'The Archive and Critical Theory' is an invited contribution to 'Capturing Creativity: Exploring the Archives of Artistic Practice', a symposium organised by the GSA Archives and Collections Centre, May 2010. The paper presentation covers aspects of critical theory relevant to discourse on the archive. With a focus on artistic uses of the archive, the paper addresses points on a spectrum defined by the archive as indiscriminate accumulation and the archive as regulated and mandated collation. This analysis touches on an idea of the manic archive as a bittersweet essay on the fugitive dimension of life, at the same as it is emblematic of the power of the human spirit of creation and collection in the face of that temporality. This is balanced with a summary of theoretical positions on the archive as a (potentially disciplinary) mandated enterprise, with its own direct and indirect governing tenets. Contemporary artists appear to be making ever more use of archives: for reasons relating to the specific content of archival materials, of course, but also because of the abstract critical meanings which orbit any archive as a form of knowledge. With focused reference to artist Nicky Bird's current residency in Glasgow Women's Library, this talk thinks through some aspects of the prominent role that the archive plays in contemporary practice and in critical theory.

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