This talk opened up a wider understanding of the concept of the “archive”: to consider how the archive, imbued with the authority to validate and authenticate narratives and accounts, has been appropriated and fuelled what has come to be recognised as a genre of artwork (“archival art”, “the artist as archivist”). Just in the edition of the Singapore Biennale in 2016, about a third of the artworks presented dealt with documented material and historical narratives in ways that draw from, implicate and/or present archives.

These art practices variously employ the archive as medium and method, presenting reinvented forms of what it can be, in some instances, content that blurs the boundary of fact and fiction. “Archival art” incorporates new and/or contrasting perspectives, shifts and unsettles accepted knowledge and registers of meaning, and importantly, more than to merely disrupt, it seeks to institute and legitimise new orders and understandings, and new bodies of knowledge.

In this talk, Chu Yuan discussed a range of artworks, focusing on Southeast Asia, to consider the ways in which artists and artistic agencies, have been variously reworking, reforming and mobilising notions, forms and applications of the archive and the archival; and draw some connections between these practices with the larger social and cultural contexts that they act within.