Simone Mandl & Petra Gemeinboeck
The Resonance of the Document: Productive Archival Methodologies in the Experimental Arts
The nature of the record has changed. From the map of our physical bodies generated by contemporary anthropometric documents, to the silos of big data and their enactive records of our millisecond to millisecond behaviours, to our habitual status updates on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, we are, as a society and as individuals, compulsive hoarders, obsessed by the documentation of our selves and the record of our present-past. Precipitated by the cloud phenomenon, it is here within the context of the surfeit of the archive, that the question of the resonance of documentary outcomes and the quality of empathetic exchange between the artist, the audience and the record, is ripe to be addressed.
This paper examines how productive archival practice transcends the static storage of the trace and cumulates in a generative translation and transformation of it. Using hybrid publishing platforms and narratives spaces, productive archival practices enable a polyphonic discourse of the subjective, the relational and the experiential voices of a project. The discussion focuses on Mandle’s studio-based research, in which participatory methodologies of enactive, subjective and entropic archival frameworks are tested. Working in phases, with small groups of participants, these projects explore the slip between the fixed nature of the document and the plasticity of our recollection of its creation. Specifically, the paper discusses Assemblage, a transdisciplinary project that generated a productive archive of the material refuse of artists participating in the Underbelly Arts Lab 2013 Sydney, Australia. As a productive model for the documentation, archival and re-generation of exchange between artists participating in experimental arts events, Assemblage addresses new ways of documenting, curating and configuring modes of participatory engagement by activating the material discarded by the artists within a multi-phased, recursive framework spanning installation, curation, photography, data visualization, and e-publishing.
Simone Mandl is a Sydney-based, multi-disciplinary designer working across mediums in the arts, architecture and fashion. She is the co-creative director and founder of the arts collective I Can Draw You A Picture and art director and co-founder of the online magazine Razou. Past projects in participatory art, experimental publication, installation and commercial design have included collaborations with Ampersand Magazine, Sydney Opera House, Serial Space, Performance Space, Reeldance, ABC Radio National, Romance Was Born, The Paper Mill, Underbelly Arts, and the UTS School of Design. She has exhibited her photographic work at Chalkhorse Gallery, collage work at Firstdraft Gallery, installation work at Underbelly Arts, Performance Space and 107 Projects and her curatorial work at Firstdraft Gallery and the Paper Mill. Simone is currently a PhD Candidate in Media Arts, COFA, UNSW and lecturers in Visual Communication at the School of Design, UTS.