Archive – Public
investigates the potential of archive art practices to produce conditions of public sphere in today’s urban environments. It examines the possibilities of intervention in existing archives and their mechanisms, in memory places, in representations and politics of heritage management as reproduced in public space. It focuses on the utilization and critical evaluation of the archive as an essential factor in identity and memory formation as well as on the archive mechanism as appropriate medium to create ephemeral communities of engaged viewers. The program seeks the potential of archive practices not so much to impose an ‘external’ framework of collection or taxonomy on public space, but to create a communicative /antagonistic situation that may affect the construction of new identities, memory and knowledge.
Artists and theorists are invited to contribute proposals, approaching the issues of memory, representation and the public sphere in the city of Patras. The geopolitical conditions of Patras, as a city-node of transitory immigration and gateway to Europe in an important migration path from the Middle East, Asia Minor and Africa, reflect the particularities of a specific momentum. The aim is to link Patras to other similar localities in a discussion that takes into account anthropogeographic parameters and issues of cultural geography.
A multiuser weblog has been set as a working, exhibition and archival platform for the participants, to actuate different forms of collaboration. Different textual and visual inputs work as exchanged material for the process of the project as well as for the elaboration of the procedures of the different participants. The publication itself will work as a meta-platform where the different inputs will be orchestrated in a discursive formation.
We are seeking texts in relation to the topics of the project, or feedback texts to the art projects as they develop. Case studies and relevant projects taking place elsewhere could also be an enriching source, opening up a dialogue and creating a network with the art projects taking place in Patras.
The weblog and publishing project Archive Practices and Politics of Memory in Contemporary Public Art is part of the research project with the same title, at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras, supported by K. Karatheodoris research program.
