이 논문은 시각적 질서 및 지식의 생산 문제와 연관해 벤야민의 역사철학적 관점과 미학 이론을 다룬다. 이는 현대미술 내에서 과거를 축적, 보존, 재현할 수 있는 기억의 형식이자 역사적 지식의 새로운 예술 생산방식으로서 그 중요성을 확장해온 아카이브 경향의 미술이 가진 특수성을 조명하고자 함이다. 본문에서는 디디 위베르망이 기획한 <아틀라스: 어떻게 등 뒤에 세계를 짊어질까?> 전시를 사례로 들어, 벤야민의 아케이드 프로젝트와 바르부르크의 <므네모시네: 이미지 아틀라스>에서 역사, 미술사, 시각형태의 지식, 이미지의 인식론적 기능, 이미지사유, 사유이미지, 아카이브 방법을 재고한다. 논의를 통해 우리는 2000년대 들어 본격화된 현대미술의 아카이브 경향에 접근할 하나의 시각을 제시하려 하는데, 그것은 푸코의 개념을 빌려 ‘헤테로토피아의 질서’로 설명할 수 있다. 즉 그 미술을 다른 시간, 공간, 장소, 기원, 맥락, 가치, 속성, 내레이션들이 모이고 축적되고 새로 배치되면서 완결된 의미 대신 지속적인 의미 생산을 촉발하는 다원적이고 이질적인 장(場)으로 보는 것이다.This article examines Walter Benjamin’s philosophical-historical point of view and his aesthetic theories as it relates to visual order and knowledge production. Drawing on these main theses of Benjamin, I argue that his methodological perspective to history and art can be connected with a tendency of the archive based art from contemporary art. Especially Benjamin explored the new methodologies of thinking and writing about the relationship between the past and the presence in “Theses on the philosophy of history”, and applied it to his last research Das Passagen-Werk(Arcade Project). And one of the defining characteristics of contemporary art has been the increasing significance given to the archive as the means by which historical knowledge and forms of remembrance are accumulated, stored and represented. So I try to find a way of understanding the archive based art by interpreting Benjamin’s philosophical-historical texts.
For more concrete discussion, this article also deals with an exhibition ‘Atlas: How to carry the world on one’s back?’ directed by Georges Didi-Huberman. In the ‘Atlas’ exhibition, he focuses on the archival tendency of modern and contemporary art through the perspective of modern art historian and iconographer Aby Warburg. This framework implies that Didi-Huberman refers to images as a group in which they are organised and the different accounts they provoke through their montages – an essential concept in Warburg’s work. Images are always relative and fleeting in Warburg’s theory and ‘Mnemosyne Atlas’.
In an effort to describe history as a kind of counter-space contains the otherness, heterogeneity, and discontinuity, we can discover practices that oppose a dominant ideology or knowledge. According to Michel Foucault, this counter-space is can be identified with the concept of heterotopia. In short, heterotopia is site in which epistemes collide and overlap, creating an intensification of knowledge. Such intensification is certainly not at odds with the practice of resistance, but shifting our perspectives from one to the other orders new insights into the historical materials and images. We can recognize that Benjamin’s intellectual practice and Warburg’s art history project also support the insights. And it seems to be true that current archive based contemporary art provides a practical form to the ways in which history of heterotopic order have been defined, examined, contested and reinvented by artists.