THIS IS AN ARCHIVE

Saturday I was lucky enough to attend Archive This a series of talks based around the position of the archive within art and culture. Held at Eastside Projects (ESP) in Birmingham, the seminar was inspired by one of ESP's latest exhibitions Dear Lynda. 
Since the 1960's curator and writer Lynda Morris has collected and preserved: letters, posters, artworks, photographs and various other ephemera that hark back to her encounters and collaborations with influential artists such as Joseph Beuys, Art & Language, Gerhard Richter and Jeremy Deller to name a few.
TALK 1:
The seminar began in the gallery space, with Lynda Morris surrounded by her vast collection. She spoke of the political and social contexts behind the objects and the qualities of the archive emerged, that of storytelling and history. Each scrap of paper, envelope and image have a story attached. How the object came in to being, how she received it, the issues of the time and the artist that created them. More than ephemera, documents and archives represent a lived history.
The subject of authorship emerged, who is the author of this collection? Yes Lynda collated it, but she feels that Dear Lynda is not her exhibition but that of the artists and people she worked with and met.
TALK 2:
The talks moved under the bonfire scented canopy of Black Pleasure. PhD student Samantha Epps considered the role of supplementary exhibition materials as artworks in their own right. I feel the properties of supportive materials such as leaflets, posters and instructions are fitting formats for conceptual art in that they are cheap, ephemeral, everyday and accessible leading to another generation of paper collecting and archiving. But how will printed material develop in the future? What impact does technology have on the archive?  

Discussion in action

TALK 3:

Karen Di Franco, artist and archivist spoke of her work with collections, materials and the artistic practice of book making.

TALK 4: 

Dr Kieran Connell shared his experience of developing an archive that brings together pop culture and mass culture, presenting their roles in society through an archive at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Reaffirming and revisiting the 60's on-wards he is striving to place the cultures of everyday life firmly on the radar of academia and archive history.

TALK 5: 

Artist Ruth Beale addressed the significance of libraries in relation to how culture is perceived. From the continuing closure of public libraries, to the grand opening of Europe's biggest library in Birmingham.What is governance attempting to portray here? A false sense of common good.