ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the politics of archiving by opening further the relationships between materiality and the discoursivity of absence. A Foucauldian understanding of archival objects as statements provides an operational model for understanding this relationship. In order to distinguish between the included and excluded objects, the chapter employs the performance theorist Diana Taylor’s notions of repertoire and archive to articulate museum memory politics and its relationship to live knowledge. The discourse that the Golden Soldier installation triggered in the local media entailed the open critique of stable notions of memory, community and citizenship, some of which clearly conflicted with their prevalent understanding. The chapter describes the work of Helsinki-based activist artist Kiba Lumberg, which helps to unpack further the interrelations between the politics of national and economic discourses in museum practice through its relationship to a particular local minority group.
