Thoughts on writing while writing a paper

Approaches on doing art history

 

In order to be a “good” art historian I should be a good historian.

I should be familiar with the history of a certain region or time period and wanting to work on a specific event for example. Then, I would look up archives of documents, photography, found footage etc. and try to analyze how this event was documented and portrayed at the time.


Whereas so far, I am looking through artworks to write about certain topics. I already know the historical time and subject I want to write about, but I am looking for contemporary artworks who are dealing with this specific subject. Of course, these artworks then have the artists stance on the topic implicit. 


For example, I am interested in Yto Barradas “Hand-Me-Downs” (2011) which is a video piece that is narrating a fictional family story. The video material consists of amateur footage by Barradas family when she was a child back in Morocco but also of found amateur footage by unknown families. Among them is also footage of white French families which settled in Morocco. Yto Barrada juxtaposed footage of average Moroccan family life in a village with recordings by much wealthier colonial families. The artists stance and the fact that much more footage by colonials exists because of the price for a camera and developing pictures becomes obvious in that way. 


So, for this piece, the artist worked with archival material, created a fictional story from it and also made a comment on the different life realities of Moroccan and French families life reality at the time. This brings me to the questions: What is the work of an artist? What is the work of an art historian? What is the work of a curator? 


If not Barrada found this footage, but me - what would have come out of my research? Me writing either a paper on this footage or composing a new video piece from it decides whether I am an art historian or an artist? 

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