1

The Post-Archive Condition Sven Spieker

The Post Archive Condition We live in the post-archive condition. By this I do not mean to say that there is no creation of documents, no gathering or saving of information, no storage, on the contrary: I mean to say that these activities have ecome so u i!uitous and "idespread that "riting a te#t and archiving it$ or shooting an image and storing it in a separate location %or sending it to a place far a"ay& have ecome activities that run virtually parallel to each other, eliminating the temporal %and often spatial& gap that has historically separated one from the other, a gap that is generally thought to define the archive. 't one time, archives "ere defined as depositories for documents that had een "ithdra"n from circulation. In the current age, such "ithdra"al is all ut an impossi ility: today, nothing seems more difficult than to dura ly e#punge information. 'nd the very notion of a document is in !uestion at a time "hen "e have all ut a andoned our trust in the authenticity of traces, the elief that archives accumulate y accident, and that chance can successfully under"rite an archive(s claim to o )ectivity.1 In the post-archive age, a document may e composed and saved in an archive %on the computer in a section reserved for ackups$ or on separate servers in cloud computing& at the same time, collapsing t"o formerly distinct archive operations: "riting and saving. *oday to "rite is to save, is to create an archive. 'nd so "e might ask, "hat does it mean to distinguish et"een the recording, data mining, registering, and scanning that goes on all around us, on the one hand, and the archive as a separate institution

,-arkheion./ devoted to the storage of documents that no longer circulate, on the other0 With today(s glo al data streams, the difference et"een storage and circulation--the distinction that defined the traditional archive at its very core--is not so easily dra"n. *o e sure, old fashioned archives reserved for the storage of documents do e#ist, ut they e#ist alongside a very different practice of information processing - one virtually defined y its lack of concern for institutional and technical oundaries, oundaries that archives have traditionally enforced very strictly. While information storage has ecome a topic of u i!uitous importance, it is no" less a matter of storing information in one place than of distri uting it across a net"ork of nodes %servers$ computers$ desktops$ mail programs, etc.& et"een "hich this data moves freely, and "here it is also stored at the same time. 'nd so, "hat I "ant to call the post-archive condition is neither a discrete institution %the traditional arkheion&, nor a set of technical protocols that are specific to a particular medium or agency, ut rather a net"orked flo" of information that collapses the functions that traditional archives had kept carefully separated. *he traditional archive functions hierarchically and vertically: hierarchically, in that it is founded on principles of order, punctiliousness, and accuracy that have their asis in a set of humanist values %o )ectivity$ precision$ rigor$ progress& that conceal their highly ideological nature.+ 'nd vertically, in that it is uilt on an archeological model, "here y each of its layers corresponds to a specific -slice. of the past. 's I sho" elo", in the post-archive condition, such stratification is given up in favor a more hori1ontal archive that functions less like an archeological site than as a screen on "hich different sets of data are collated, processed, remediated, yet also stored. *he post-archive condition gives a name to the fact that today archiving %as opposed to -the archive. as a

technically and administratively discrete institution& is u i!uitous: to deal "ith information is to create an archive of that information at the same time. *his means that "e may need to update the critical tools "ith "hich "e approach the archive: gone are the days "hen archiving "as an afterthought to the production of documents$ no", the production, processing, and storage of information can no longer e neatly distinguished from each other. 's "e "ill see, this has implications that go far eyond the archive(s technical parameters: in fact, at a time "hen the media specificity that "as one of the hallmarks of modernism is a thing of the past, a purely technical %administrative, ureaucratic& definition of archives simply "ill not do. *he post-archive is not defined y technical protocols or set administrative procedures. *he kind of archiving I associate "ith the post-archive condition %as opposed to -the archive. in the singular& collapses the collection of information "ith intelligence gathering, profiling, data mining, and other techni!ues that com ine the collection and storage of data "ith their analysis and use for purposes that range from commerce to policing to military operations. *oday(s glo al archiving, as opposed to traditional archives, not only accumulates data, it instantly analyzes that data and re-deploys it to to create statistically significant su -sets "hich, once aggregated, can e used to create profiles "hich in their turn ecome -targeted. advertisements, terrorist profiles, etc. *he militaristic metaphors here are telling: the origin of this kind of operation--technically, logistically, operationally--is the kind of intelligence gathering that fuels any "ar. 'ccording to Wikipedia, the goal of data mining is -to e#tract information from a data set and transform it into an understanda le structure for further use..2 ' ma)or rift is opening up et"een commercial and governmental data gathering operations that occur in secret

