Archaeology of the contemporary
I came across the following excerpt from James Clifford's The Predicament of Culture, reproduced in Interpreting Objects and Collections, Susan Pearce (ed), Routledge (1994):
Clifford is writing about the way we value objects in collections and notes how we find "intrinsic interest and beauty in objects from a past time" and how we assume that "collecting everyday objects from ancient (preferably vanished) civilisations will be more rewarding than collecting, for example decorated thermoses from modern China or customised T-shirts from Oceania...Temporailty is reified and salvaged as origin, beauty and knowledge". (261-62)
This pretty elegantly sums up, I think, a central issue for the practice of archaeology in contemporary contexts. Of course, an interesting question is whether shifting the focus onto the contemporary for the purposes of collection can constitute merely another order of reficiation--the reification lying more in the system of collection than the things collected.
Labels: archaeology, theory
posted by Pat Cooke @ Wednesday, October 22, 2008
1 Comments:
Interesting... Is reification avoidable in a discipline which traditionally is focused on 'things'?
To take the long leap - are we embarking on a flawed attempt at a non-thing-based phenomenology.
The central issue with this quote I feel is the value:time or beauty:time matrices. In the Romantic tradition, value/beauty was found in those things that 'showed' the passing of time - especially ruins. This interaction has been somewhat complicated given our abilities to simulate 'age' in objects. (ref. Baudrillard)
I feel the attachment to this 'time made manifest' phenomenon has more to do with affirmation and resilience. It's both about being part of something broader/bigger than one's own immediate temporal awareness - and also something to do with the 'chance' or 'luck' of survival. It's a joy to find something that despite it being cast into oblivion has re-entered your or our world.
The difference with archaeology today is that we actively seek the preservation/conservation of things - thereby undermining the accruing of value of those things which survive oblivion.
But the issue of contemporary things and contemporary archaeology is critical here. Issues of banality, disposability, obsolesence all feature here. Rather than an intellectual argument - I pose an example to ponder...
On YouTube there are more and more TV show theme montages loaded everyday. Just yesterday I was sent the opening of CHiPs. These programmes (and associated paraphenalia) likely were subjected to the same concerns as our contemporary banality (though arguably less acutely). And they are seen as having value/beauty of a sort.
I'm losing intellectual steam here - but what I'm wondering is whether what we need here is a new articulation of aesthetics and values. A beauty that is not tied into the out-moded paradigms. Or is this a danger of drifting into bohemian relativity (after Benjamin)?
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