In cooperation with the German Photographic Society (DGPh), section "History & Archives", the University of Hildesheim Foundation and the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum
The symposium took place as an online event and was streamed live on our website and on dringeblieben.de. Both days of the symposium were recorded and can also be watched afterwards.
The symposium “Artist Meets Archive – Theory and Practice of the Archive,” which took place as part of Photoszene United and was conceived in connection with the exhibition series “Artist Meets Archive” by Internationale Photoszene Köln, spent two days exploring a spectrum of artistic and theoretical positions that had been developed in relation to the photographic archive, its structure, its function, and its aesthetics. The contributions on the first day, from the disciplines of art and media studies as well as ethnology, dealt with various positions ranging from local intervention to documentary film. On the second day, the artists invited to participate in the “Artist Meets Archive #2” program 2020/2021 presented their projects and provided insights into their year-long development process, during which they had gained their own unique perspectives on the respective archives. The artist talks concluded with a panel discussion to compare the respective positions and interventions.
It was generally assumed that artistic access to the photographic archive should be regarded as a form of research in its own right and that, in doing so, aspects and facets of a photo archive often came into focus that would otherwise have gone unnoticed or unheeded. The special potential of the artistic approach to photographic archive holdings and the question of what perspectives on the archive they conveyed were therefore at the center of the contributions and discussions.
Supported by the dive in. Program for Digital Interactions of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) in the NEUSTART KULTUR program.
