ABSTRACT
This paper presents the concept of function-historian as a possible model for authorship of an art of memory. Elaborated based on a modulation of Peter Osborne’s artist-function and the analysis of The Atlas Group project, Walid Raad’s artistic practice on the Lebanese civil wars, the term is developed as a counter position to the critical model of artist-as-witness, predominantly used in the mediations of artistic practices on recent political conflicts. The confrontation between these two proposals is based on the distance between the subject-artist and a position of artistic authorship. This separation allows the investigation of other formats of presentation of the artist as part of his production and to verify new approaches to autobiographical and identity bonds in contemporary artistic productions.
KEYWORDS:
Contemporary Art; Authorship Models; Memory and History; Political Conflicts; Walid Raad