Editor's Note

Art and Archives in the Digital Age

What challenges and threats does the digital age pose for archives and how is the medium of the archive represented in contemporary art and theory? The radical challenges posed by social media have changed the relationship between users and archives and the role of documents and the status of archives. Wikileaks, Flickr, Instagram, and many others are paradigmatic examples of this trend. They mark a temporary culmination by providing a repository for the limitless production of digital images created by smartphone cameras and shared by anonymous users.

Various conceptualizations of an archive have been formulated, for example, archive and historical a priori (Michel Foucault), archive fever (Jacques Derrida), archival territory (Allan Sekula), archival entropy (Wolfgang Ernst), archival violence (Ariella Azoulay), archival activism (Joaquín Barriendos) and others. This issue contains contributions dealing with the aesthetics of contemporary artistic practices, artistic research in/with archives and studies on the theory of cultural memory media. What constitutes an archive, apart from being an accumulation of documents meticulously organized according to an all-encompassing classification and imposed power structures? How can the archive become a living and activated place from which we can rethink art and its institutions? Could we perceive archives not only as time capsules but also as repositories for unfinished or incomplete utopias or alternative futures?

In contemporary scholarship, including visual anthropology, the sociology of visual culture and social art history, there is a growing interest in the re-evaluation of archived iconospheres from socialist and post-socialist times. Theorizing the notion of the archive itself raises the question of how to undermine and unlearn the imperial legacy of an archive or even activate its hidden potential.

The issue discusses how digital technologies have profoundly altered perceptions of materiality, space, and information. Boško Drobnjak in his essay “Digital Architectural Archives – Aesthetic Reading” tackles the problem of digital archives that have emerged as temporary repositories of architectural activity. Pablo Gobira, Emanuelle Silva, and Luiz Oliveira co-athored the essay “Digital Games and The City: About Reality, Commuting and Gamification”, which provides an insight into gamification of reality. Jovana Tošić in her essay “Digital Mini-Archives: Social Media Users as Curators of an Architectural Utopia” explores utopian potential that is based on digital mini-archives and curating role of social media users as interpreters of architectural history, as well as of the future of architecture. So called non-fungible tokens (NFT) and their implementation in visual arts during the COVID-19 pandemic is analyzed by Maja Stanković in her essay “NFT: An Episode in Digital Arts”.  Vladimir Popov in his essay “The Transformative Role of Digital Tools in Comic Book Preservation” revise the media theories that democratize access to cultural heritage, transforming archives into active sites of cultural engagement and potentiality. And, finally, Daniel Grúň in his essay “Cultural Therapy and Concern for the Archive. The Case of Documentary Video Archives by Tomáš Rafa” explores contemporary artistic ways of archiving and their roles in constructing regional art histories.

Guest Issue Editor

Daniel Grúň

On the cover: Andreja Kulunčić, Collective antimonument “850 Women for 850 Women”, 2022-2024, (photography: Sanja Bistričić Srića).