%4ace ook$ the 5S'&, and those that are undertaken in pu lic, say y individuals "ho use social net"orking sites or the internet to collate their o"n archives from "hat is availa le to them there. 6nlike the traditional archive, "hose secrecy "as often a function of its diplomatic and legal status, in the post-archive condition, the secrecy of universal archiving has ecome su )ect to lively de ates, and access to information is the defining issue of the post-archive age.3 'rchiving is every"here, ut the archive is elusive. 7ost-archiving does not need an archive as a single location. ,I8'9:;1: <=>6?/ In cloud computing, for e#ample, a net"ork of servers all over the glo e archives our te#ts and our songs, and this net"ork takes the place of a single inventory or storage place. In fact, given the "ay in "hich sets of data are distri uted across such a net"ork, it may e !uite misleading to speak a out storage at all, as the term seems to indicate a single location "here something is stored. *he cloud as archive - a more parado#ical formulation could hardly e found. <louds are y definition dispersed, their contours uncertain, and they span the glo e. <louds as sites for archiving suggest a formless and non-technical archive %"hich of course in reality it is not&, an archive that is as ethereal as the air "e reathe, and as inevita le as the "eather. In fact, "e do not speak a out cloud-archiving, "e speak of cloud computing, and "e mean y that a type of use of computers that defines itself in relation to a glo al net"ork that is as far a"ay and yet as inevita le and all-pervasive as clouds. @ere the archive effect is instantaneous: "hen "e visit 'ma1on or 4ace ook, our movements, choices, and actions are tracked and immediately analy1ed y algorithms: "hich "e sites do "e visit, "here do "e stay and ho" often do "e click on a certain address. If "e go through security at an airport, our odies are scanned. 9oogle :arth maps the glo e from a macro

to a micro-scale progressively, inventori1ing our streets, uildings, ut also interiors, even e-mail addresses and %perhaps& the messages "e send ,I8'9: ;2: ?B>5:/. <rucially, "e no longer associate the storage of information "ith the past, "ith memory, or "ith archeology. In the post-archive condition, stored information can e used for any purpose, much like the data stored y a computer can e visuali1ed in any num er of "ays. 's I "rite this te#t, the 5S'(s gathering and storage of vast amounts of telephone records in order, as the agency argues, to prevent terrorist plots, have )ust een made pu lic. *hese records "ere archivi1ed not in order to foil specific, and ongoing, activities, ut future ones. >f course, such data gathering and storage occurs in the "orld of neo-li eral glo al commerce as "ell: the records stored y a communications company may e useful for la" enforcement, yet they may also e useful for targeted advertising purposes. Where in a traditional archive "e confront a collection of documents "hose parameters "ere set in advance %no archive can indiscriminately collect everything& and "hose purpose is to help a historian reconstruct the past, in present-day archiving, no such parameters e#ist: to refer to this type of operation as -mining. is odd, since it has little in common "ith the archeological metaphor that has dominated the modern thinking a out archives ever since 4reud. 'ccording to that thinking, the archive corresponds to a layered archeological foundation "hose different strata allo" the historian or archeologist to e#amine the past as the present, one layer at a time. By contrast, as I hope to sho", the post-archive tradition connects and collates practices and documents on a hori1ontal plane, suggesting a plurality of heterogenous elements.

The Archive as Network

*he post-archive condition is not a phenomenon of the last decade or so. 5or is the erosion of the archive that "e "itness today purely the result of neo-li eral economic policies, of glo ali1ation, or the spread of 9oogle :arth. In fact--and this "ill e my concern in this essay--, the archive(s erosion as a discrete operation and its su stitution "ith the archive-as-net"ork and other more distri uted forms of information storage and distri ution has an alternative history: here, the image of the earth does not %yet& e!ual glo al corporatism and surveillance, hinting instead at an emancipatory vision that seeks to connect individuals "ith collectively o"ned and distri uted information "ith the help of technology. In the first half of the +Dth century, t"o distinct critical responses to the archive of 1Eth-century historicism can e discerned in art. 4irst comes the criti!ue y mem ers of the early +Dth-century avant-gardes %?uchamp, etc.& "ho intervene in the most asic assumption of the 1Eth-century archive, the idea that in an archive relations in space can al"ays ecome relations in time. *he aesthetics of shock %photomontage& developed y other mem ers of the historical avant-garde "as another "ay of intervening in the hermeneutic operations that transformed an archive(s documents into an ordered historical narrative. In the mid-1E+Ds, the %anti-& archival aesthetics of shock that characteri1es avant-garde collage and photomontage "ere )oined y another model, one that criti!ued the 1Eth century archive, and "ith it historicism more generally, y harnessing it to a specific type of kno"ledge production. In an article from the early 1E+Ds, the theorist of productivist art and founder of =:4, Sergei *ret(iakov ,I8'9: ;11/ "ants to e#plain the progress made y the Soviet state in transforming reality. @e "rites: -*he )u#taposition, for e#ample, of a photograph of a tiny village on a putrid little

river "ith one taken a year later in "hich a glass uilding has replaced the villageGsuch stunning )u#tapositions force you to radically reconsider the o solete notion of a Hhuman lifetime,( for our century e!uals a millennium in earlier times..A It is clear that the service photography renders in documenting, and cele rating, the ne" reality cannot ecome effective "ithout an archive to supplement it: in order to ecome documentary, an image of the truth, the photograph that sho"s the ne" reality %-a glass uilding has replaced the village.& has to e )u#taposed "ith another %second& image %-tiny village on a putrid little river.&, one that confirms its truth y testifying to "hat once "as$ there cannot e truth in one image alone, only in an archive of at least t"o images. 7arado#ically %and tellingly, for the situation in the Soviet 6nion in the 1E+Ds&, the archive is here not a place for the reconstruction of the past, or for memory, ut a place that allo"s us to e#perience first hand the rapidity "ith "hich that past disappears: y comparing ho" far "e have come already "e can gage, for etter or for "orse, ho" far "e "ill go. In the de ates around documentarism and the nature of facts during the 1E+Ds and a out the role technical media such as film and photography played in the shift to a ne"ly affirmative aesthetics of truth production, the archiveGhere thought of as an antidote to the earlier, shock- ased model of photomontage--played a central role. 4irst, as the replacement of a principle of shock "ith a principle of accumulation$ second as the "ay of replacing montage "ith organi1ation$ and third, as a "ay of turning the artist from a skilled craftsman into a producer of kno"ledge.C It "as in the mid 1E+Ds that the theoreticians of of Soviet 7roletkul(t organi1ation %Bogdanov, *ret(iakov& defined la or as an organi1ational activity that encompassed oth physical and cognitive, intellectual "ork. 4or Walter Ben)amin, as for *ret(iakov efore

