That was Then, This is Now

Primary Information was formed as a platform in 2006 with one of its aims having an archival function: “the publication of lost or unpublished material still vital to contemporary discussions”. In this sense, the organisation is indebted to the traditions of FLUXUS and Political Art Documentation and Distribution (PAD/D) in “archiving the Left” and retrieving the past to inform the present. Alongside Primary Information’s exhibition That was Then, This is Now, which explored activist art since the 1960s, the organisation presented an exhibition on the history of the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) from the Vietnam War era at a time of continued critiques of the US occupation of Iraq and its military methods. As with the PAD/D Archive, this exhibition had to live through the contradiction of being within a MoMA-institutionalised space. Was it an example of PAD/D founder Lucy Lippard’s “archival activism” as a critical “Trojan horse”?