Displacements of the intimate archive: memory and affective reactivation in contemporary artistic practice

Abstract

The study explores how contemporary artistic practices problematize the personal archive by shifting it from the intimate realm to the collective experience. Through the analysis of the self authored installation called Inhabiting Memory, which moves domestic objects from the private space to the exhibition space, it explores the capacity of art to activate shared memories. Thus, this displacement operates as a gesture that turns the everyday into an expanded archive, where the affective dimension precedes the articulated discourse. From a research-creation methodology, we use a situated approach that articulates theory and practice from the workshop, which allows us to avoid interpretative reductionism. The analysis allows us to understand these archival practices as territories of affective reactivation that generate situated cartographies and alternative meanings. In this way, the installation is configured as a space where memory, identity and displacement converge, activating new thresholds of perception in the spectator.