University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Archives are the basis upon which the historical past has been constructed by among other disciplines art history, museology, aesthetic philosophy, art practice, and art criticism. Traditionally understood as a container of artifacts and documents that represents artist’s lives, time periods, and cultures, the archive is usually structured by a scientific and forensic analytical logic based on proof (as in courtrooms), and organized according to a progressive chronology.

Contemporary artists, however, often disrupt this model archive by approaching it as a medium, and thus erasing traditional boundaries between artifact and representation, fiction and non-fiction. An example is Leanne Shapton’s book. Written and designed in the form of an actual auction catalogue, it renders a four-year relationship between a fictitious couple—Hal Morris, a 40ish British photographer, and Lenore Doolan, a New York Times food columnist in her late 20s—trough the couple's accumulated relics and memorabilia. This original book (a novel? a graphic novel? a fictional catalogue?) throws light upon the social and affective life of everyday objects, while suggesting we approach the archive with fresh eyes and forensic imagination.