“The Archive: Savior, Inventor, Witness”

“The Archive: Savior, Inventor, Witness” explores personal archives developed by artists who practiced under restrictive social and political climates internationally during the 20th century. Focusing on the diverse roles such repositories have played in recording underground movements, as well as the potential of their legacy in re-orienting the histories that are presented in art institutions now, the two-day conference brings together leading artists, curators, and writers in the field. Structured around six thematic panels, interspersed with debates, interviews, and performances, the sessions question issues of subjectivity, survival, interpretation, and ethics.

Speakers include: Refik Anadol, artist, Istanbul; Lars Bang Larsen, art historian, independent curator and writer based in Barcelona and Copenhagen; Claudia Calirman, Assistant Professor of Art History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro, art historian and archivist, Conductorless Soviet orchestra Persimfans; Evgeny Gusyatinskiy, film critic, Eastern Europe Programmer, International Rotterdam Film Festival; Carol Yinghua Lu, writer and curator, Director, Beijing Inside-out Art Museum; Ana Luiza de Oliveira Mattos, archive coordinator, Bienal de Sao Paolo Foundation; David Morris, writer, researcher and educator, editor at Afterall; Bill Morrison, artist and filmmaker, New York; Sasha Obukhova, curator, Garage Archive Collection; Sezin Romi, Senior Librarian and Archivist, SALT, Istanbul; Vladislav Shapovalov, artist, Moscow; Dmitry Vilensky, artist, writer, founding member of Chto delat?/What is to be done?, St. Petersburg; Emilie Villez, curator, Kadist Foundation, Paris; Hu Yun, artist, Shanghai.

The main goal of the conference is to shed light on ways the archive can serve as the only option of survival for different art scenes under grave political conditions, or situations of limited institutional development. “The Archive: Savior, Inventor, Witness” is also crucial to further the work of Garage Archive Collection, which is central to the activities of the Museum. The Collection consists of an extensive holding of materials relating to Soviet and contemporary art in Russia. As the first public resource of its kind in the country, the Archive records artist’s practices from the mid-1950s through to the present, including articles published by local and foreign media from the late 1970s to the present day; a stills library of exhibition documentation, portraits of artists, and reproductions of their works from 1960–2010; video documentaries related to performances and exhibitions in Moscow from 1985; and a corpus of texts written by artists from the 1960s through 1990s, as well as unpublished critical articles, artists’ biographies, press releases, catalogues, and other exhibition materials (1985–2013).

The conference is organized to mark the launch of RAAN (the Russian Art Archive Network) which is an online database under development between the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (USA) and the Research Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen (Germany) with Garage Archive Collection. Established to promote the study of underground Soviet and Russian art from the postwar period on, the network is focused on creating an online catalogue that centralizes the data of Russian art archives that are dispersed across the globe.

To encourage wide attendance, Garage is offering two Travel Grants for International Curators, covering return airfare and accommodation for three days in Moscow over the duration of the conference.

For further information about the conference please contact at conferences [​at​] garagemca.org. 

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a place for people, art, and ideas to create history. Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich, Garage is the first philanthropic organization in Russia to create a comprehensive public mandate for contemporary art and culture. Through an extensive program of exhibitions, events, education, research, and publishing, the institution reflects on current developments in Russian and international culture, creating opportunities for public dialogue, as well as the production of new work and ideas. At the center of all these activities is the Museum’s collection, which is the first archive in the country related to the development of Russian contemporary art from the 1950s through to the present.