Hal Foster- An Archival Impulse

Hal Foster covers the complex and varied concept of Archival works, understanding that the commonality that these works share is a notion of artistic practice as an idiosyncratic of delving into specific figures, objects and events in modern art, philosophy and history. Through this Foster examines varied approaches through the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, Sam Durant and Tacita Dean, which all exemplify how an archival impulse can operate internationally in the contemporary art world.

A typical approach for archival artists can be argued as purely drawing upon the past and cataloguing or organising history into the present, typically exhibited as installations, but with further examination this can be seen as only a small approach to archival impulse art. An interesting point is how the contemporary is enabled to experiment with the information we are presented with particularly how the relatable mass culture can stabilise a legibility that can then be manipulated. Furthering this idea that information in a contemporary sense can appear as a virtual readymade, implying that the ideal medium of archival art being the internet, calls for human interpretation of our interactivity with it.

Foster’s subcategorises Hirschhorn’s works into ‘direct sculptures’, ‘altars’ ‘kiosks’ and ‘monuments all of which engage with their archival materials, direct sculptures tending to aim to reconfigure a message disparate to the original purpose of the archival material, the altars which follow are seen as commemorations which can be seen as holding emotive significance, whereas kiosks are purely informational, and monuments a fusing of both concepts of information and devotion. On the contrary Foster utilises artist Tacita Dean to express the other retrospective of archival art, to pain the human soul and see the archive as failed futuristic visions. Dean looks towards drawing on the narrative of people, things and places of the stranded or forgotten. Foster furthering point through the example of the Denge “sound mirrors”, abandoned remnants of a failed futuristic vision, and Dean’s interest with archival failure. Her works are seen as a portal between the unfinished history and re-opened future. Durant is seen to represents the “theoretical” space between forms, seen as eclectic in his samplings. His work is seen as a framing of the historic of a particular, offering critical perspective and revisions of the past. His further archival developments look at advanced art, rock culture and civil rights, which he collects and re gathers the past to create new views or reassesses how we see these histories.

Foster fuses the approaches of all three contemporary artists to demonstrate the continuum of archival impulses, and advertises the alternative views of what archival impulses may involve in reopening how we see the past.