Applications of energy: A study of artists and entropy in the material

An exploration of creative archival and anarchival processes used by artists to work with the inevitable entropic tendencies of diverse media and materials, this chapter focuses on selected artists’ practices and specific applications of energy to keep creative content and materials active, relevant and meaningful (low entropy), preventing the descent into disorder, inaccessibility and irrelevance (high entropy), and implications for the changing meanings and interpretations of this material over time. Creative practice archives in this text have materialities that become records of place and time and form relationships between archives, performance and re-performance (Lyndal Jones); reveal and bear witness to injustice and hidden stories (Yhonnie Scarce); and remix archival contents to challenge and subvert cultural perceptions and identities (Soda_Jerk). These artists are brought together here because of the diversity and significance of their practices and the particular way each practice tells a story of entanglement with entropy in the material.