Savignano Si Off Fest.
From North to south: the archive as a connective map

2016, Italy. Co-curated with Federica Landi

Marianne Bjørnmyr​ An Authentic Relation Jolanta Dolewska_ Reservoir
Bianca Salvo _The Universe Makers

The hypothesis – that the archive as artwork challenges the notion of history as a discourse based primarily upon chronology and documentation – no longer presupposes a stable and retroactive archive, but often a generative one.

Traditionally, an archive is seen as a physical collection of documents, chronologically organized. These documents are mostly originals and have a historical, cultural or evidential factor, constituting what we perceive as ‘facts’. It only exists in relation to a space, as that is the physical manifestation of this entity – the arkheion.

With the evolution of media and the dissemination of information ­ culminating perhaps with the Internet – the traditional understanding of the archive, its components and the space that inhabits started changing significantly and used as means and medium for artistic practice.

The work of the three artists presented it is significant to understand, not only what can be the status of an archive and of its contents, but also – and maybe more importantly – how can these contents’ authority changes in relation to its subjects. How do these systems of relations with the ‘so called’ factual information are manifested and subverted through the artistic practice? Archives are also potent symbols of national identity, contributing to the conception of a collective truth – either in smaller or larger scale.

Referring to Vilém Flusser that states that it was not constructed as place in which we deposit and recover information, but rather a compilation of timeless truthful information that we must only aspire to remember. This imposition of information over us inadvertently positions us as subjects of an objective world as we rely on these ‘so called’ facts.

However, with the introduction of technology and the consequent creation of an electronic memory, this ideological pressure for the grasping of knowledge has changed. This new type of memory – or new space for memory – allows for a bigger freedom to process the information instead of just accumulating it.