FOR ETERNITY - ARCHIVAL STRATEGIES IN ART

Kunstraum Alexander Bürkle, Freiburg, Germany
8 October 2017 – 25 February 2018

Jill Baroff, Viktoria Binschtok, Hanne Darboven, Peter Dreher, Philipp Goldbach, Katrin Herzner, On Kawara, Nick Koppenhagen, Ingo Meller, Helen Mirra, Susan Morris, Andrea Ostermeyer, Peter Piller, Maria Tackmann, Matten Vogel, Daniel Wrede, Ulrich Wüst

An archive collects documents of historical significance–whether culturally, legally or politically–all of which are chosen, catalogued and conserved. These documents serve as records for both the general public and scholarly research and thus enable societies to continually remember the past. In the 21st century's digital information age, the archive and its memorializing function has gained new meaning, not only as a non-material but also now as a virtual space. We currently find ourselves in a state of continuous generation as we constantly produce new and immeasurable quantities of data. Despite the fact that library index cards are being replaced by apps, and the photo album by the Cloud, the amount of stored data being produced continues to grow.

This has highlighted the distinct need for change and compelled people to instead of merely preserving records of their own existence for future generations, to take control of the flood of data. This overflow of information is something that only started to emerge with the continuous development of available media storage. Therefore, in recent years it is not only librarians, registrars and archivists who have been addressing the safekeeping of meaningful information, but also increasingly software developers, who are seeking solutions for the problem of the unstoppable growth of data.

Since well before the digital economy, archival strategies have always played an important role in the visual arts, however, since the beginning of the digital era a new, notably increased interest has arisen. From the cabinets of curiosities of the late-renaissance, through to the end of the 1920s and the cultural scholar Aby Warburg's extensive Mnemosyne Atlas and going right up until Marcel Duchamp's legendary Boîtes-en-valise series - the series features a selection of miniature reproductions of his works in cases and thus removed the need for a catalogue of works; what these particular examples from art history demonstrate, is how through collecting, saving and archiving the visible–that which the image shows–meaningful arrangements are implied.

Even today, a large proportion of artistic archives invest in a variety of types of content, such as individual works, materials and objects, but also increasingly digital data detailing the individual's life or artistic undertakings in order to to preserve them, arrange them and to allow them “to be seen”. Furthermore, this type of work also reflects a confrontation of the principle memorializing function of imagery and the resulting process of perception, within which ultimately the viewer's own memories and associations are consciously taken into account. While it is important for us to consider our entire collection and to take into account the various ideas represented within it when selecting works for an exhibition, we also wanted to restrict ourselves to representing younger artworks.

The art production of the last 20 years has demonstrated a keen interest in archival strategies not only for example in photography, which is a medium typically associated with memorializing, but also in painting and sculpture. In addition to this, it is also noteworthy that despite the possibilities of and many digitally created and stored works, more and more images are once again being produced using manual or analog processes, that means drawn, printed, sculpted or engineered. This has led to an artist's choice of materials once again becoming a central focal point, and raises questions about how artists create imagery that should be understood as visual systems, rather than purely as records per se.

SUSAN MORRIS: SOME NOTES ON THE WORK FOR ‘ARCHIVAL STRATEGIES’ SHOW

For five years, from 1st January 2010 to December 31st 2014, I wore an Actiwatch, a scientific/medical device used by Chronobiologists, that recorded my sleep/wake patterns plus the levels of ambient light in my immediate environment.

Prior to this, I had been using year planners as templates to track various personal activities and traits, such as my spending patterns, mood swings etc. I was interested in the way that digital technology might allow me to trace something more involuntary; a bodily unconscious. I also became aware of the relation between digital media and Jacquard technology (one of the first binary systems), and this led me to the Jacquard weavers in Belgium who were able to generate tapestries directly from the recorded data.

The tapestry you have in Freiburg, SunDial:NightWatch_Light Exposure 2010-2012 (Tilburg Version), 2014, shows the amount of light (natural and artificial) that a subject (me) living in a northern European city during a period of late capitalism was exposed to over a period of three years. It is very accurate, with values recorded for every 1,440 minute of each day.

