Whilst some such as Claire Bishop lament this turn to the contents of the past, others such as Anthony Downey highlight how artists who contend with the archive ‘reveal a set of mechanisms that are simultaneously situated in the present but inevitably project meaning into the future.’ As many artists and historians continue to turn to highly localised and national archives to upend colonial narratives, to unearth new stories, to reconsider what an archive is, and how its infrastructure informs our understanding of broader institutional structures and national narratives.

It appears that archive fever shows little sign of cooling off. 

So how do we speak about the archive now?

With an internet that forever proliferates is there even any need to contain or hold the contents therein? Is the archival in art a sign of malaise or escapist nostalgia? What can be considered an archive? How are artists using the archive to imagine new futures? What new techniques are being developed by archival scientists amidst an information explosion? Can digitisation ever supersede the physical experience of archival ephemera? When will archives containing stolen objects ever relinquish their contents to rightful custodians, and what may this look like?

Some potential topics to be considered include:

— Writing by artists and historians currently conducting archival research
— Features of decolonial artistic projects engaged with archives
— Profiles of artists working with and problematising archives
— Speculative archives
— Lost archives
— Archival malaise and nostalgia in contemporary art
— Storage issues of collections and archival material
— Emerging archival science practices and processes, including approaches to archiving the digital, classification methods and changes in tagging and describing data
— Repatriation of stolen Indigenous cultural objects in colonial archives
— Queer artistic archival research
— Archival materiality, embodiment and performativity
— AI and the archive

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please send a single pdf to info@artandaustralia.com (and cc eaton@unimelb.edu.au) which includes the following:

— Up to 200 word outline of proposed submission
— Preferred format: article, conversation (recorded or transcribed), video work, coded web applet etc.
— Up to five images with captions (if relevant)
— A one-page CV (or link to CV online)
— Links to previous writing, social media, website or projects

INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Key Dates

— Proposals Due: 20 July 2024
— Initial Drafts Due: 30 August 2024
— Publication Launch : November 2024

Fees

— Art + Australia provides an 80c p/word fee for articles published on Art + Australia
— A fee a equivalent will be determined on a case-by-case basis for all creative or experimental submissions

More information can be found on our editorial overview and guidelines page here and here.

Contact

For all queries and proposals submissions please contact Art + Australia's Managing Editor Jeremy Eaton at eaton@unimelb.edu.au