Camera Austria International 163 | 2023

For many artists, part of their work is how to handle their archives or those of others. In reconsidering underlying practices of selection and presentation, they question them, shed light on their inherent power structures, and probe the gaps in storage to identify thematic developments and open them up to discussion. The current issue of Camera Austria International takes these considerations as its point of departure to focus on artistic approaches dedicated to the wide range of functions and uses of (image) archives.

Based on its artistic research practice, the WERKER COLLECTIVE has distilled a contribution to QUEER REPRODUCTION from its AMATOR ARCHIVE (2009–ongoing) that poses the question: “How could the archive be transformed from being a tool of domination at the service of patriarchy to supporting intersectional and intergenerational processes of personal and collective self-determination?” The focus here is on self-organized, radical ways of working, as well as queer ways of life, bodies, and hxstories; the collective “opposes a patriarchal understanding of reproduction that sustains the current status quo, based on private property, inheritance, and the passing on of privilege. We claim, ‘Let’s make books, not babies!’”

Akinbode Akinbiyi has also created a work from the photogra­phic archive he has been amassing for decades. He focuses on vernacular situations in the Global South and analyzes the (de-)colo­nial implementation of photographic images over the past two hundred years, including institutional archival practices. Akinbiyi probes into questions of visibility and writes: “I constantly question my stance in the flow [of everyday life]. Is there still this northern hemisphere privileged gaze?” What happens to those “who wander in the other direction?” They “take pictures of their tortuous journeys to the promised land. Right down to moments before drowning, being submerged in the heavy seas of the constant flow. What of these bodies of visual desperation?”

The archive of the performance and conceptual artist Ulay, who passed away in 2020, forms the core of Ajda Ana Kocutar’s text. She takes a look at the beginning of Ulay’s artistic career and parses out how his early preoccupation with photography, in particular Polaroid, shaped his later performative works, and how reserved he remained toward his own archive throughout his life. “Reading his thoughts and memories now, it seems obvious how a difficult relationship with the idea of exhibiting led to an extremely selective attitude when it came to opening his archive to others. Even in his most prolific years, when he would jump from one project to the next, Ulay rarely took the time to exhibit or publish his work.”

Considering Luise Schröder’s multimedia installation She Takes a Hand Herself in History (2015), Susanne Holschbach reveals how the work’s title can be read as a symbol for the complexity and committed approach of the artist’s practice as a whole. “Taking history into her own hands—a powerful translation of this metaphor—stands for a claim to agency, that is, for the ability to act and the opportunity to shape the course of history. Yet it also represents, for Luise Schröder, taking something into one’s hands quite literally, in order to grasp it.” For the artist, a “comprehension” of history not only includes researching and examining material, disclosing it and making it visible, but also reformulating historical narratives in order to make alternative histories imaginable.

Margit Neuhold, Christina Töpfer
September 2023

Cover: Luise Schröder, Public Parcours, 2020, from the participatory online project The Crown Letter, 2020–ongoing. Copyright: the artist and ADAGP, Paris / Bild­recht, Vienna, 2023.

Language: English / German
Size: 30 x 21 cm
Binding: softcover
Publisher: Camera Austria, 2023