Pratiche visive e immaginazione algoritmica/ Visual Practices and Algorithmic Imagination

The rapid rise of Generative AI (GenAI) tools is reshaping conversations about assessment and feedback in higher education. While much institutional attention focuses on detection, compliance, and academic integrity (Cotton et al., 2024), this presentation shifts the lens to educators and how they are actually using GenAI in assessment practice. We present findings from a grant-funded initiative at UNSW that explores educator-led innovation through a Postcards of Practice approach. The Postcards of Practice are one-page, practice-based narratives where educators document their use of GenAI tools. These postcards highlight applications including formative feedback generation, student prompting literacy, assessment redesign, and co-creation with AI. They reveal how educators are experimenting with GenAI to support student learning while navigating ethical concerns, transparency, and pedagogical alignment. Our study uses a qualitative interpretive methodology, combining thematic analysis of the postcards with follow-up interviews. The analysis draws on theoretical frameworks including feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018), dialogic assessment (Nicol, 2010), and new paradigm feedback design (Winstone & Carless, 2020). We also apply institutional and national GenAI guidelines (Liu & Bridgeman, 2023; Perkins, 2023) to surface shared values such as authenticity, inclusivity, and responsible innovation that guide educators’ decisions. The aim of this study is to explore how educators are experimenting with GenAI in assessment and feedback, and to capture their emerging practices and reflections through the Postcards of Practice initiative. The central research question guiding this work is: How are educators integrating GenAI into assessment and feedback, and what opportunities, challenges, and support needs arise from these practices? This work advances Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) by providing empirical insights into how GenAI is actually integrated at the coalface of teaching. Educators describe how GenAI supports more frequent, personalised feedback and builds student agency in learning. At the same time, they raise concerns about over-reliance, AI hallucination, and the need for clear pedagogical scaffolding. These reflections point to the need for professional development that is discipline-sensitive, responsive, and grounded in practice. The postcard approach also functions as a professional learning intervention. It prompts reflection, encourages cross-disciplinary dialogue, and helps build a local community of practice around GenAI use. Through this model, we demonstrate an innovative and scalable method of capturing and supporting TEL innovation in real time. The findings suggest GenAI is prompting a rethinking of assessment: from summative, compliance-driven models to more transparent, formative, and student-centred designs. Educators begin to embed feedback literacy, ethical AI use, and critical prompting into their teaching, with clear implications for program-level assessment and graduate capability development. To strengthen clarity, we propose a concise diagram mapping the emerging practices captured in the postcards against the theoretical frameworks of feedback literacy, dialogic assessment, and new paradigm feedback design. This visual representation illustrates how practical insights align with, extend, or challenge these frameworks, making the study’s contribution accessible across diverse tertiary contexts. This proposal offers exemplary innovation in TEL by foregrounding bottom-up, practice-led experimentation with GenAI. It is grounded in strong theoretical frameworks and applicable across diverse tertiary contexts. The Pecha Kucha format will present key insights through rich visual storytelling, including excerpts from the postcards themselves. We conclude by proposing future directions for research and institutional strategy, including how to embed GenAI into assessment ecosystems in ways that enhance learning, uphold integrity, and empower educators to lead digital transformation from within.

This research was carried out to examine the effects of active learning methods, which take the information away from memorization and make it applicable in daily life, on the achievement, attitude and self-efficacy of the ‘Contemporary Art Practices’ course taken by the undergraduate students. In the study, single group pretest-posttest experimental design, which is one of the quantitative research approaches, was used. The research was carried out on 15 students studying at the 1st and 2nd Grades of Izmir Katip Celebi University in the fall semester of 2019-2020 in Turkey on the pandemic process. Contemporary Art Practices course was conducted by using active learning methods 'brainstorming, demonstration, speech ring, story creation and Phillps 66'. In this study, 'Contemporary Art Practices Course Achievement Test', 'Attitude Scale' and 'Self-Efficacy Scale' developed by the researcher were used as data collection tools. In the study, it was examined whether the data obtained had a normal distribution. For this, Shapiro-Wilk test was used. Relationship sample t-test was used to compare the data obtained before and after active learning activities. Analyzes were made using statistical program. The results of the research are that active learning methods have a significant effect on the achievements, attitudes and self-efficacy of the ‘Contemporary Art Practices’ course that the undergraduate students take via distance education.

