EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing
ARCHEOLOGY AS DRAWING “The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological…” Robert Zinn 28 History has a tendency to tell lies. "The history is right perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors." wrote Alexis Guignard de Saint-Priest in 1844. This sentiment, and others like it, are often credited to Winston Churchill and uttered commonly in popular culture as, "History is written by the victors." 29 Churchill represents the ultimate victor who wrote his own version of history about the very idea of who writes the history. It is the ultimate example of an ideological bending of the truth. Someone is always to gain by controling history. In all senses, this story promotes that to know a true history of an event, one is going to have to dig for it. One has to uncover the ideological fallacies that history holds, to do so takes an archaeological process. Within the domain of this research, this archaeological approach became activated through drawing. Using a system of masking and cutting, a drawing can begin to play out the process in which the truth is hidden, offering a conceptual ground to dig into. This physically took the form of vellum sheets layered onto the "folksong reconstructions". Each layer took the role of a particular mode of history-making (see page 78). Using the knife as a tool to cut into the layers, the masks are pulled up, revealing the "truth" below (see figure 5). Through this masking methodology, the ideological negationism, revisionism and reparation of history can be simulated; drawing becomes a tool to uncover history.
28. Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: Harper, 2017. 8. 29. Matthew Phelan. ‘History Is Written by the Victors’ Was Not Written by the Victors. Slate Magazine. Slate, November 27, 2019.
73