him, a crucial part of the artist(s alignment "ith other producers "as the need for the artist to cease eing a specialist "ho relies on his or her skill to produce an art o )ect ready for consumption and commodification. 's an antidote to this evisceration of art(s critical function in the face of a culture industry that can co-opt even the most critical images, Ben)amin suggests that the photographer transcend his speciali1ation and ecome a "riter, so that he "ould e alienated from his original craft: -What "e re!uire of the photographer is the a ility to give his picture that caption "hich "renches it from modish commerce and gives it revolutionary use-value..F In other "ords, the intellectual has to etray his class and move from eing someone "ho supplies the production apparatus "ith contents to someone "ho ecomes an engineer and "ho refuses to supply that apparatus "ith fodder. >nly in a state of alienation from his craft %and class& does the artist turned producerJ"orker discover that his means of production do not elong to him, "hich in turn opens his or her eyes to the necessity for solidarity "ith other producers. I "ant to suggest that one of these -alienated. states for the artist "as to ecome an archivist. 's archivist and ricoleur, the artist no longer produces, he choses, la els, classifies, dealing "ith the fragments of reality and aligning himself "ith other producers. *his is the logic of the constructivist archive, for "hich Kertov(s 8an With a 8ovie <amera 1E+E ,I8'9: ;1+/ serves as an outstanding e#ample. *he film is a portrait of a synthetic Soviet city put together from still shot from several Soviet cities and locations. 't one point in the film "e see Kertov(s "ife as she stands in front of an archive of individual shots %-the city.$ -factory.&, selects them, and splices them together so they can ecome the film "e see. *he city can only e visuali1ed through the archive of individual snapshots of "hich the film is made. *he film itself

consists e#clusively of shots from this archive, held together y the cameraman "ho is sho"n moving a out the city "ith his camera, taking shots from all kinds of angles. We often see Kertov(s camera mounted on an automo ile in a "ay that is remarka ly similar to "hat a 9oogle :arth car looks like as it moves through the streets. In other scenes, "e see a massive camera stalking through the city as if it "ere alive, and taking pictures from a ove. ,I8'9:S/ Kertov(s film is structured y the differential relationships et"een the ody of the cameraman and the ody of the camera$ et"een the city as an integrated ur an space and its -archival. reconstruction in film$ et"een the time of the day and the time of the film, etc. *he archive, in a sense, functions as the ar iter of these relationships: it does not produce closure %the city is ine#hausti le, it cannot e finally mapped or visuali1ed&$ instead it sets up relationships et"een images, shots, and camera angles. In *he 8an With a 8ovie <amera, the relay of an e#perience is crucial: through his "ork "ith the tool that is his camera, Kertov gives us access to his la or. By contrast, the territory mapped y the imaging specialists at 9oogle :arth reflects a post-la or position: there is no cameraman ehind the scanner that sits atop the 9oogle :arth car, )ust as there is no archive of images$ the stick on the roof of the car contains a "hole attery of remote controlled %digital& cameras. When the car is in motion the images taken y the camera and the car(s location are stored on a computer in the car, organi1ed and sent to servers. 5o e#perience of la or is eing translated here, even "here lots of data is eing transmitted. 'nd information is here understood very differently: it(s not personal, not em odied as "ith Kertov, nor is its archive anomic. *he uniformity and steadiness of the data-stream contrast elo!uently "ith the erratic movements of Kertov(s cameraman "ho in one scene is seen as he lies efore an oncoming train in order to

1D

capture its approach. ' crucial element in the criti!ue of the traditional archive undertaken y the historical avant-garde "as its re)ection of provenance, a re)ection "hose theoretical ela oration occurred a decade later in Walter Ben)amin(s famous essay a out the "ork of art in the age of technical reproduction "ith its claim that the disappearance of the aura "as intimately tied to the loss of the place in "hich an art"ork elonged y tradition. In fact, the archive of historicism "as also ased on the assumption that in an archive, every document had its o"n uni!ue place, reflecting a specific point in time. *he principle of provenance, the most prominent archive principle of the 1Eth century, stipulated that in an archive every item has a place that reflects accurately its origin in a specific other place. By contrast, in avant-garde photomontage, elements are freely mova le across the hori1ontal plane of its support$ there is no origin or original order for the elements that come to rest on this surface. 'ccording to Ben)amin Buchloh, in the post"ar era, the archival interventions of the historical avant-gardes gave "ay to something he calls the -anomic. archive.I @o"ever, "hile the anomic archive continues, ho"ever o li!uely, the constructivist criti!ue of provenance that egan earlier in the +Dth century, more formative for the postarchive condition is the fact that in the 1ECDs and FDs, the idea of the archive-as-net"ork egan to compete "ith the archive-as-construction. Instead of focusing on ordered series of provenances or collections of documents, the 1ECDs and FDs favored connectivity over the discrete archive, associating the latter "ith sta le canons of kno"ledge that preclude participation and collective agency. In the age of the developing computer net"ork and space travel, it is not provenance ut the net"ork that comes to the fore: to create an

