In An Archival Impulse by Hal Foster, hes illustrates archival aesthetics by giving examples of three artists. He focus the work of art which sources are drawn from the archives of mass culture, but they can also be obscure.
Thomas Hirschhorn’s work change my idea of archival art. For me, when I hear “archival art”, it is something like a “collection” that is being done by the artist or he/she apposes something has features in common and shows then as one work. But in this reading, archival art is not about the collection but the framework of how the artist sees and connects people, things and places. By connecting something cannot be connected before, it creates new meaning and reveals something are stranded, outmoded or obscure.
Foster says “In a sense all these archival objects serve as found arks of lost moments in which the here-and-now of the work functions as a possible portal between an unfinished past and a reopened fire.” This framework make it possible to see many art works as a archival art. It allows me to think all artists are archival artists in some ways.
When I think about archival artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto came to my mind. He is a Japanese photographer based in Tokyo and New York. At his exhibition “Hiroshi Sugimoto: History of History”, he showed not only his photographs but also his collections that he has collected over the years particularly from East Asia and Japan, and he curated the exhibition. The exhibition addressed “recorded history, unrecorded history, and still another history–that which is yet to be depicted… like parts waiting to be assembled in a do-it-yourself kit”, Sugimoto says.
http://www.japansociety.org/event/hiroshi-sugimoto-history-of-history
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/11/artseen/hiroshi-sugimoto-history-of-history