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Un/Imaginable: The Archival Principle of Provenance and the Practices of Contemporary Art

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2024, (55), pp.197-219
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : April 29, 2024
  • Accepted : May 28, 2024
  • Published : June 30, 2024

Su-Mi Kang 1

1동덕여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article traces emergent theoretical points to the limits of the given consciousness and representation through the archival turn in contemporary art. It aims to explain that these practices can serve as a room of potentiality to overcome the unimaginable for the presence of the past and the future. First, I explain that the paradigm shifts from the archival principle of provenance assuming the concept as a single and complete archive and natural and organic origin in the mid-19th century in Europe to the revisited theory of as a logical structure in the late 20th century in North America. Second, my research focuses on Mémoire des camps. Photographies des camps de concentration et d’extermination nazis (1933-1999) organized by Clément Chéroux in 2001, which presented the photographs of the genocide in Auschwitz as a contemporary archive exhibition. In particular, my analysis deals with the debates between George Didi-Huberman and the other critics at that time about the value of overcoming the limits of imagination or, conversely, the danger of falling into the trap of images. Then, I expand from George Didi-Huberman’s argumentation about the unimaginable to the subjects of the principle of provenance in archival science and aesthetic imagination in contemporary archival art.

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