Kerstin Mey, studied Art, and German language and literature in Berlin, Germany, and undertook research for a PhD in art theory/aesthetics. After positions in universities in Germany and the UK, she currently holds a Chair in Fine Art at the University of Ulster. There she heads up the research area ‘Art and its Location’ in Interface: Centre for Research in Art, Technologies and Design, School of Art and Design. She is also the Director of the Research Institute Art and Design. Her research is mainly of a text-based and curatorial nature. She is concerned with the situatedness of contemporary cultural practices. Of interest is the role of art in civil society and the status of the work of art. She is working on art in contested spaces and the construction of identities, as well as the interconnections between art and documentation. Publications include: Sculpsit. Contemporary Artists on Sculpture and beyond (MUP, 2001); with Simon Yuill: Cross-wired. Communication, Interface, Locality (MUP, 2004); Art in the Making. Aesthetics, Historicity and Practice (Peter Lang, 2004). She is author of the book Art and Obscenity (IB Tauris, 2006).

Art – Documentation – Civil Society

Where does the urge to document archive come from? Why is it important? The presentation will introduce the approach developed by Interface: Research in Art, Technologies and Design, a Research Centre at the University of Ulster. The relationship between art and documentation constitutes one of its main research foci. Drawing on examples of the Centre’s work, the following points will be put forward for discussion:

• a) processes of making art and their documentation influence each other
• b) the documentation of art / creative processes and their outcomes underpin the validation of art practices as they allow to determine precedents (and their genealogy)
• c) the practices of producing and dealing with archives in which those databases are ‘exposed’ to different forms of significant processes and narrative structuring is social practice in itself. Thus archives tell us a lot about power relations and value hierarchies
• d) documenting and archiving means conscious and active participation in civil society.