This research project is concerned with jewellery as portrait. The portraits created are not mimetic nor do they necessarily refer to a specific model but are created to produce an effect upon the wearer and viewer. This effect is intended to rupture conventional ideas of portraiture. The portraits created are not what they seem and are linked to contemporary arts theory and practice in that they address pressing concerns: questions of subjectivity, portraiture, appearance and jewellery. Portraits in the twenty first century are diverse and can range from the most abstract representation to detailed life like, mirror images. They can be self-portraits, representations of once living or living person's, refer back to historical art practice and master paintings, or they can he constructed in the imagination of the artist, real or fictional. The portrait is at the forefront of exploring ideas of self in contemporary arts practice and has a multitude of possibilities, but always they emphasize the human presence and narrative. The aim has been to create jewellery that draws from the Surrealist technique of automatism, James Ensor and masks. Firstly, automatic drawing (specifically automatic drawing as a way to re-interpret portraiture) is examined in this studio based practice by creating wire faces which are produced in a manner that references Surrealist practices. Secondly, the work of James Ensor and others is examined in order to define how artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's had considerable impact on conventional portraiture and the place of the mask to this end. Thirdly, masks are investigated because of the way artists used them to help dismantle portraiture in the twentieth century and the use of the mask freed them from the constraints of realism and broadened artistic language. Finally, Freud's notion of the unconscious is introduced as part of portraiture and jewellery. The Surrealist technique of automatic drawing, the mask, the theory of the unconscious and the art of James Ensor all disrupt the traditional ideal of the portrait as a realistic representation of the sitter/model, presents the self as multiple and a performance that is disrupted by the unconscious. In this project, this shift is examined through theories of the self and the response of art theory and practice to these ideas. Prior to the advent of the twentieth century, the self was basically considered as a something that could be worked upon. In other words, individuals could consciously work towards developing themselves to a particular end; better person, more moral, kinder and so on. This was, and often remains, the basic tenet of education and self-help programs. In terms of portraiture, the image could be a mirror image of the sitter/model or a representation of what the sitter/model thought of themselves: heroic, beautiful, young. Either way, the aim was to capture the sitter in a moment for perpetuity. However, this view of the self as the result of a conscious program was challenged: firstly by the work of Freud in the early twentieth century, and later by continental philosophy. In particular, Freud's notion of the unconscious contributed to a different understanding of the self. This idea had profound effects upon art theory and practice, including that of portraiture. The aim of this current project is to consider this notion in relation to more contemporary beliefs of the self and to develop a practice of making portraits as jewellery objects that seek to reference the unconscious in order to contribute to the displacement of the ideal that the self is the end product of a conscious effort. This aim is intrinsically ethical as it allows for the disruption that the repressed causes. It also promises to develop jewellery objects that while ostensibly portraits, make reference to the repressed content of the sitter/model. The mask has been chosen as a marker of this type of event not only because masks are traditionally changeable and offer a disguise but, because of their relationship to the unconscious. The mask shows us that we are bound by psychological and social constraints: by the masks of convention. This research is linked to contemporary arts practice by continuing to explore complex and evolving issues of self. It investigates the human face and its artistic rendering which remains central to contemporary arts practice. Finally the work that is created is discussed and the journey that has been charted and the influences that initiated the work to the current position. The conclusion, in defining the work, finds the links between the series and points to possible future directions.

