Revealing impermanence...
Time is on everyone's mind be it in the past, present, future or their variables: transitional, delayed misdirected, celebratory or uncanny time. There is also telling time, inferring time, repeating time, time immemorial, unstable time and allegories of time. Time has been an obsession at the turn of the millennium.
From the 16th century onwards visual records of fireworks, triumphal entries, civic celebrations and spectacles were published to record the moment. The need for collective memory is still evident today. Essential meanings and universal truths are often found in the humble home movie where apparently inconsequential moments of everyday life flicker past us. The rush to create spontaneous shrines to Diana following her sudden death was a significant example of an international collective memory of grief. Conceptual Artists in the late sixties purposely used impermanence as a strategy to undermine the making of the unique art object. Information, communication, documentation was the Conceptualist's mantra. Documentation was often the sole remnant of the "concept." Ephemeral in nature and cheap to produce, the concept was easily transportable and reproducible. Today, the Internet makes all information, all art, instantaneously and globally accessible. Following the legacy of their predecessors, the Conceptualists, some artists use not only the Internet's reproductive and transmission capabilities, but also its inherent destructive capability of memory, as an integral part of the work of art.
Revealing the ephemeral and the invisible is not something new to either artists or librarians.
Information has been recognized as a commodity until recently because it assumed a materiality--chiefly the book and the card catalogue. Libraries are recognized as having the responsibility of repository for information in all its manifestations. Technology has shifted the emphasis in libraries from ownership of information to increasing its accessibility. This issue of Art Libraries Journal invites contributions from librarians, archivists, teachers and artists to reveal or question
"information about art and information that is art" in our libraries both real and virtual.
The Art Libraries Journal is a scholarly quarterly devoted to art, architecture and design librarianship that publishes articles, reviews and conference papers, in particular those of IFLA Section of Art Libraries. International in outlook, it frequently includes contributions from around the world. Further information about the Journal and its parent body the Art Libraries Society of the United Kingdom and Ireland (ARLIS UK & Ireland) is available from their website: http://arlis.nal.vam.uk.
Please send a brief description (3-4 sentences) of your proposal by April 15, 2001 to:
Peter Trepanier
Deputy Editor
Art Libraries Journal
Library, National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
P.O. Box 427, Station A
Ottawa ON K1N 9N4
Canada
T: (613)990-0587
F: (613)990-9818
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Peter Trepanier
Head, Reader Services /Responsable, Services aux lecteurs
Library and Archives/Bibliothèque et Archives
National Gallery of Canada/Musée des beaux-arts du Canada
380 Sussex Drive/380, promenade Sussex
P.O. Box 427, Sta. A/C.P. 427, Succ. A
Ottawa ON K1N 9N4
T:613.990.0587
F:613.990.9818
[log in to unmask]@beaux-arts.ca
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