Working with archives. Traces and documents in art studies I and II

Archives and collections are part of the work of most art researchers, curators, and visual artists. Physical archives and collections contain artworks, historical documents and information, traces of life, experience and exchange that can help document or disprove a hypothesis or give rise to new assumptions.

Archives are part of the collective memory, even if they are not known or immediately accessible, and as such can be seen as a defence against repression and oblivion. In themselves, on the other hand, they are necessarily selective and biased. To form meaning and coherence, they rely on principles of selection that judge some documents relevant and others irrelevant. Smaller, often private archives sometimes make up for the shortcomings and blindness of official and institutional archives by preserving what other archives have excluded or forgotten. The researcher working with archives must, as far as possible, ensure that the documents found are not random. And they must be aware of the blind spots in one archive that an alternative archive might be able to shed light on. This requires both methodology and ingenuity in the archive search and in the questions you ask the archive. But it also requires an awareness of the logic of the archive, its rules, its traps, and its possibilities.

Target group

PhD students and other early-stage researchers interested in conducting archival research as part of their research projects. Students can participate regardless of the level and stage of their project. The course will provide an opportunity to share both theoretical and methodological issues and experiences from archival research. Emphasis will be placed on archives and collections related to research in art history, visual culture and artistic practice (max. 20 participants).

Purpose

• To equip early-stage researchers within the field of art studies to find relevant archival documents for their projects by introducing and discussing various archival practices and methods.
• To enable early-stage researchers to engage critically and ethically with physical archives

2023 Workshops

Workshop I

31 October – 1 November 2023, 9-16 (both days)

The first workshop discusses the status and functioning of physical archives while introducing methods and practical approaches to archival research. The two-day workshop consists of institutional visits (Collection of Prints and Photographs at the Royal Library and the Collection of Graphic Arts and Artist archives at SMK) as well as on-site presentations by invited tutors mixed with shared readings of case studies and archival theory of relevance to art related and practice-based research.

Workshop II

19 March – 20 March 2023, 9-16 (both days)

Working with Archives II is a continuation of the autumn workshop on archival research, Working with Archives I, but it can stand alone and does not require participation in the first part. Whereas last time we looked at archives and collections in large institutions, namely SMK and KB, this time the focus will be on artists' archives and artistic approaches to archival practices, and on decolonial archival practices with Arctic archives as a special case. The first day will take place at the Arctic Institute, where artist, curator and collection researcher Martha Fleming, Associate Professor at PASS and the Natural History Museum of Denmark, will address decolonial work across scientific collections and cultural archives, focusing on collective research about Greenlandic botany. The second day of the workshop will take place at Heirloom. Centre for Art and Archives in Sølvgade, Copenhagen. Here we will hear presentations from and discuss with Heirloom's driving forces Johanne Løgstrup and Stine Hebert, as well as visual artists Eva la Cour and Mia Edelgart, who will talk about an artistic and archival research project that will culminate in an exhibition at Heirloom this autumn. As last time, the workshop will begin and end with a discussion of the accompanying theoretical texts.

Literature

ECTS credits

• 1.5 ECTS (one workshop)
• 3 ECTS (both workshops)  

Workload

Presence total 28 (14) hours + preparation total 56 (28) hours.