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Anarchival practises : the Clanwilliam Arts Project as re-imagining custodianship of the past
(2023)
Where is the past? It is not really behind us, but with us, constantly imagined and re-imagined in public discourse through historical narrations. Using the Clanwilliam Arts Project as a case study, this volume is founded on the 'anarchive', a conceptual constellation that positions the past in relation to the present, bringing into view strategies to facilitate remembering beyond the colonial archive.
This article investigates and proposes the concept of speculative writing, which is a disruptive sort of dramaturgy mediated by artificial intelligence. What are the kinds of events created by speculative writing? What might its history and genealogy be? What might the duration of an alphanumeric reenactment be? Guided by these questions, the article details its search for speculative writing in unfilmed script history as well as in premediation events. According to these concepts, this essay concludes that speculative writing will enact potential, abstract, and premediated events, which have never become material media.
What is the effect of weathering in a confined space? What if this space is the bathroom of the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo? Writer Mario Bellatin and photographer Graciela Iturbide venture into this once intimate room and through a series of artistic interventions breathe new life into it. The logic of the archive is their guiding principle: in order to preserve what has been locked away and stored, it must be exposed and put to new uses.
By distancing it from historical revival (i.e., 'Living History'), reenactment is here understood as artistic strategy as well as curatorial practice, and therefore as critical method. As artistic strategy it implies the reactivation (over time) and remediation (on different supports) of images stemming from a vast visual repertoire that artists - especially those working with time-based media (film, video, performance) - appropriate in order to give them new meanings. As curatorial practice and critical method, reenactment regards the remaking of impermanent artworks and the restaging of temporary exhibitions to possibly offer an understanding of (art) history that gives preference to a visual and performative, sometimes immersive, approach.