academic researchers, incorporating their practices within the broader university system. The chapter consider the overt and implied assumptions involved in comparing the artist to a researcher. Artists’ use of text and their interest in marginal and mystical figures are analysed through specific works by Tacita Dean, Simon Starling and Joachim Koester. They are shown to mobilise a notion of historical research in part driven by chance, serendipity and a kind of mystical connection to historical figures or events, while also continuously pointing out that they are themselves unreliable narrators or that the facts they deal with are uncertain. The chapter ends with a discussion of artworks that use the index and footnote as forms of academic research and referentiality.
Art + archive: Understanding the archival turn in contemporary art examines the meaning and function of the notion of the archive in art writing and artistic practices c. 1995–2015. The book takes on one of the most persistent buzzwords in the international artworld, adding nuance and context to a much-discussed but under-analysed topic.The study’s first part outlines key texts about archive art, the interdisciplinary theories these build on, and the specific meaning the archive comes to have when it is brought into the artworld. The second part examines the archive art phenomenon in relation to materiality, research, critique, curating and temporality. Instead of approaching the archive as an already defined conceptual tool for analysing art, the book rethinks the so-called archival turn, showing how the archive is used to point to, theorise and make sense of a number of different conditions and concerns deemed to be urgent and important at the turn of the twenty-first century. These include the far-reaching implications of technological changes; the prevalence of different forms of critique of normative structures; changes to the view of the art object; and the increasing academicisation of artistic practices. This book shows that the archive is adaptable and elastic, but that it is also loaded with a great deal of theoretical baggage. It clarifies why, how and with what consequences the archive is referenced and mobilised by contemporary artists and art writers.