11

archive is to esta lish a net of connections that resem les a map more than a layered archival site or a series of provenances. In the late 1ECDs and FDs, the archive "as thought of less as a storehouse of past traces, a treasure trove of memory and Bildung, than as a deeply conservative astion of canonical kno"ledge, authority, and po"er that restricted access to true information rather than facilitating it. *he efforts undertaken in the 1ECDs and FDs to either create or appropriate -glo al. net"orks for the generation and distri ution of information "ere y and large not focused on discreet archival storage "ith its assumptions of hierarchy and authority$ in fact, the idea of storage as a final stage in the processing of information "as suspect as it seemed to imply a static approach to information. Instead, the storage function "as su sumed under a dynamic model for the transmission and e#change of kno"ledge in such a "ay that that kno"ledge constituted itself only as a result of its dynamic flo" through a more or less regulated net"ork. Such a system, "hich could e the telephone net"ork or the postal system, "as the opposite of an archive, if y the latter term "e mean a more or less sta le repository for a more or less sta le amount of information. It "as also potentially glo al: the 1ECDs and FDs represent a first, and no" often forgotten, moment of -glo al. thinking, a moment "hen thinking in terms of the -"hole. ecame ig. 's Buckminster-4uller "rites in his ook >perating 8anual for Spaceship :arth: -5othing seems to e more prominent a out human life than its "anting to understand all and out everything together..E ,I8'9: B6<LM 8'7/ It is not y coincidence that studies like ?iane <rane(s Invisible Colleges %1EF+& sought to account less for the -content. of an archive than for the communities %of scientists& that helped shaped, or even created, such content across the net"orks and

1+

communities to "hich they elong, offering in the process an account of ho" kno"ledge changes over time as a result of such distri ution. *he criti!ue of education that is a hallmark of the 1ECDs and FDs also fre!uently targeted the idea of teaching as the transmission of an intrinsically sta le archive of kno"ledge. <ritics of traditional schools such as Ivan Ilich %Deschooling Society, 1EF+&, focused on "hat Ilich calls -left "ing institutions. that "ould facilitate cooperation, communication, and the e#change %rather than the o"nership& of kno"ledge. <learly, Ilich(s agenda is directed against a certain understanding of the archive as a repository of kno"ledge: the asis for the e#change he advocates as a replacement for traditional school "ere communication net"orks such as the telephone, the postal service, or the computer. @is idea "as that a truly -free. net"ork is one that circumvents the modern logic of consumption, ena ling individuals to engage in an unmitigated e#change of information: the net"ork here replaces the school. @aving found their match "ith the help of a computer, individuals "ould agree to short-lived encounters "ith other individuals "ith "hom they discuss a pro lem or !uotation that concerns or interests them: -' computer-arranged meeting to discuss an article in a national maga1ine, held in a coffee shop off 4ourth 'venue, "ould o ligate none of the participants to stay in the company of his ne" ac!uaintances for longer than it took to drink a cup of coffee ,.../. :ducation for all means education y all..1D In 1EFD, the artist =uis <hamnit1er referred to this kind of instruction as a form of -alpha eti1ation., seeing art as one of its principal agents. 's an information e#change ased not on corporate uniformity and military e#pediency ut on openness, dialogue, and heterogeneity at the service of the "hole %earth&, the net"ork here functions as a kind of forum or commons "here one(s personal e#perience replaces anonymous market forces.11 *he idea here is

12

neither to facilitate ac!uisition nor to supply information a out prices ut rather to esta lish an archive as a forum for an open dialogue that gives participants, "ho are also suppliers, the information they need to orient themselves in the present. Ilich(s deschooled society, "hich replaces the anonymity and alienation of modern ur an life "ith net"orked e#change and dialogue, is also a de-archivi1ed one$ information is not consumed$ it is lived, processed, and e#perienced. *he technical media that facilitate such e#change, such as the computer, are for Ilich not archives in the sense that they store information$ they rather function as %ideally pure& channels of communication that are, in the author(s vie" %naive though it may seem from today(s vantage point&, capa le of channeling the disinterested e#change of kno"ledge that allo"s its users to function as free agents: -*elephone link-ups, su "ay lines, mail routes, pu lic markets and e#changes do not re!uire hard or soft sells to induce their clients to use them. Se"age systems, drinking "ater, parks, and side"alks are institutions men use "ithout having to e institutionally convinced that it is to their advantage to do so..1+ 5et"orks, in this understanding, are not archival in that their use does not presuppose a clear separation et"een means and ends, the very logic that governs the "orld of commerce and politics. In the -totally administered. "orld, the archive serves as the "ork ench for a logic that ties specific ends to particular causes, and vice versa. In postarchive net"orks, on the other hand, the distinction et"een form and content that under"rites the means-ends logic of the political and the economic sphere is lurred: en)oyment comes from the net"ork itself as much as from the messages it channels. ' -pedagogical. %post-& archive pro)ect that helped dissolve the archive function in the direction of the net"ork and collective agency "as the so-called Whole Earth