As a species of hunter and gatherer, we as humans are driven to collect things that we can use to sustain our lives, but once the intrinsic need of this process is met, animals of all sorts will collect objects for other purposes. To the contemporary artist, this innate sense of object envy or the desire to collect has become a driving force behind much contemporary art practice and is firmly posited in art theory. Patterns are emerging within collecting processes that have become templates for unique styles of representation, be they conceptual or practical. This research probes beneath the surface of artistic practice in relation to collected object inclusive artistic practice in the search for a model to explain the phenomena which has become more prevalent over the past century. The historical discourse of object collecting, classification and display from the Medieval Reliquary, cabinets of curiosities, early museums and the modern and contemporary museological frameworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries forms the basis of this research. It is hypothesized that this historic continuum of collection processes has generated culturally and socially influenced object interaction behaviours that underpin the manner in which humans collect, classify and display objects. These historically informed behaviours have, over the span of history, resulted in a set of codified practices of collecting, classification and display. These practices, which have been repeated over the course of object collecting history, appear to have been adapted and incorporated into contemporary visual arts practice in those instances where artists engage with collected objects. To investigate the resonances of characteristic practices of historic collection processes that can be observed in contemporary collected object inclusive artistic practice, a series of researcher generated theoretic paradigms titled the Butterfly Pin Constructs, has been developed. The Butterfly Pin Constructs consist of five individual constructs that represent key elements of collecting, classification and display which have persisted and evolved since the Medieval period. These theoretic representations provide a platform upon which to discuss collected object inclusive artistic practice and the impact of the legacy of collection processes upon this contemporary phenomenon. This research utilises interview data from four Australian sample artists and the visual analysis of a number of their works of art to interrogate the framework of the Butterfly Pin Constructs and the role they may fulfil within the creative process. The Butterfly Pin Constructs, as embodiments of key characteristics of historic collection processes, are the central framework upon which an understanding of the phenomena of collected object inclusive practice can be positioned. As such, the interview responses and works of art of the late Tom Risley, Donna Marcus, Patrick Hall and Glen Skien, each of whom engage in collected object inclusive artistic practice, offer a sample set of this artistic phenomenon upon which to assess the validity of this theoretic model as offering an alternate paradigm to examine collected object inclusive artistic practice.

The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT model in late 2022, as most Australian universities wound down for summer holidays, elicited varied responses from higher education practitioners, policy makers and commentators that ranged from heightened concern and proscriptive impulses through to cautious excitement about the potentially disruptive, deceptive impact of university student use of AI chatbots (Skeat and Ziebell, 2023).
 
 Generative AI has both transformative and disruptive implications for conventional university assessment practices. Simultaneously, we observed a tension between university teaching and learning imperatives of digital literacy, academic integrity, student employability, and data security and privacy.
 Large Language Models (LLMs) run on deep learning programming, trained to process data in a way modelled on human brain cognition, to generate human-like responses to natural language prompts. Generative AI can answer and compose questions, write narratives, summarise documents, and construct essays, reports, reviews etc, and perform reflective writing capabilities (Li et al., 2023). Importantly, generative AI performs these tasks with substantially different degrees of accuracy, biases, and relevance potentially with each prompt.
 
 These dynamic and iterative learning abilities have significantly, sometimes imperceptibly, compromised the integrity and reliability of conventional university assessment types. Moreover, generative AI is improving incrementally, increasingly integrated into everyday software, platforms and apps (Liu and Bridgeman, June 2023). Nor is it only traditional written assessments that are at risk of disruption and invalidation. AI image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E can produce high-quality, realistic and fantastical artworks.
 
 ChatGPT-like AI models are designed for conversational and dialogic user experiences, programmed on natural and intuitive patterns of language use. Even without any targeted training in ethical, effective and critical ‘prompt engineering’ (cf. Liu, 2023) students can output passable assessment content.
 
 As well as concerns around digital literacy, academic integrity and meaningful learning, prompting, performed rudimentarily at least, blurs the lines between a student’s original thinking (and integration of sources) and machine-generated output. The foundational challenge being in determining whether a student's submission is a result of their applied understanding or the AI's algorithmic capabilities. Yet, this GenAI interactional, iterative user experience can also be harnessed by educators to design, facilitate and assess socially constructivist, authentic, analytical, and innovative approaches to student learning (Liu and Bridgeman, June 2023).
 
 We report on a research project that implemented an iterative, nested, and collaborative assessment redesign (Lodge et al. 2023) as an alternative to a 2000-word Final Research Report due in the semester’s penultimate week. For the redesign, we partially broke the one submission down into three, smaller critical reflections due across a semester. For the first, students used ChatGPT before, and then after, learning a prompt engineering approach (cf. Liu, 2023). Secondly, students reflected on their engagement with generative AI as a collaborator in comparison to their collaboration with peers on a task. The final critical reflection required students to anticipate how generative AI might impact their professional practices drawing on the subject’s key topics.
 
