L’immagine d’archivio nell’epoca della partecipazione interattiva

The goal of the paper is to examine the concept of archival image in the era of participatory culture. The text discusses two different definitions of archival image: a) The archival image is a record stored by an institution; b) The archival image is the result of an elaborative process of appropriation and relocation – which usually takes place within the artistic or cinematographic fields – that produces an effect on the viewer, who will recognize the image as such). Moving from these two possible definitions, the paper comes to identify the technical and aesthetic specificities of the archival image in the contemporary media configuration. In the final part two works of the American artist Natalie Bookchin are presented and examined, as examples of a form of elaboration of archival images based on the contemporary media practices.