Re-animation and interrogation: Irish visual and performing artists’ encounters with the archive

Abstract

ABSTRACT Archival art has been burgeoning for almost three decades and archival artists can be seen to engage with important sociopolitical questions concerning official history, collective memory, identity and social power through their use of archival records in art. Yet despite this, until recently there has been a lack of research into this important user group and their creative use of records in archival studies literature. This has slowly begun to change with a number of key studies emerging, however research in an Irish context remains significantly lacking. Through a case study of Irish visual and performing arts company ANU Productions, this research seeks to explore this tendency in Ireland – to examine its motivations, strategies of use, social impacts, and the role of collaboration with archivists within this. The research highlights the capacity of artists to transform records in artworks that, through a process of affective exchange and participatory practice, activate archives in ways that create considerable social impacts; opening archives to new and diverse users and creating spaces in which communities participate in the formation of their own historical narratives – to make visible those who have been hidden and heard those who have been silenced.