Excavating the archive: exchanges between artists and their photographers

Excavating the Archive focuses on the documentation of live art through interviews with artists and their photographers or film-makers and reflects on the ways in which bodies of photographic work have been made manifest as representations of the live within exhibitions. The exhibition and publication Live Art on Camera (John Hansard Gallery, 2007, SPACE, 2008) positioned documentation of artists’ performances within the context of the archives of the photographers or filmmakers who had recorded their work. In this way seminal performance documentation from artists including Gutai, Adrian Piper, Carolee Schneemann, Marina Abramovic, Ana Mendieta amongst many others was seen in relation to the ongoing practices of the corresponding photographers and filmmakers, Kiyoji Otsuji, Rosemary Mayer, Peter Moore, Babette Mangolte, Hans Breder, Kurt Kren amongst others. A series of interviews enabled insight from both sides of the camera. These conversations opened up discussions about the actuality of the lived experience, the act of recording and being recorded, the physical processes mechanics inherent in the making of the work and the ways in which these images subsequently navigated paths both through the historical and commercial canons of art. Excavating the Archive re-evaluates this approach within the present and tracks the circulation of specific images within contemporary discourses