 With ethics approval granted, our research findings are drawn from the roughly 10% of all students (n = 83) that chose the redesigned option. We analyse their three submissions in terms of existing themes in the literature (cf. Skeat and Ziebell, 2023) around academic integrity, digital literacy, institutional messaging and student belonging, and generative AI as ‘study buddy’ (Skeat and Ziebell, 2023).

The purpose of the article is to characterize the phenomenon of project activity - the "crossover point" and its distribution in contemporary artistic practice. The need for such an approach is due to the fact that the culture of arts in public practice is carried out in accordance with the laws of business, in which the commercial component becomes decisive. The methodology of the research is based on the interdisciplinary integration of methods of contemporary culturology and art criticism . The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that the phenomenon of the project activity - the "crossover point" and its actualization in contemporary art practice, due to the growth of mass demand for entertainment and the musical and theatrical project as a new form of synthesis of several types of art, generated by the implementation of new technologies, are considered. Conclusions. The term "project" in the context of artistic practice is understood not only as the result of the original plan but as a unique set of coordinated actions aimed at achieving a particular cultural, aesthetic and artistic purpose. Throughout history, an active search for new forms of artistic creation is taking place to reflect and understand all the changes in reality. Artistic projects have become a logical manifestation of the development of culture. The project activity in the field of culture at the new level "connected" Ukrainian art to world art tendencies, fundamentally changed the picture of the life of the Ukrainian artistic culture. Artistic projects constitute a new form of syncretically synthesized spectacle, a phenomenon mediated by the peculiarities and realities of the world culture of the beginning of the 21st century. In the context of the article, "project integrity" is understood as the intersection of project design of ideas and their implementation ("crossover point"), multisectoral, but oriented to the current today, the future, which reveals the potential and social significance of cultural and creative practice. Creation of synthesized art "crossover-projects" requires the efforts of a group of managers and performers, taking into account market demand for artistic needs, a comprehensive perception of their wide audience, non-traditional approaches to the production of classical works, taking into account the specifics of location. Indicative in this respect is the project activity of T. Filevskaya, art director, curator of many projects devoted to Ukrainian avant-garde art, founder of the public organization "Malevich Institute". Her work fits into the concept of "crossover projects", which corresponds to the main principle - the synthesis of several types of activities: artistic, exploratory, artistic and artistic, with the creation of the event of events.

The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another. The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, Faith Ringgold’s story quilts and Susan Hiller’s ‘paraconceptualism’, as well as less well-known practice, such as the Women’s Postal Art Even (Feministo) and the photomontages of Maud Sulter. Dead (lexicalised) metaphors, unhomely domesticity, identity and (dis)identification, and the tension between family stories and art's histories are examined in and from the perspective of different artistic and critical practices, illustrating different aspects of the feminist uncanny. Through a ‘partisan’ yet comprehensive critical review of the fascinating concept of the uncanny, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice proposes a new concept, the feminist uncanny, which it upholds as one of the most enduring legacies of the Women's Liberation Movement in contemporary art theory and practice.

When engaging in contemporary community art practices, art educators question and reflect upon daily life aesthetics, creating micro-narratives and provoking actions through poesis and metaphors. Performative practices converge in political events using hybrid languages in-between the borders of various fields where educational practices may be generated through participatory research and collaborative art processes. In this chapter we describe several practices and strategies of activism related to art education research by the authors with intention of promoting socially engaged justice through artistic process in the community. The strategies employed by the authors are based on collaborative pedagogical approaches adopted from contemporary art practices and artistic tools, such as collaborative sketchbooks, kilts, drifts, drawing festivals and online exhibitions. These approaches promote shared learning experience and democratic participation through the arts, and ultimately help to develop community cohesion, solidarity and social justice.

