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ABSTRACT
Archival art has been burgeoning for almost three decades and archival artists can be seen to engage with important sociopolitical questions concerning official history, collective memory, identity and social power through their use of archival records in art. Yet despite this, until recently there has been a lack of research into this important user group and their creative use of records in archival studies literature. This has slowly begun to change with a number of key studies emerging, however research in an Irish context remains significantly lacking. Through a case study of Irish visual and performing arts company ANU Productions, this research seeks to explore this tendency in Ireland – to examine its motivations, strategies of use, social impacts, and the role of collaboration with archivists within this. The research highlights the capacity of artists to transform records in artworks that, through a process of affective exchange and participatory practice, activate archives in ways that create considerable social impacts; opening archives to new and diverse users and creating spaces in which communities participate in the formation of their own historical narratives – to make visible those who have been hidden and heard those who have been silenced.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. See Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’.
2. Carbone, ‘Artists and Records’, 100.
3. When referring to artists’ use of archives I follow Kathy Carbone’s approach (See ‘Artists and Records’) — to mean an amalgamation of ‘archives’ (institutional repositories of collections of records); informal archives (historical materials found outside of institutional archives); and, ‘the archive’ (as concept).
4. Resulting in the publication of a sequence of state reports including The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (The Ryan Report) on 20 May 2009, and the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (The McAleese report) on 5 February 2015.
5. For key examples see Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’; Enwezor, Archive Fever; Mereweather, The Archive; Simon, ‘Introduction’; and Borggreen and Gade, Performance Archives.
6. See for example Bracha, ‘Artists and the Film Archive’; Breakell, ‘Archival Practices’; Carbone, ‘Artists in the Archive’ & ‘Artists and Records’; and Magee and Waters, ‘Archives, Artists and Designers’.
7. Though there has been significant academic scholarship on Irish visual and performing artists within disciplines such as visual arts, performance and memory studies, this has not been matched by similar work within archives studies literature. For example, Houlihan’s, Navigating Ireland’s Theatre Archive, is a tour de force on Irish theatre archives, however it contains limited studies on creative use of records by practitioners and none on such use by visual and performing artists.
8. Callahan, Art and the Archive, 3.
9. Foster, 10.
10. Ibid, 22.
11. See for example Derrida, Archive Fever and Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge.
12. Mereweather, The Archive, 10.
13. Van Alphen, Staging the Archive.
14. Harris, ‘The Archival Sliver’, 84–5.
15. Ketelaar, ‘Cultivating Archives’. See also Carbone, ‘Artists and Records’ on the role of artists in ‘activating’ records.
16. See for example Andrew and Neath, ‘Encounters with Legacy Images’; Bryan-Wilson and Dunye, ‘Imaginary Archives’; de Jong, ‘At Work in the Archive’; Lehner, ‘“Parallel Games” and Queer Memories’; and Kogler, ‘The Art Practice of Carlos Motta’.
17. See Carbone, ‘Artists and Records’ and ‘Artists in the Archive’.
18. Matthew Cornish, ‘Performing the Archive’.
19. See also Solveig Gade, ‘Performing Histories’.
20. Caswell and Cifor, ‘From Human Rights’, 24. For further discussion on radical empathy in archival practice see for example Arroyo-Ramirez et al, ‘An Introduction’.
21. Bracha, ‘Artists and the Film Archive’, 134.
22. ‘Louise Lowe — Laundry and the memory of the Magdalen Laundries’, podcast, Irish Memory Studies Research Network, 2013. https://www.ucd.ie/humanities/events/podcasts/2013/irish-memory-studies/
23. Boss, ‘Online Artist Talk by Owen Boss, ANU Productions’. Academy of Visual Arts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPVG92CjQxM. Such works are comprised of performance works, public art commissions, gallery installations, and museum interpretations.
