In addition to the usual paper presentations for the conference (De)constructing the Archive in a Digital Age we are hosting an exhibition Archive Fever, which includes six artists whose works explore the archive as part of their practice.
Jacqueline Butler
Paper Landscape and Impulse, Gesture
Responses to the Lewis Carroll Photographic Archive
It seems apparent now more than ever that digital photographic production and consumption has escalated and it is therefore natural that there is great deal of contemporary discussions and debates surrounding the impact of the decline and potential eradication of established analogue photographic practice and the developing process of digitising photographic archives. As we contemplate what this means for the future of the medium it also allows space for reflection and reinterpretation of chemical based photographic practice, to prise photography from the position of facilitator, and create space for the medium to ‘speak’ for and about itself. By beginning to consider the narratives of, in and surrounding the photograph, the narrative created by the mechanical and chemical process involved in ‘making’ photographs, in actuality deciphering thoughts inside the photograph.
Relating to the aforementioned thoughts I have been developing two pieces of work which form a body of research. My thoughts have been formed through my developing artistic response to, and study of a collection of photographs by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) held within the Insight Photographic Archive at the National Media Museum, Bradford. The work developed, titled Paper Landscapes and Impulse, Gesture, reflect my deepening interest in photography and its effect on how time is measured, and understood, and on how artist as researcher can open potential re reading and new ways of viewing and evaluating archives and collections.
Biography
Jacqueline Butler is an artist and academic living and working in Manchester. In her arts practice her primary interests consider reflections on time and memory in relation to the photographic and the cinematic, and contemplations on the material qualities of the photograph both in its analogue and digital states.
She works with photography, digital video, artist book, writing and curation. She is a member of Manchester based PRG (Photography Research Group) and MADE (artist book co operative) and is the Programme Leader of BA (Hons) Photography and Pathway Leader if MA Photography at The Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University.
family business by hannah goldstein
family business is about memory, death, authorship and inheritance. When my father died in 2001 I inherited all his cameras, his enormous archive of pictures and negatives, his entire darkroom. A few years ago I started to sort through this huge archive of work. Deciding which pictures to use in family business became a way for me to keep him alive, but also to rewrite history. At times it was a frightening thought that I was replacing my memoires of my father with the stories that were told in the pictures. My picture selection became a way to say this is how our life was. This was a mourning process and a process of authorship because by selecting the pictures I did, I now tell the story. My father is not here to contest. What happens when you decide what gets taken out of the boxes and re-entered into history? How do you handle such power? What about all that stays hidden in the archive? family business is about the relationship to the death of my father, the way that it changed my relationship to my mother and how the inheritance of this archive helped me move on.
Biography.
hannah goldstein has a B.A in Photography and Human Rights from Bard College, New York. She attended the Royal University College of the Arts, Stockholm for a one-year residency program. In 2007 goldstein worked as a photography assistant for Nan Goldin, assisting in the editing of her Hasselblad book The Beautiful Smile. goldstein works as a teacher at Stockholm Public University and the museum Fotografiska. Her classes are mostly advanced photographic seeing courses, but also introduction to photography. In 2011 she will be co-curating a photography show in Stockholm. In 2007 goldstein was selected for the biennial at the Center for Photography in Stockholm. The biennial focuses on Swedish up and coming artist. While living in Australia she worked with a number of interesting galleries and The Australian Center for Contemporary Art. The body of work that came out of her residency is a project called family business and at the moment goldstein is working on a book publication of the project. This year the artist received a grant to do research about German artist Käthe Kollwitz hopes to produce a body of work that is a follow up to family business. goldstein has exhibited work in New York, Australia and Sweden. She lives and works in Stockholm and Berlin.
Libby Ralph
This artwork is a direct response and reconstruction of the visual archive in the form of an artwork/performance that aims to utilise the visual classification of found papers and objects from books within Manchester central libraries. They are archived by a specifically designed classification system that aims to gives order and justification to these abandoned objects.
