Small acts of resistance: teaching young and emerging artists sustainable preservation strategies for contemporary creative practice

Abstract

The 'Context and Culture' unit of study contributes to visual arts students making informed decisions about sustainable preservation strategies in creative practice through participation in projects and activities that focus on preservation issues, and through the study of significant contemporary artists, curators and academics who engage with the archive in challenging and radical ways. This article gives an account of the complex nature of creative content created by artists, and the small acts of resistance we perform on a daily basis in creative practice.

Information in the personal collections of writers and artists: Practices, challenges and preservation

“…Nature, artwork and artistic media, works of art seen in person, observation of other people and personal life experiences are information sources that inspire or guide artists' work [16], as do television, films, novels, poetry, non-fiction books, travel, music and personal collections of photographs taken for inspiration [16,17]. Artists often document the artistic processes in the form of visual diaries, blogs and podcasts, thus recording the process of creating art, which they can reuse in later stages of their work [9] or simply preserve memories and document personal growth and identity formation [18].…”

“…Although in general, the value of a personal collection (and arguably the value of any kind of collection) ‘shifts depending on the context of interpretation and who is interpreting them’ (p. 213) [4], the value perceived or assessed by a personal collection’s owner is nonetheless a factor influencing their information management practices [37,38]. For artists, in particular, it is often the perception of the value of items in personal collections that will determine if artists invest effort into strategies for preserving the collection at all [18].…”