Cinema and art as archive. Form, medium, memory (Mimesis-Cinema) - Softcover

As Jacques Derrida stated in Archive Fever, nothing is less reliable or less clear thanthe word "archive." Nevertheless, it is precisely within the semantic openendedness of this notion that contemporary discursive practices of cinema and art have developed, thus reconfiguring the very idea of the archive. The single disciplines involved in this broad field - film and art history, film and art theory, aesthetics, semiotics, philology, etc. - are now beginning to question the concept of archive even in its "negative" sense: in other words, they are now starting to investigate - following Michel Foucault - what the archive is not, or does not seem to be. The archive is not the "library of libraries" or the "encyclopaedia;" it is not "memory" or a "database." In recent years, much attention has been focused on these ideas, revealing new "impulses," "turns" and specific forms of art ("art archive"), as well as highlighting how the notion of archive has gained importance on different interrelated levels (aesthetic, political, ethical and legal) across diverse disciplinary fields.

vincenzo estremo has been awarded at the festival Ice-berg 2009 as young writer with a collection of short sto-ries: Omero e altri uomini illustri, published by Pendragon. he is currently Ph.d candidate at udine university and kunstuniversität linz in the department of Time-based Media. he is chief editor for droste Effect Magazine and regular contributor for Arte&Critica, Juliet and Camera Austria.