Performing the function of demonstrating the fluctuation, temporarity and transition of accessible knowledge, each piece of paper in this library represents a point of access and a marker for something important or useful.
To fulfil a cycle from having a purpose to being abandoned back to the bookshelf had become these papers fate. Each piece acts as a representative for its home and its journey. I believe they have their own bank of knowledge, gained over the days, months and years spent on the bookshelf; in return, they become librarians of their own knowledge. A steal-able, re- useable approach to accessing information.
Based on an analytico-synthetic “FACETED” classification system, the “WPI Visual Archive System” is an applicable classification distinction used to numerically categorize found pieces of paper
Biography.
Through my artwork I consider myself to be a visual artist working mainly with forms of sculpture, installation and photography. I tend to work with the subject of space and changing space using the interactions made by humans and non humans with the work I produce. Through my work I like to leave questions and suggest stories. I like to create work that is visual but emotive, responding to my sometimes volatile and ridiculous brain in a calm, organised and enjoyable way.
Natasha Rees
“From gardens where we feel secure” (2010) Media: PAL single channel video; sound; colour; 8:16m
This video piece has just been completed (August 9th, 2010) and comprises found, out of copyright, images and sound. The images are from US Army archives of American troops in Northern Vietnam in1967, deployingOperation Baker. The footage shows the everyday of war, amid scenes of US soldiers placing an Ace of Spades playing card in the mouths of dead Vietcong/NLF (this was considered to be a subtle form of intimidation, so much so, 1000’s of the card were manufactured and sent to the front line soldiers). I was drawn to this footage as I felt it resonated with recent war reportage of Afghanistan and Iraq. The sound in my piece, is from a field recording of implosion testing in the 1980’s as well as faint, momentary, echoes of a chant du travail from unknown French Guinean farmers. As a whole, the piece is ambiguous as the elements are merely suggestive. But what I was trying to achieve with this assemblage is a rereading of historical events known and not so known, within a framework of something familiar but unsettling (the slowed down implosion soundtracks). I also wanted the initial image sequences to be a little dis-orientating, and mesmerising. To this end the images are highly coloured and initially blurred, until the final couple of minutes. I constantly utilise images, titles, sound effects and soundtracks in my work, to attempt revisions of how we can re-relate to ubiquitous materials and ephemera from culture. Much of my work is sourced from the internet and reworked in 2d or moving image formats. I try and reframe the materials so that they are looked at in different ways, and contemplated in and outside of traditional art contexts. Images that attempt to be ‘re-stuck’.
Biography.
Natasha Rees is an artist and writer based in London, UK. Rees works with a variety of media, including 2d, 3d, video and sound as a means to speculate on images and objects from the visual world, to consider their resonance through discourses of power, seduction and ideology. Works are ideas based, and often transpire from extensive research.
Janice Dale
Precision
I have probably identified myself with still-life images more than with any other subject. I share the view of photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch, that “We still don’t sufficiently appreciate the opportunity to capture the magic of material things. The structure of wood, stone, and metal can be shown with a perfection beyond the means of painting…”[1] (as well as sharing an original career in Chemistry). He was concerned with photography’s ability to record the exact appearance of an object, whereas I deliberately chose to photograph functional objects to accentuate their beauty.
In this work I have indulged my love of metallic objects with a desire to learn about engineering terms and an aspiration to convince my audience of the beauty of man-made articles. However, my images are not of pristine, showroom quality components, but rather pieces that have been used and in that usage have accumulated marks and scratches, dirt and grime. This is their history, part of their function.
This work is an aesthetic appreciation of functional engineering components: valves, pistons, bearings etc., and engineering tools. The images of engineering components were made as large-format transparencies and are presented as small, precious, jewellery-like objects. A series of (medium format) images of tools are exhibited as digitally printed framed images, with just a hint of amusement in their composition.
The title ‘Precision’ refers to the manufacture and final use of the components, where metal is machined to within a few thousandths of an inch and operates to equally fine tolerances, and also to the slow and meticulous way that I produced the images.
