Archive, technology, aesthetics

Abstract

This article deals with the notion of the archive in the 20th and 21st centuries, in relation to aesthetical practices that shed light on the phenomenon and the new media technology that changed its preconditions. Examples discussed include artists Christian Boltanski, Susan Hiller, Robert Smithson, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Sophie Calle, as well as theoretical ideas about archives from Michel Foucault and Wolfgang Ernst, among others. The article stresses the need to rethink the archive as well as ideas of cultural heritage, art and literature in relation to new media technologies. The archive in Foucault’s sense forms the point of departure to discuss a change in aesthetical practices on the one hand and in archival practices on the other, which finally is challenged in the age of digital communication.