What Will Be Already Exists

1. Why did you choose this topic?

It emerged from the need to reflect on and contextualize transnationally the 40-year-long history of Artpool, an ›active archive‹ – now a department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest – but founded in 1979 as an underground institution with the aim to share and generate information on local and international art practices. Several similar artist archives have recently reached a turning point in their history and have to transform from private initiatives into public institutions.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

Our book discusses artist archives not as static time capsules, sheer sources of (art) history, or raw material of artistic practices but as self-organized institutions actively shaping their own histories and futures. The chapters of the volume authored by experts of different but interrelated art fields of Eastern Europe explore how these archives persist and adapt to radically changed contexts compared to the ones in which they were established.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

The volume's topic is at the intersection of more current discourses in the field of institutional critique, archival studies, and progressive museology, critical historiography including the feminist rereading of the Cold War East European neo-avantgardes, the institutionalization, and historicization of self-organized curatorial and artistic practices like mail art and artist archives. The authors of the chapters present innovative theoretical proposals and case studies based on new research of primary sources.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

Wolfgang Ernst, Professor for Media Theories at Humboldt University of Berlin, theorist of archives, the author of »Das Rumoren der Archive. Ordnung aus Unordnung« (2002).

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

The book gives a guide to the whole life cycle of artist archives from motivations behind self-documentation and archiving, through the alternative histories they generate, to their inevitable transformations.