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13. Anarchive and Arts-Based Research: Upcycling Rediscovered Memories and Materials

Chapter of: (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War(pp. 307–325)

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Metadata
Title13. Anarchive and Arts-Based Research
SubtitleUpcycling Rediscovered Memories and Materials
ContributorRaisa Foster(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0383.13
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0383/chapters/10.11647/obp.0383.13
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightRaisa Foster
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-04-22
Long abstractHumans living in postindustrial societies have slowly realised that the ecological crisis is a crisis of our culture. Therefore, to address the ecocrisis, we need to understand our place as humans in a radically new way. We cannot continue to elevate ourselves above the rest of nature and exploit other lives in pursuing just our own interests. Archiving is one example of the human tendency to conquer and control culture and knowledge. Anarchiving has been thus suggested as a counteract that welcomes transformation and reciprocal knowledge-creation in multiple complex relations between different times and spaces and between people and the more-than-human world. In this chapter, I ask how arts-based research can be understood as a practice of anarchiving that challenges the assumptions of novelty and originality in art and in life. By applying contemporary art’s philosophy of (un)doing the existing unsustainable structures and values, it is possible to imagine more sustainable art-making processes and to adopt sustainable orientations towards life more generally. As example, in this chapter, I describe how I upcycled rediscovered materials in my art (drawings, videos, and sound artworks) instead of starting from mental (genius) ideas and raw (virgin) materials―an approach that allows for complex meanings to emerge in-between the materials and memories.
Page rangepp. 307–325
Print length19 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Raisa Foster

(author)
Associate Professor at University of Eastern Finland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2661-6041

Raisa Foster is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher living and working in Tampere, Finland. She holds the title of associate professor in social pedagogy at the University of Eastern Finland and dance pedagogy at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She investigates current social and ecological issues through dance, drawing, video art, and writing. The starting point of her artistic and philosophical research is human’s bodily relationship with the world.

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