13

Catalogue %-'ccess to *ools.&, "hich "as pu lished for the first time in 1ECI. It "as an archive of sorts: in different ru rics that included sections on -land use, shelter, industry, craft, community, nomadics, communications, and learning., it listed 3DD large pages "orth of ooks, tools, implements and other useful tools suggested y and commented on y the catalogue(s users themselves ,I8'9: ;3: W:</. *he cover of the <atalogue is adorned "ith a picture of the glo e taken y the first 'pollo mission, and, on the ack cover, "ith a !uote from Buckminster 4uller "ho, as the compilers assert, inspired the pro)ect as a "hole. 'ccording to the compilers, the function of the catalogue "as to e -an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should kno" etter "hat is "orth getting and "here and ho" to do the getting.. *he compilers continue: -'n item is listed in the <'*'=>9 if it is deemed: 6nderstanding Whole Systems$ 1. 6seful as a tool$ +. Belevant to independent education$ 2. @igh !uality or lo" cost$ 3. :asily availa le y mail..12 ,I8'9: ;A, C: W:</ @o"ever, the Whole :arth <atalogue "as neither an archive nor a mail order catalogue in any straightfor"ard sense of that term: nothing is for sale directly$ instead, readers sent in their recommendations, annotate them, so that other users can see their revie"s and then decide for themselves if they "ant to purchase a certain products--for the most part, other ooks--or not. If Buckminster 4uller claimed, in his 8anual for Spaceship :arth, that there "as in fact no instruction manual for spaceship earth, the Whole :arth <atalogue "as not designed to fill this gap. With its hundreds of pages of !uotations and short reader revie"s of ooks and other manuals, the W:< functions more like a meta-manual, a manual on ho" to find your manual: it is information on ho" to handle information, rather than on ho" to act or "hat to do. *he difference is crucial:

1A

W:< is an archive, and as such emancipatory, not ecause it supplies you "ith meaningful instruction, ut ecause it teaches you ho" and "here information circulates. If on the surface of things the Whole :arth <atalogue resem les a mailorder catalogue, upon closer scrutiny, it is far from it: the point is not the consumer o )ects "e desire ut the larger principle of an open e#change of e#periences "ith tools that form part of a larger system. 's such, this archive is a "ager on the future rather than the past: not a manual, it is more like an effort to understand the rules so "e can act responsi ly in the future, and not as narro" minded specialists ut as as informed universalists. NNN

:ver since the 1ECDs the archive has organi1ed t"o %or more& different takes on glo alism: one inspired y a vision of the archive as a "ay of allo"ing individuals to access information in order to act on ehalf of a glo al "hole "ithout relin!uishing their individual agency %W:<, Buckminster 4uller&$ the other a centrali1ed corporate operation of data gathering that relates to the archive first and foremost as a self-regulating, autonomous storehouse of information "hose aggregated "isdom y definition e#ceeds that of individuals. Such thinking "as echoed y the economic theories that "ere eing developed in the late 1ECDs y the follo"ers of 4riedrich @ayek, a role model for 8ilton 4riedman and detractor of Oohn 8aynard Leynes ,I8'9: ;F/. @ayek elieved that the more comple# society ecomes the less individuals are a le to comprehend it. In this line of thought, consumers supply the market "ith information through their ehavior as consumers of goods, thus contri uting to the vast archive of information that is the market. *he latter acts as a kind of -general intellect. that provides consumers, "hose

1C

a ility to process the comple#ities of its "orkings is y nature limited, "ith the kind of information a out prices and values they need in order to carry out their transactions. In this instance, crucially, individuals act as passive participants in a market that supplies them "ith information that in its turn compels them to act in a certain "ay. @ayek openly suggests that the capitalist market is "hat gives individuals access to the kind of "isdom they cannot themselves possess. 's markets pile up price information from uyers and sellers "ho "ill never meet, they regulate a glo al system that includes individuals only as agents of the market itself. It is striking ho" closely this model resem les modern data mining operations, even "here these operate "ith much more sophisticated technologies: "henever "e carry out a usiness transaction, or even a phone call, 9oogle :arth and other such archiving operations resolutely follo" @ayek(s model: as agents in the market place "e supply that market "ith information y acting "ithin it %as sellers or as consumers&. In the late 1ECDs, one of the outlet(s for transforming -the archive. into the postarchive net"ork "as conceptual art, "hich su scri ed not only to an -aesthetic of administration. ut also to an innovative idea of the archive as a "ay of reconciling, through demateriali1ation and -reduction of visuality., the agency of individuals "ith the concern for the many. >ne can see this at "ork, for e#ample, in the e#hi ition catalogues the curator and critic =ucy =ippard created in the late 1ECDs in the form of stacks of standardi1ed inde# cards ,I8'9: ;E/, naming her e#hi itions after the population num er of the city "here the e#hi ition "as held %in Kancouver, 1EFD: -EAA,DDD.&. <rucially, "hile the si1e of the cards that introduced each artist(s "ork "as standardi1ed, =ippard invited each artist to design their o"n cards for themselves in "hichever "ay

