STEVEN TEN THIJE AND GALIT EILAT - LIVING ARCHIVE: EXHIBITING THE VAN ABBEMUSEUM ARCHIVE

In today’s artistic and curatorial practice, the archive and the act of archiving plays a prominent role. Artists are researchers and curators need to mediate between installations that often contain a hybrid of objects, of which many used to be found in archives. It is difficult to designate one common point which inspired this archive virus, but one element that seems to play an important role is the increased opportunities to mine archives thanks to web technology and the different relationship to data that these new possibilities inspire. No longer do we consider the archive to be a mysterious, closed-off space in which information and evidence are stored for the rare moment when the ‘truth’ needs to be recalled, but it has become a living part of the way in which we form ideas about the world around us on a large scale. These ideas are no longer monumental Histories, but are tailor-cut micro-stories that are filtered out by increasingly more refined search technology. Within the context of the museum, this meant a step back from the universal, linear art history and the establishment of much more site-specific materialisations of issues in the presentation of the collection. In the Van Abbemuseum this has given rise to a different form of collection display in which the archive has a prominent position, which manifested itself in the exhibition series Living Archive curated by Diana Franssen. In their lecture Galit Eilat and Steven ten Thije will discuss the way in which she composed the exhibitions and how she treated the archive. Research curator Steven ten Thije will supplement the discussion by raising some more philosophical questions concerning the consequences of this use of the archive within the experience of art and the museum.

Steven ten Thije is research curator and executes a PhD-research initiated by the Van Abbemuseum and the University of Hildesheim. Galit Eilat is a writer, curator and the founding director of The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon. She is co-editor in chief of Maarav – an online arts and culture magazine, as well as guest curator at the Van Abbemuseum.

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This event is part of MEDIA, MEMORY, HISTORY - CURATORIAL LECTURE SERIES