Supervised by Rachel Noel, Convenor: Young People’s Programme, Tate; Dr Andrew Flinn, Department of Information, UCL; Dr Liz Bruchet, Department of Information, UCL
October 2021–
Guerrilla Girls, Complaints Department operated by the Guerrilla Girls, Tate Exchange, 4–9 October 2016
© Tate
This doctoral research seeks to examine the nature, significance and collectibility of the traces left by programming and exhibiting socially engaged art practices in the contemporary art museum.
Taking its lead from the recently closed Tate Exchange, this research will be rooted in socially engaged practices to explore how Tate collaborates with artists and communities (especially those underrepresented in museums) to explore where art and society meet across its practices. While these collaborative processes do not necessarily make it into Tate’s art collection, they create and leave traces. These traces include tangible material objects and intangible processes and experiences; they are records of these interactions and interventions, but are not recognised by Tate’s established record-keeping and archival structures. This leaves these items statusless and these moments of practice at risk.
New, critical forms of archival practice centre the record maker, rejecting ‘epistemic totality’ in favour of a model of pluralistic knowledge production and materiality outside of the archive. Can the traces, if archived, extend the life of these practices? Can we think of these archives as a living archive? Can the material continue to be used, researched and reactivated as new forms of social practice? And by whom, how and where?
About Sarah Haylett
Sarah received her MA in Archives and Records Management from UCL in 2014 and is interested in the intersection of archival and artistic practice. Between 2018 and 2021, Sarah was the Archives and Records Management Researcher as part of Tate’s research project Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum. You can find out more about Reshaping the Collectible here.
Twitter @haylett_s