An Artist Unpacks the Archives

• Main Author: Maclennan, Ruth
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 2023
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198829324.013.0030; https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/55354/chapter/430292176

Abstract This chapter tells the story of my encounters as an artist with archives and the ideas and artworks they inspired. It begins inside the archives of the London School of Economics, where I made The Gatekeepers, a film about the archivists and other works exploring institutional archives and performance in the workplace. The chapter discusses films that draw on archival images to speak to contemporary concerns around corporate workplaces and genetics. It then moves on to experiments with archives as containers for circulating ideas, and as documents of live events. Leaving institutions behind, it shifts focus to landscapes as living archives, repositories of occluded lives in the Scottish Highlands, the Kazakh steppes, Crimea, and the Russian Arctic. The chapter concludes with reflections on the climate emergency and the uses of archives for ecological thinking.