24. See http://anuproductions.ie/ and https://theserooms.ie/
25. Derrida, Archive Fever, 36.
26. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Video interview with Owen Boss in ‘Room 02, Archive and Process’, These Rooms Website, accessed 1 July 2020: https://theserooms.ie/room02/
30. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
31. Lowe, ‘ANU Productions: Dramatizing the Past’ Interview with Louise Lowe, Catriona Crowe and actors Liam Heslin and Una Kavanagh, ‘Dramatizing the Past’ The History Show with Myles Dungan, RTE Radio 1, 1 February 2015: https://gallipoli.rte.ie/listen/rt-the-history-show-anu-productions-dramatizing-the-past/
32. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
33. Enwezor, Archive Fever, 33.
34. Haughton, ‘A Theatre of Truth?’, 2.
35. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
36. Ibid.
37. Rigney, ‘Divided Pasts’, 95. See also Ketelaar, ‘A Living Archive’.
38. Moran, ‘This is how we begin’ speech Beyond These Rooms Symposium, curated by Lynette Moran, TATE Liverpool, 7 February 2019.
39. Lowe, ‘The Elephant of Revolutionary Forgetfulness’ — Keynote Speech, Beyond These Rooms Symposium.
40. Ibid.
41. Taylor, The Archive, 2–3.
42. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
43. Lowe speaking at ‘Queering the Archive’: Event, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1 February 2020.
44. Carbone, ‘Artists in the Archive’, 45.
45. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
46. Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’, 4.
47. Carbone, ‘Artists in the Archive’, 41.
48. Lowe interview with Karen Till:‘Uninvited Rebellion’ to ‘Collective Dreaming’ David Bolger, Owen Boss, and Louise Lowe, in conversation with Karen E. Till. 10 February 2016, 2 & 7. Lar Joye, archivist and curator, was curator of Irish Military History at the National Museum of Ireland at the time these works were created; Caitriona Crowe was senior archivist and head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland; and Brenda Malone is a curator at The National Museum of Ireland.
49. Boss, Interview with the Researcher. See also ‘Process and Archive — Room 02’ These Rooms website: https://theserooms.ie/room02/
50. Laundry, for example, used 14 community cast members.
51. Greavu, Introductory address at ‘Queering the Archive’ Event.
52. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
53. These Rooms, directed by Louise Lowe and David Bolger and designed by Owen Boss was first performed as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Sep -Nov, 2016. In a reimagined version, performed in June 2018, co-commissioned by the UK 14–18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, These Rooms shared its focus between the civilians of North King Street and the men of the South Staffordshire Regiment who committed the massacre. This production was accompanied by Falling out of Standing, a connected series of three short films in a real-time installation, and Beyond These Rooms an art installation based on the work, which was exhibited in the TATE Liverpool from Jan-Feb 2019 and the National Museum of Ireland in Nov 2019. A digital archive of the works can be found at https://theserooms.ie/home-2/
54. A Fragment of 1916 History held at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.
55. Schneider, Performing Remains, 2.
56. Lowe in Till, From ‘Uninvited Rebellion’.
57. Lowe, ‘The Elephant’.
58. Boss, ‘Online Artist Talk’.
59. Bolger, speech, Beyond These Rooms Symposium.
60. In addition to A Fragment of 1916 History’ the 2018 production used the Courts of Enquiry into the alleged shooting of civilians by soldiers (WO 35/67/3) held at the National Archives UK, Kew. The latter had been closed for 100 years due to the controversial nature of its contents and at the time of the first production of These Rooms was inaccessible to ANU. However the file was released in October 2016, somewhat earlier than their 2017 release date, with the help of archivist and curator Lar Joye — see Lowe, ‘The Elephant’.
61. See ‘Narrating Conflicted Histories’ in Beyond These Rooms — Visitor Histories https://theserooms.ie/beyond-these-rooms-visitor-histories/
62. Laundry, directed by Louise Lowe and designed by Owen Boss, was the second instalment of The Monto Cycle of plays. It formed the centrepiece of a key programming strand of the 2011 Dublin Theatre Festival entitled ‘Behind Closed Doors’ and won the prestigious Best Production Award at that year’s Irish Times Theatre Awards.
63. Lowe has stated ‘When it comes to theatre, I don’t want to think, I want to feel. I want the visceral connection.’ — see Till, From ‘Uninvited Rebellion’, 5.