Making recordings for long time periods draws attention to repetitive rhythms and activities that often extend beyond a single year. Furthermore, things are also recorded that are not directly connected to me but to external things such as the seasons. It is apparent, however, that the subject being tracked is nevertheless governed by clock and calendrical time - even when you are only looking at recordings of light. The piece is therefore a kind of diary of a body embedded in a particular socio-cultural environment.

I configured the recorded data so that time travels upwards, (1) beginning at 00:00 hrs on 1st Jan 2010 at the bottom left hand corner of the tapestry. (2) The recording ends at 24:00 hrs on 31st December 2012, at the top right hand corner of the piece - so it’s as if time moves forward across the piece in a kind of coiling motion. (3)

Night occupies the bottom third of the tapestry, with evening along the top section. Midday runs across the centre of the piece.

There were 1,096 days in the three-year recording period (2012 was a leap year). These are organized chronologically going from left to right across the tapestry, (4) with the individual days marked vertically, like lines of chalk down a blackboard.

I used a black warp thread, with different coloured weft yarns to represent each day of the week:

Monday - Dark blue
Tuesday - Yellow
Wednesday - Purple
Thursday - Green
Friday - red
Saturday - Light blue
Sunday - Natural

1st Jan 2010 was a Friday.Of course, the weft goes right across the loom but it is covered or revealed by the warp according to the levels of recorded light - i.e. it is completely obscured during the periods of darkness. (5) I like the way the tapestry becomes almost monochrome when viewed at a distance, as if it has been bleached by the sun. (This also evokes a photogram - ie an image made by light.)

You can see the changes of light intensity across the seasons as the recording goes from January through spring into autumn and winter - passing through three summers. (6) Note that the natural light follows a full curve in the evenings but is flatter in the mornings because the curtains blocked it out - except in the summer of 2011 when I was on holiday and the room had only thin blinds!

You can also see the difference between natural (7) and artificial (8) light. And you can see when I travelled into a different time zone during two trips to New York City - in 2010 and 2012. (10)

I had to download the recorded data every three weeks – something I forgot to do on a few occasions. The resulting 'zero data' shows up on the tapestries as 'blanks' where I reversed the weave, so that what is usually behind - ie the back or underneath of the tapestry - was brought to the front. The most prominent of these blanks - the two large white stripes / parallel lines intersecting the image in the centre of the tapestry – was caused by a kind of memory loss both literal and metaphorical, during the stressful process of moving house in 2011. (11)

You can also see the few minutes it took to download the data, when again nothing is recorded, and which show up on the tapestry approximately every 21 days, usually in the evenings, as small vertical lines or ‘blocks’ of whitish warp thread.

Living most of the time in London I am exposed to a lot of light pollution, plus I tend to work late into the night under electric lighting. In this way the time for sleeping is slowly eaten up by work and social pressures. You can see this in the part of the tapestry that records the night (9) – only about a third of my time is spent in what the philosopher Hannah Arendt has described as ‘the darkness of sheltered existence, [the] twilight that suffuses our private and intimate lives.’ Without this time or space for privacy, as Jonathan Crary has argued in his recent book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, the ‘singularity of selfhood’ is at risk.

Having ‘explained’ the image, I want to point out that - despite the fact that the work is generated from real data and is an exact transcription / rendering of an actual recording - it is important to me that the work doesn’t give itself up too easily - you have to press on it to get some understanding of what it might actually ‘be’. Indeed, it is critical that the image is first and foremost fairly obdurate; mute. The viewer has to contend with his or her reaction to a thing that conceals its origin and evades being reduced down to a single interpretation or particular meaning. For example, the piece deliberately nods at pictorial abstraction - it is stretched like a painting - while also belonging to a body of work that is preoccupied with ideas around the indexical mark and the trace in relation to digital technology. Finally, two key works influenced the aesthetic of these pieces: the score for John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 5, 1952, and Albrecht Dürer’s Dream Vision of 1525.

Endnote - I did a Google translate of a review from the ERES No Secrets show, which I really liked: