Between Memory and Document

If modernism erased the notion of memory from artistic practice, converting its significance into a register ofpure visuality, artists in the decades following World War II, and continuing to the present day, have endeavouredto revive this dimension, employing the most diverse forms and procedures. With the collapse in valueof the grand narratives that previously gave specific order to the facts and data constituting 'knowledge,' thenotion of the archive - a notion that, paradoxically, evolved more in the modern world than at any other time- has played an increasingly significant role. The archive is the privileged form granted to the accumulationand objective organisation of historic knowledge, and indeed even personal memory. Such archival objectivityis not, however, neutral. It bears the repository of a system of organisation of records and documents bya state, by diverse institutions, by a collection, a discipline, or simply by an individual subjectivity. Artisticpractices of the past fifty years have explored the notion of the archive in such as way as to re-examine itsmeanings, and underlying concepts and concerns, as well as the power over memory that emerges from suchexplorations. Based on an examination of works selected from the Museu Coleo Berardo, Ruth Rosengarten's essaytraces the complex trajectories of the problems these works raise in relation to the potentialities of those artisticpractices wishing to reclaim individual historical memory as testimony: a bulwark against forgetfulness. Pedro LapaArtistic Director, Museu Coleo Berardo