11. Tracing Histories

This chapter addresses the act of tracing as an archaeological approach, to establish a ‘history of the present’ while reading a piece of artwork or performance. Tracing is the act of finding out how something has come to be, conceptually and materially. From its raw materials to its conditions of possibility to its conceptual lines of flight, tracing allows the contours of the cultural artefact under analysis to emerge. A contemporary artwork often poses and reflects upon an issue for the present time, which could be traced back historically to present a longer view of its contextualisation, in order to show historical continuations as well as contemporary permutations. Offering a genealogy of a concept or of an object, for instance, could help shed light on how to read the artwork at present. Foucauldian discussions of the archaeology of knowledge emphasises the epistemic conditions of possibility for a particular discourse. This chapter offers two examples of tracing: Singaporean dance artist Choy Ka Fai’s Postcolonial Spirits and Congolese visual artist Sammi Baloji’s ‘802. That is where, as you heard, the elephant danced the malinga. The place where they now grow flowers