LIVING ARCHIVE

Course Description

How do artists document their practice? What parts of a studio practice are archived? How do we document collaboration? How can oral history play a role in art practice? How does a living archive exist and evolve with a given subject? In this 10 week course, students will work collaboratively to create an ethnographic archive of their own studio practices. Together students will play a dual role of artist and archivist, maintaining a studio practice while orienting their work inside of The Archive.

The Archive will be approached as a living, evolving entity which students will consider through theoretical lens, practical application and field trips, and by embodiying the archivist themselves. Students will help each other create an archival folder for their practice, considering what gets recorded, what gets left out, and what is fabricated for the context of the archive. Students will learn about archival processes through oral history recording practices, theories of archival gaps, and historical speculation examples in historical, art historical, political, queer and feminist studies, decolonize studies, and print and film media. They will conduct 3 interviews and create a personal archive by the end of the quarter.

Interested students should email Lucy Bell at llbell@ucsb.edu.

Optional Text

Warren Ellis, Nina Simone's Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found Faber & Faber