Los archivos son máquinas: una revisión de los discursos artísticos sobre arte y archivo en Iberoamérica, 2011-2022

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of the use of the term “archive” in discussions about visual arts in Ibero-America between 2011 and 2022: Why has this term gained currency in the Ibero-American art world during the last decades? What is it used for? How do artworks function when they are understood as archives? What are the main themes in these discussions? We propose to frame our analysis in four inter-pretive hypotheses. 1) The use of the term “archive” in discussions on contemporary Ibero-American visual arts can be understood through the model of the machine, that is, in terms of certain functions the archive performs. 2) Archives in Ibero-American visual arts have three basic functions: collecting, montaging and mobilizing. 3) Ar-chives are communitarian machines: they emerge from communities, create commu-nities, and require communities for their operation. 4) Archives are time machines: they shape our memory and our future. Understanding archives as machines allows us to see how artistic practices and discussions about archives in Ibero-American visual arts are linked to shared aspirations to come to terms with violent pasts and histories of exclusion, with the need to strengthen public deliberation, and the will to defend democracy. In this region, the relationships between art and archival have made it possible to read history against the grain and to coordinate the work of artists, archi-vists, communities and cultural managers with the concrete demands of social move-ments and their need for recognition. The poetics of archive in contemporary Ibe-ro-American art is oriented towards creating the new, not towards repeating the past.

Keywords

• art and archive
• iberoamerican art
• community
• memory
• archival art