64. Operating from as early as the 18th century, Irish Magdalene Laundries were carceral, punitive institutions. From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 until 1996, at least 10,000 women and girls were imprisoned in these institutions, run by four religious orders in ten different locations around Ireland. Often confined for decades on end, they were forced to carry out unpaid labour, primarily laundering and needlework, and were subjected to severe psychological and physical maltreatment. See http://jfmresearch.com/home/preserving-magdalene-history/about-the-magdalene-laundries/
65. The Justice for Magdalenes (JFM, now JFM Research) archive consists of 795 pages of survivor testimony and 3,707 pages of archival evidence and legislative documentation gathered and prepared as part of the JFM’s principal submission to the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries (IDC). see http://jfmresearch.com/home/oralhistoryproject/archive/
66. The Justice for Magdalenes Research group outlines how ‘A rule of silence was imposed at almost all times in Magdalene Laundries and, in many women’s experiences, friendships were forbidden. Correspondence with the outside was often intercepted or forbidden. Visits by friends or family were not encouraged and were monitored by nuns when they did occur’ see http://jfmresearch.com/home/preserving-magdalene-history/about-the-magdalene-laundries/
67. Haughton, Staging Trauma, 139.
68. Haughton, ‘From Laundries to Labour Camps’.
69. See Taylor, The Archive; also Schneider, Performing Remains.
70. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 72.
71. Lowe in From Uninvited Rebellion,10.
72. Megan Webb, ‘Review: These Rooms, Shoreditch Town Hall’ in A Younger Theatre, 10 June 2018. https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-these-rooms-shoreditch-town-hall/
73. Cifor, ‘Affecting Relations’, 22.
74. O’Toole, ‘It’s Ireland’s best public theatre, and it needs our support’ in The Irish Times, 28 September 2013: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/it-s-ireland-s-best-public-theatre-and-it-needs-our-support-1.1542665
75. Singleton, The Monto Cycle, 10.
76. Ibid, 10.
77. Emilie Pine discusses ‘making strange’ and challenge as inherent to the spectator’s (and her own) experience of site-specific, and specifically ANU’s work — see The Memory Marketplace.
78. Haughton, Staging Trauma, 126.
79. See Carbone, ‘Artists and Records’; and Cifor,‘Affecting Relations’.
80. Duff et al, ‘Social Justice Impact’; Duff, Sporn, and Herron, ‘Investigating the Impact’.
81. Haughton, Staging Trauma, 123.
82. By Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, on 19 February 2013.
83. Joye, Beyond These Rooms Symposium.
84. Boss, Interview with the Researcher; Lowe in ‘Louise Lowe — Laundry’, podcast.
85. See note 75 above.
86. Faultline was directed by Louise Lowe, co-created & developed by Lynnette Moran, and designed by Owen Boss & Maree Kearns. The site-specific piece was a co-production between the Gate Theatre and ANU Productions and ran at 11 Parnell Square East, Dublin, from Sep-Dec, 2019.
87. The Irish Queer Archive began life as a community archive and is a living archive which constitutes the most comprehensive collection of material in Ireland relating to homosexuality in particular and LGBTQ studies in general.
88. Moran, ‘Queering the Archive’ Event.
89. Caswell et al, ‘To be Able to Imagine Otherwise’.
90. See note 58 above.
91. See note 83 above.
92. For student blogs on their experience see for example: ‘Stratford College Visits’, 2015: https://www.stratfordcollege.ie/news/post/1st-and-2nd-year-students-see-pals-in-collins-barracks
93. The 38 Women project ran from 19 September — 4 December 2016. See ‘Participation and Engagement — Room 05’ in the These Rooms website, accessed 28 June 2020: https://theserooms.ie/room05/
94. Ibid.
95. For example Brenda Malone and Lar Joye of the NMI were official speakers at the Beyond These Rooms Symposium; while archivist Caitriona Crowe and Joye were interviewed with Louise Lowe by for RTE ‘ANU Productions: Dramatizing the Past’
96. Cifor, ‘Affecting Relations’, 21.
97. Caswell and Cifor, ‘From Human Rights’, 24.
98. Interview with the Researcher.
99. Boss, Interview with the Researcher.
100. Rigney, ‘Divided Pasts’, 95.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jennifer Branigan
Jennifer Branigan is a professional archivist and graduate of the Masters in Archives and Records Management programme, University College Dublin. She also holds master’s degrees in Film Studies and English Literature from UCD.