1F

they pleased: here once again "e have an e#ample of ho" the archive can function as an ar iter et"een the individual and the communal, et"een a common format and the kind of visual cacophony that also characteri1es the W:<. In the late 1ECDs and FDs, many pu lication follo"ed a similar model y giving several participating artists an e!ual amount of space that they "ere invited to fill. *here "ere many other pro)ects like this in the late 1ECDs and FDs, oth in curatorship %Seth Siegelau & and in pu lishing, such as maga1ines that allotted artists a certain amount of space "here they could freely organi1e information. @ere as "ith =ippard, the idea "as to ena le individual agency "ithin a collective, and the archive in oth cases served as the outlet for these efforts. It "as the photographer and critic 'llan Sekula "ho in a pro)ect entitled 4ish Story connected the idea of the artist as producer as it "as conceived in the 1E+Ds as part of a criti!ue of provenance "ith a different kind of net"ork: the glo al net"ork of commercial operations across the oceans that had developed as a result of neo-li eral economic policies during the 1EIDs and EDs. 7reparing for his archival pro)ect, "hich "as e#plicitly conceived as a map, Sekula spent several "eeks on a large cargo ship, "ith a vie" to mapping -the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist "orld..13 *he artist(s residency on the vessel esta lished an -operative. %*ret(iakov(s term&, interventionist and production- ased position for the photographer. Its as much a out the glo al image archive as a a out container commerce: images floating around. Met at the same time dou ts a out the efficacy of this critical model a ound as Sekula follo"s the drift of glo al capital. 's the artist himself "rote, alluding directly to the loss of provenance as a guiding principle for his investigation, -"ith the shift from the groundedness of landscape to the fluidity of seascape, and "ith the desta ili1ation of the

1I

"orld(s geopolitical alance eginning in 1EIE, the drift and uncertainty of an e#tended "ork in progress seemed appropriate. Sites "ere chosen for reasons that "ere "himsical as "ell as thematic.. %p. +D+& *he political charge of Sekula(s archive is am iguous$ on the one hand, his investigation follo"s the movement of capital and its often dramatic effects$ on the other hand, it also seeks to analy1e these movements.1A In the present era, archival mapping on a glo al scale has itself ecome corporati1ed. 9oogle :arth has created a vast technically and visually uniform archive of the developed "orld that can e accessed y people all over the glo e "ho have access to the internet. *he W:<, too, used the idea of the net"ork, ut here the net"ork "as not a system of satellites or camera cars that systematically scan the streets, ut rather it "as the users themselves "hose cacophonous contri utions to the catalogue translated into a visual montage that could, as such, not e further from the -uniform variety. of 9oogle(s late-capitalist -"hole earth.. 4or 9oogle, "e are consumers of a corporate glo alism that reduces the glo e to its data formats. 4or the su -cultures of the 1ECDs, the variety of such formats "as a given. When I e#ited the plane at a ma)or :uropean airport the other "eek, the first thing I sa" "as an advertisement y a ank, declaring in huge letters: -4uture Investors 8ust e :#plorers.. *he slogan reminded me of Buckminster 4uller(s 9reat 7irates, the no" e#tinct, la"less entrepreneurs "ho ruled the "orld y their superior kno"ledge of the "hole, through -great anticipatory vision, great ship designing capa ility, and original scientific conceptioning..1C *he 9reat 7irates, the only ones "ho kne" that the peoples in the different un-connected parts of the :arth kne" nothing of each other helped them share their respective tools and resources1F -- a function the Whole :arth <atalogue tried to emulate and revive. By contrast, today "e live in an age

1E

"hen glo al corporations e#ploit and market resources %not, as the W:<, tools& on a glo al scale, and "hen ideas such as Buckminster 4uller(s have ecome little more than slogans.

The Horizontal Archive *he -hori1ontal. archive esche"s the vertical orientation of the traditional archive$ it a andons the latter(s association "ith the trace and "ith memory and turns to scale %the map& instead$ it favors remediation and post-production over a focus on single documents in a specific place$ and it is part of a larger development in glo al art that creates artistic value not through individual "orks or practices located in one place ut as a function of %glo al& connectivity. Where 4ish Story still preserved a connection "ith the critical interventions in the archive from the early +Dth century %the production of critical kno"ledge&, this is no longer the case "ith more recent incarnations of the hori1ontal %post-& archive. Sekula had still assumed that it might e possi le to find a scale that "ould allo" him to map the archive of glo al commerce. 5o" it seems as if that archimedic point has disappeared. In contemporary art and literature, the "ork "ith, or in, archive documents as a "ay of opening up a space for "hat is possi le %rather than "hat is -real.& often egins, parado#ically, "ith the foreclosure of kno"ledge. 4or instance, OPrgen 9asile"ski(s +DDC novel *he 9othen urg :vents uses a multitude of painstakingly collected and researched documents to reconstruct 9eorge W. Bush(s +DD1 visit to the S"edish port city of 9othen urg on the occasion of the :6 summit meeting. ,I==: <>K:B/ By com ining documents "ith elements of fiction, 9asile"ski(s novel provides a literary, yet also oddly -documentary. ela oration of the demonstrations and