Através dessa contribuição, pretende-se enfrentar um âmbito bastante articulado e vasto como o dos arquivos, objetos de amplo debate, através de dois estudos de caso diferentes por história e natureza, o Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione da Universidade de Parma – CSAC – e o MoRE, Museum of Refused and Unrealised Art Projects – http://www.moremuseum.org/omeka/. Dois arquivos dedicados à pesquisa artística e projetual contemporânea, no primeiro caso italiana, a partir das primeiras décadas de 1900, o segundo internacional e italiana, da segunda metade de 1900 e contemporânea. Os dois arquivos estão relacionados por um objetivo comum: a necessidade de conjugar a pesquisa sobre a contemporaneidade através da coleta e arquivamento de documentos do fazer artístico.Palavras-chave: Arquivos Digitais. Arquivos de Arte Visual. Práticas de Arte Contemporânea. Arte Italiana. Arte não realizada. Projetos.Link: http://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/121368/118568

Generative AI (GenAI) technologies are examined through the lens of issues and trends related to decision making. After examining the foundations of the technology particularly related to large language models (LLM), opportunities for GenAI to be used in the decision-making process of intelligence, design, choice and implementation are explored. With its ability to rapidly generate insights, present optimized solutions, and provide detailed analysis of given input, the technology has demonstrated that it can assist and augment human decision making. Although GenAI systems have the potential to transform content creation and human cognition, they also raise issues around accuracy, misinformation, ethics, bias, morality, social impacts, privacy, copyright, legality, and explainability, among others. Addressing these challenges is important to maximize the efficacy of GenAI in decision making.

This is the first book of its kind to examine the development of the confessional subject in video art and demonstrate how it can provide a vital platform for navigating the politics of self, subjectivity, and resistance in society.In doing so, it reframes video art – the most ubiquitous and yet most understudied art form of recent decades – as an urgent socio-political tool that is increasingly popular among contemporary artists as a means of exploring a broad range of social issues, from politics and identity, to the body and technologies of self-representation. Analysing a diverse selection of case studies from the 1960s up to the present day, covering the work of Yoko Ono, Gillian Wearing, Ryan Trecartin, Tracey Emin, Anatasia Klose, and Heath Franco, among others, the book brings together theory and practice to look afresh at contemporary video art through a Foucauldian lens. It also brings the analysis of video art up to date by showing how social media and digital self representation has informed and further politicized time-based art practices. Confessional Video Art and Subjectivityshows how forms of confessional discourse not only play an important function in the construction of subjectivity but also open spaces for personal resistance and agency within contemporary video art. As a result, it offers researchers of contemporary art practice, and media and cultural studies, an updated framework through which to view this constantly-evolving genre and a deeper understanding of wider contemporary video practices. Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity: Private experiences in public spaces examines the notion and prevalence of our contemporary confessing society and its impact on, and relationship to, the visual arts. More specifically, it examines a contemporary confessional video art practice that utilises video-based performance. The book examines how Michel Foucault’s philosophical notions of the self can be appropriated and mobilised in a contemporary confessional video art practice. Additionally, the book will also discuss how Foucault extended his philosophical approach to subjectivity and truth through the examination of how the human subject fits into certain ‘truth games’ in scientific practices of control. These preoccupied Foucault’s later work regarding technologies of the self. By turning to antiquity, Foucault demonstrates how the discourse surrounding Greco-Roman rituals of technologies of the self – and their relation to ‘truth games’ – could be conceived as a potential practice of self-formation for the subject, rather than a purely coercive practice. Through an extension of Foucault’s reworking of power, Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity: Private experiences in public spaces frames contemporary confessional discourse as a less coercive practice by establishing a dialogue between technologies of the self and a contemporary confessional video art practice. As the boundaries between private and public space become increasingly problematised in our confessional society (Instagram, the blogosphere and Facebook), Confessional Video Art and Subjectivity: Private experiences in public spaces posits that contemporary confessional video art gives a voice to displaced subjectivities while presenting a more complex politics of self.

