Installation: The Great Archive
With support from Kunstfonds e.V., Bonn in 1992-93, I
created the installation ""T": Files out
of the Great and Small Archives" ("T: Akten aus
den großen und kleinen Archiven") in the Ozwei
Gallery in Berlin which focused many of my recurring
interests and included many of the materials which I had
been gathering during the preceding years under "one
roof". I had long been interested in moving beyond
the proscenium space of the "hypertext opera"
performance project and this indicated a new direction in
installation as well as in performance.
This installation contained original historical
archive documents, "text-objects" and video and
has formed the conceptual basis for a number of
installation/performance projects since. Influenced by
use of the Data/Text projections in the Opera
performance, I proposed to limit the installation to the
display of texts in rooms. The installation would include
no images, but would show related texts and documentation
about Memory, History and Biography functioning as
images, as objects and as information. Memory is not only
a question of time, but that of a "space" for
remembrance and archival storage. My interest in the
connection between memory and the archive, which has
since become more and more important in my work has
derived from my years of experience in navigating through
biographical and historical fragments within a computer
architecture. One begins to perceive of information as
spatial. It is interesting that the so-called "Art
of Memory" as practiced in its neo-platonic form in
the Renaissance (14),
at a moment when oral and written culture coexisted,
represents the joining of image and memory in spatial
terms as "loci". As we recollect, we tend to
"locate" our imaging of moments from the past
in specific "memory" places. When we
reconstruct a Memory from isolated moments, separating
foreground from background, our remembering takes on
spatial aspects. As Memory no longer sustains our
identities, we use terminology like
"dislocation", "displacement" and
"dislodging" to indicate our state of
alienation and "hidden" and "buried"
to describe the location of meaningful and often
unobtainable knowledge.
In 1993 I built an object for this exhibition which I
called the "Great Archive" (Das Große Archiv),
in which I attempted to objectify "hypertext"
as a three-dimensional image. A black box approximately
1.5m. high, .4m. wide and 1.2m. long and painted black,
is divided by four lateral sheets of Plexiglas
sandwiching clear plastic sheets inscribed from edge to
edge with layers of finely printed texts. (The uppermost
text layer being the top of the box). The layers of texts
are illuminated from below. The texts were constructed
from the tens of thousands of biographical fragments
which I have renovated from the "Who's Who in
Central & East Europe" As one peers into this
"sea of information", it is as if one stares
into a bottomless well filled with layers of floating
texts in depth. One focuses with one's eyes on any given
text fragment on a given level, as the other text levels
defocus and blur. One's attention might wander to a
deeper or nearer fragment, the eyes continually
refocusing as one isolates and "links" a
related or unrelated name or phrase. It was my intention
here to realize, in three dimensions, a
"hypertext" as a metaphorical space which
contains in compressed form a database of all mankind.
The three rooms of this exhibition are all related to
this object in theme and structure, delineating a logical
path first through the metaphorical "Small
Archive", then "The Storage of Memory",
and finally to the "Great Archive". In the
first and largest room, "The Small Archive",
are found 110 archive documents on the walls and 4 large
text scrolls on the floor. This room represents two
aspects of the individuum:
a) Lists of fragmental details such as addresses and
organizations which were sampled from the "Who's
Who" database and were printed on large endless text
scrolls using an architectural plotter. These scrolls
dominate the center of the center floor area,
representing both an archaic form of writing, seemingly
without a beginning and an end, as well as a sacred
object with biblical overtones.
b) In contrast to these objects implying a collective
history, the documents on the walls of the "Small
Archive" trace the observation, recording and
archiving of mistaken identity. 110 chronological
selections from International Secret Service Archive
document the life and times of a forgotten Central
European historical figure whose multiple identities span
three continents and touch on many of the most important
events of the pre-war period.
In comparison to the collection of hundreds of
individual stories upon which "Who's Who in Central
& East Europe 1933" is based; the improbable but
real life of "T" seems to include a collection
of lifelines and events within one individual. I have
collected over 3,000 pages of original documents from
State Archives in Europe and North America. These
"original" archive documents were digitized and
"faked" by specially developed printing
techniques applied to the reverse side of Postwar East
German archival pages, posing question about the
"identity" of both the subject's personality
and the documents themselves.
In the center space, which is in the form of an elongated
tunnel and which serves as a conduit between the
"Small Archive" and the "Great
Archive" in the last room, we find data presented on
a track containing large hanging plastic cards which can
be moved back and forth at will, containing information
on an international "high-tech" computer firm
and an American church-sect which is pursuing an
extensive worldwide archiving project. "The
Church" has been collecting and storing the personal
data from over 15 Million persons from around the world
for over 50 years in 1.6 million rolls of microfilm which
are stored in Utah in the Western United States in a cave
safe from nuclear attack. Each year 30,000 new rolls are
added and the material is made accessible to the public
at Family History Centers worldwide. This project is the
largest of its kind ever conceived, and as its goal seeks
to collect store, and digitize all genealogically useful
information which can be located before eventual
disappearance. This project was the inspiration for the
creation of the "Great Archive". "The
Company" has developed a robotic Mass Storage System
in which files are ordered and physically moved by a
robot monk/librarian. In the area of the aforementioned
Card Catalog is found a video installation illustrating
the self-destruction of a robotic mass data storage
machine.
This installation built on my previous work in creating a
hypertext from biographical and historical fragments, yet
also included ideas and concepts which have since become
central to my work: text in space: the architecture of
Memory and the use of archival documents in reflecting
the "official" traces of history and memory.
Continue: From Book
to Book, A Journey in the Text
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