+D

police violence that accompanied the :6 summit, as "ell as their )udicial aftermath. 4or 9asile"ski literature is a -"ay of uncovering the implicit narrative constraint of a document.. By this the "riter means that an archival document does not contain or -o"n. its o"n status as an inde# or trace$ rather, it searches for that status "ithin "hat the author calls -the greatest of stories, reality..1I <alling his novel a -literal fiction., 9asile"ski focuses on the figure of an alleged 9erman agent provocateur "ith -yello" hair. "ho figures in the internal police reports and, su se!uently, in the right-"ing S"edish press as an anarchist and -9erman terrorist.. *he true identity of this 9erman, "hose alleged su versive activities the press soon utili1ed to refer to all the demonstrators as terrorists and "hose -testimony. "as used in court against the demonstrators, could never e esta lished. @e "as most likely an invention y the police. In 9asile"ski(s novel, y contrast, the figure of the -9erman terrorist. ecomes a -real., i.e., fictional character. 's such the 9erman terrorist in *he 9othen urg :vents is the counterpart to the ghosts that haunt the archive in ->ne ?ay.. *he novel continuously creates effects of disorientation and archival misprision that create openings in the archive for "hat is possi le rather than "hat is factual or real. 9asile"ski challenges our idea of a sta le oundary et"een the document and literature$ et"een the archive and the real$ and et"een art practice %"riting& and politics. Oust like the police archive -documents. the e#istence of an agent provocateur "ho "as in all likelihood fictitious, 9asile"ski, y placing this fictional character "ithin the limits of his -documentary. novel, not only discredits the police archive as a fiction, he also esta lishes *he 9othen urg :vents %his novel& as the only possi le documentary practice, since it alone is capa le of unveiling the -narrative constraint. that inhi its the police

+1

archive, meshed up as it is in relations of po"er, from functioning as an inde# of "hat really happened. 't the heart of the novel is less the reification of kno"ledge, or the suggestion that kno"ledge is emancipatory in and of itself, than its su sumption under various regimes of a -connecting. practice that is, as such, typical of the hori1ontal archive. Such -kno"ledge practice. vie"s the archive as an inventory in Banciere(s sense, -the potential of o )ects and images in terms of common history..1E *he defining feature of the archive as a space for the production of kno"ledge is that it lurs the line et"een practice and theory, et"een art and action, creating various forms of disorientation "e have to forget, to identify the -narrative constraint. if "e "ant documents to not only signify "hat happened %a hopeless undertaking& ut "hat could happen. *he hori1ontal archive creates lateral connections et"een activities and events, ut it refuses to esta lish a normative, rational history for them. *he result is desorientation rather than orientation, illegi ility rather than legi ility, and connectivity rather than syntagmatic relations that correspond to an ordered grammar for the production of archival statements %4oucault&. When 7alestinian artist :mily Oacir has her camera confiscated y Israeli soldiers and a pistol held to her temple as she passes an Israeli checkpoint on the Bamallah-Bir1eit road in order to get to her university ,I==. :8I=M O'<IB/, she returns the ne#t day, cuts a hole into the ag that she carries "ith her, and records her "alk for eight days. *his process of -carrying over. does not, ho"ever, result in the production of historical evidence. What Oacir records and documents is not -the Israeli occupation of 7alestine. Q she documents only her "alk, "hich is, literally a carrying over. @o"ever, Oacir(s archive is never neat or focused, it

++

doesn(t %unlike Sekula(s& aspire to mapping its territory from a vantage point that "ould allo" that territory to ecome transparent. Oacir(s archive is shaky, it sho"s things from uncertain perspectives, depending on the road and the daily course. It misses a system, a method, a regularity eyond the fact that the artist returns every day. @er recording is orn from repression %Oacir cannot sho" her camera, that(s "hy it(s in the ag& ut it is also a result of the artist(s defiance: she goes to school regardless. 's a form of protest, the hori1ontal archive reflects a desire less to revise history than to desorient it, creating small archival openings that allo", perhaps, to glimpse a different future. *he hori1ontal archive is a matter of scale, and it opens an e#perience of the present rather than offering an authoritative interpretation of the past. *he map ecomes elusive in the process. 's an e#ample, let me riefly discuss a "ork y 7eruvian artist =u1 8aria Bedoya, entitled =inea de 5a1ca %+DDI&, a single-take video of +:3D mins length that records, from a car driving across the 7an 'merican @igh"ay in the Southern 7eruvian desert, the area "here the 5a1ca lines %2DD B.<.JEDD '.?.& are located. *he artist dre" a ladder on the gallery "all in charcoal$ additionally, there are five framed sentences taken from oldest pu lished ook a out these lines, a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the 5a1ca desert in southern 7eru elieved to have een created et"een 3DD and CAD '?. *he hundreds of individual lines dra"n in the desert include a stract designs as "ell as animal motifs %they are visi le as such only from a plane&. *he shallo" lines are a good e#ample for the "ay in "hich an archive ecomes legi le "hen it is vie"ed from a certain scale or perspective. *he images of the 5a1ca line, "hich count among 7eru(s greatest tourist attractions, are classically vie"ed from a plane. In Bedoya(s "ork, on the other hand, "hat I "ould call the -archival perspective.--one that