Purpose Generative AI (GenAI) in education brings renewed attention to learner autonomy – that is, whether learners can think and act independently. GenAI offers the promise of learning efficiency and personalization, while raising questions about its alignment with nurturing autonomous learners. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework to investigate the relationship between GenAI and learner autonomy, to guide the design of educational environments that are safe and autonomy-supporting. Design/methodology/approach Our paper explores the multifaceted nature of autonomy across the cognitive, philosophical, political and computing fields, connecting theories such as self-determination theory with reflections on machine autonomy. Leveraging Latour's Actor-Network Theory, our framework aims to elucidate how autonomy is distributed between human and non-human actors in educational environments. Findings Our main contribution is the process of “autonomy budgeting”, viewing autonomy as a resource that is allocated and traded off between an ensemble of actors. Autonomy budgeting works as a guiding conceptual tool for researchers, educators, curriculum designers and policymakers to assess and manage the autonomy trade-offs involved in integrating GenAI into educational environments. Research limitations/implications By re-centering the learner's agency and capacity for self-regulation, autonomy budgeting provides a way to conceptualize and operationalize autonomy within AI-mediated education, and to navigate the complex interplay between human and machine agency in education. Originality/value Our framework develops reflections on the socio-technical nature of educational processes, where technologies act as co-participants rather than neutral tools. Autonomy in education, becomes a multifaceted construct that spans (human) cognitive, epistemic and political domains, and must be considered vis-a-vis varying degrees of machine autonomy.

Abstract: Augmented Human Intelligence (AHI) represents a paradigm shift in human-AI collaboration, leveraging Generative AI, Quantum Computing, and Extended Reality (XR) to enhance cognitive capabilities, decision-making, and immersive interactions. Generative AI enables real-time knowledge augmentation, automated creativity, and adaptive learning, while Quantum Computing accelerates AI optimization, pattern recognition, and complex problem-solving. XR technologies provide intuitive, immersive environments for AI-driven collaboration, bridging the gap between digital and physical experiences. The convergence of these technologies fosters hybrid intelligence, where AI amplifies human potential rather than replacing it. This research explores AI-augmented cognition, quantum-enhanced simulations, and AI-driven spatial computing, addressing ethical, security, and societal implications of human-machine synergy. By integrating decentralized AI governance, privacy-preserving AI techniques, and brain-computer interfaces, this study outlines a scalable framework for next-generation augmented intelligence applications in healthcare, enterprise intelligence, scientific discovery, and immersive learning. The future of AHI lies in hybrid intelligence systems that co-evolve with human cognition, ensuring responsible and transparent AI augmentation to unlock new frontiers in human potential. Keywords: Augmented Human Intelligence, Generative AI, Quantum Computing, Extended Reality, XR, AI-driven Cognition, Hybrid Intelligence, Brain-Computer Interfaces, AI Ethics, AI-enhanced Learning, Spatial Computing, Quantum AI, Immersive AI, Human-AI Collaboration, Ethical AI Frameworks.

This article draws from an AHRC-funded research project on the topic of Chinese borders in contemporary art practices, entitled Culture, Capital and Communication: Visualizing Borders in the 21st Century (CCC:VCB). The research is contextualized in the article in relation to the concept of ‘Chinese-ness’ in Contemporary Art Discourse and Practice, as addressed in the corresponding conference at the University of Lisbon – http://chineseness.fba.ul.pt. The physical and political borders that demarcate the straits of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are signifiers of the identity struggles that they contain. Art practices that address issues of Hong Kong-ese-ness and Taiwanese-ness in relation to the limitations of Chinese borders for defining their sovereign political and socio-historical identities, can, therefore, be considered as border art. Often, such explorations of identity are counter-posed with the presence of China and Chinese-ness as a cultural, economic and political hegemonic force, and ideological barrier. Artists who examine Chinese borders within their work tend to interrogate, represent and, often, contest or counter, the perceived political and cultural restrictions imposed by the Mainland. This article considers socially engaged artistic practices – including art spaces and events – encountered during the research laboratories, summative conference and site visits, which work on micro levels to both interrogate and counter the influence of Mainland China through instigating social undercurrents. I suggest that the combination of politicized theorizing and physically demonstrative or precarious art activities create a form of artistic praxis that works to expose and, in turn, traverse the limitations of border presence or absence across the Chinese straits.

The essay intends to offer a contribution to the archival studies through two study cases that have different stories and diversified nature: the CSAC (Study Center and Research on Communication), and MoRE (Museum of Refused and Unrealised Art Projects – http://www.moremuseum.org/omeka/-.). These are two archives devoted to contemporary art and design practices. CSAC is mainly devoted to italian art and design of the XX century; MoRE is an archive of unrealised works of art from the second half of the XX century till today. CSAC is an archive of paper, while MoRE is a digital repository. Finally both the archives have a common objective: promoting the research on contemporary art practices through the collecting and cataloguing of works of art and items of the design process.