The Creation of a New Archive. Photographic matrices, open-ended works, and gender in art

The article focuses the art project entitled RE-ACTION (2015-2016), by Spanish artists Su Alonso and Inés Marful, as a highly original generative way of revisiting a series of photographic matrices from the modern age. As a case of contemporary archival art, the project offers a starting point from which a provoc-action can be derived. It signals a form of artistic creation that breaks down the barriers of authorship, upholding a joint system of creation and disclosing potential sources of inspiration for art, while also revealing the latency of its interconnections, interrelations and, above all, its links with gender. Through a succession of actions by the artists invited to take part in this collaborative project, six photographical matrices from the officially sanctioned archives of a victorious western modern age, from the second half of the 19th century through to the early 20th century, have literally been re-engendered (or, paradoxically de-gendered).