Archive: La Petite Histoire
The word archives is derived from the ancient Greek arche’, meaning government or oder, this in opposition to anarchy and disorder. An archive refers to a collection of historical records, and also refers to the location in which these records are kept. Archives are sometimes described as information generated as the "by-product" of normal human activities, while libraries hold specifically authored information "products".
For artists interested in the cultural mythologies, narratives, and common truths of everyday life, the collection of materials has frequently served as fertile source material in their work.
All the artists included in this project have been concerned from the beginning more with what Kevin Lynch called 'a pattern of sequential experiences,' that is with a process that connects one image or one encounter or one object to the next and the next and the next, rather than using archival material to exercise the analytical powers of isolation, definition and classification or even detailed description and understanding. The idea is to make families of objects, or, to create families of motifs.
Working objectivity against subjectivity, one comportment against the other and then back again, these artists have found the motor for their epic in an elastic liminal bearing that continually bounds between sides, between a cool, quasi-disembodied objectivity and a hot subjective comportment that speaks of its own history and desire in its bearing toward the world.
La Petite Histoire is a visual account of contemporary art and creativity through the particular tool of archiving. The idea of the archive can be seen as a love letter to the ephemeral and to memory, a valorization of the things that are destined to disappear.
Curated by: Gyonata Bonvicini
