Original scientific paper
Representative and Signifying Practices: The Authors of Archival Materials
Nataša Lah
Abstract
Does even art offer itself today as a “new archive” of remembrance? And has it, by taking this position, intervened in the old, hitherto unsurpassed controversy between modernity and the “open horizon” of remembering the various facets of history? If there is a possibility of answering both questions affirmatively, our aim is to show in which way what we know as remembering the unique (art) history has evolved under the impact of rather different types of remembrance, as the different starting points for evaluation have shaped various cultural strategies as well as art practices. Our hypothesis is that it is cultural history as such that imposes itself as a possible source of understanding all conceptualization, thus preceding the institutionalization of all archival holdings. And, regardless of whether modern art has exposed this state of affairs, it is most certain that the controversy over the crimen of “objective” memory has not yet been solved. Thereby one should take into account that these limitations of historiographic sources can be overcome by bringing together tradition and the present on the level of paying utmost respect to their disparity, where the self-image of cultural and artistic heritage would cede way to the hermeneutics of history, that is, to the theory of understanding art practices. Hans Georg Gadamer has helped us understand that the given form of reconciliation between the past and the present is not paradoxical in itself, and it is through the lens of his philosophy that we will take a brief look at how these two horizons are only seemingly separate. Our intention is, moreover, to use this argumentation to show that modernity, by raising a new subject of epochal significance – that of the reality of oblivion – has only broken the link with the tradition of its self-understanding, whereas memory has remained an integral part of the texture of all present. In this sense, the practices of art and reception, be they museological or theoretical, are incessantly involved in their own conceptualizations by offering hermeneutical, living, situational interpretations.
Keywords
archive of remembrance; conceptualization of archival materials; institutionalization of archival holdings; hermeneutics; open horizon of past and present; signifying practices
Hrčak ID:
185578
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2014.
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