+2

privileges a specific vantage point from "here all the lines align to ecome forms, figures, or images, is given up. *he speed "ith "hich Bedoya(s car is traveling through the desert, hori1ontally rather than vertically, increases the vie"er(s visceral e#perience at the e#pense of a successfully integrated reading that can transform the lines into meaningful figures. Bedoya, "e might say, puts herself in the position of the producers of this archive %"ho "ere themselves lind to the overall design they "ere creating-there are no mountains near y&$ she refuses to e its consumer. *his does not mean, ho"ever, that she does not register the many efforts that have een made over time to make sense of these geo-glyphics. 'nd so, the ladder on one "all of the installation is designed to evoke not only the "orkings of scale, ut also the activities of 8aria Beiche, a 9erman "oman "ho studied the 5a1ca line in the middle of last century. *hese captions on the "all %focused on the right height at "hich to see the 5a1ca lines&, also invite the vie"er to simulate Bedoya(s drive through the desert right there, in the gallery: as "e move alongside the framed captions, "e may try to avoid that central point from "hich they all make sense, opting for the e#perience of the lines and letters rather than for their meaning. 's a contri ution to our -glo al. moment, Bedoya favors an approach that "ith 9. Spivak "e might call -planetary., a term she opposes to -the glo e.: -*he glo e is on our computers. 5o one lives there. It allo"s us to think that "e can aim to control it. *he planet is in the species of alterity, elonging to another system$ and yet "e inha it it, on loan. It is not really amena le to a neat contrast "ith the glo eR.When I invoke the planet, I think of the effort re!uired to figure the %im&possi ility of this underived intuition..+D Bedoya, "e might say, also tries to create an archive that "e can inha it

+3

rather than "anting to master or consume it %as 9oogle :arth does&. *hat such inha iting re!uires her to traverse the desert at great speed testifies to her reluctance to give in to the nostalgic temptations of -slo". localism: our glo ality cannot e reversed, and archiving is one of its principal conditions. ' -planetary. perspective in Spivak(s sense can also e o served in =ina Selander(s film 'round the <ave of the ?ou le *om s %+D1D&, a video and ook pro)ect that deal "ith the artist(s multiple visits to the West Bank city of @e ron. 'round the <ave of the ?ou le *om s takes its starting point in several research trips to the West Bank, especially to the city of @e ron. *he mute video links photographs and still images that sho" a model of ancient Oerusalem in a 8useum, a check-point "ith its massive security architecture s!uee1ed into a historical uilding, houses, "alls, o )ects. *he camera records continuously, ut haltingly, distur ing, in curator 4eli# Kogel(s "ords, -our perception and sense of orientation and..+1 Still and moving images alternate "ith short te#ts that open up an in!uiry into "hat "e are seeing. *he in!uiry, narrative or not, articulates a kno"ledge ut it also disarticulates it Q the archive e#ists in the moment. 's Kogel comments: -It is through a renunciation to speak on ehalf of someone or to represent someone or a specific o )ective, ut instead to focus on the ontological status of image and te#t in film that 'round the <ave of the ?ou le *om s unleashes its potential of letting the real shine through, or, as one of the te#t panels states: *he real is cut and reassem led, returning "ith a different origin..++ Selander creates an archive suspended et"een motion and fro1en inertia. @ere is a se!uence of moving images that sho" a chain link fence a ove a shopping alley in @e ron, uilt to protect 7alestinians from settlers thro"ing stones at them. ,KI8:> https:JJvimeo.comJ+3222CCA JJ 2:+D:

+A

S:='5?:B/ *he ook Selander produced from this film is an instance remediation, the translation of one archival medium into another. *he perforation make the pages of the ook seem as if they once all elonged together$ and yet, the com ination of lack pages$ te#t$ and more or less detailed lack and "hite images of the order crossing never cohere into a meaningful narrative. @ere again, "e are dealing "ith a concatenation and com ination that does not locate truth in the documents themselves ut in the opening that is created as a result of their com ination and concatenation. 4or Selander, it is during the process of editing "hen, to paraphrase @arun 4arocki, she takes leave of any plan she may have had for her material, reali1ing that such planning is, in her "ords, -nonsense.. ?rifting across her o"n material, Selander creates local orders "ithout an overarching master plan$ she pushes her material to a point "here, as she herself asserts, she feels herself e#cluded from it. 9oing eyond "hat *ret(iakov might have had in mind "hen he "rote of the revolutionary realist archive: for here, it is the material itself that is the location for e#plorations "ithout a fi#ed destination, uncertain )ourneys in archival space that may, at times, ecome politically relevant or revelatory, ut "ithout any consistency. With Bedoya and Selander, the %post-& archive(s only content is connectivity itself: the point is not to construct a message, an identity, a meaning, or an interpretation y collaging of collating information, or to reveal the rules for such a construction %4oucault&$ rather it(s the e#perience of connecting--people, images, te#ts, and documents--that matters to oth artists. It is therefore neither a matter of provenance$ nor of a criti!ue of it. Instead the post-archive needs to e considered efore the ackground

+C

of the net"ork aesthetic developed during the 1ECDs and FDs. Beyond that, the contemporary post-archive, "hose focal point is the contemporary rather than the past, functions as a scaling operation: it aims to offer e#periences of glo ality on a variety of different scales, oth local and glo al.

The Horizontal Archive and the Future of History Writing ( a!s "edia Collective# The Ca$ital of Accu%ulation& In his study Provincializing Europe, the historian ?ipesh <hakra arty, outlines the difficulties confronted y historians "ho approach su altern histories from the vantage point of the Western archive and the legacy of Western historiography more generally. 4or an event to e included in this archive, it has to respond to a set of rational criteria that determine the event(s -plausi ility., it(s -"orka ility. as a historical truth. But "hat if an event falls short of these criteria0 <hakra arty mentions the e#ample of striking "orkers in rural India %the Santal& "ho e#plain going on strike "ith reference not to a set of rationali1ed grievances or demands ut to their local 9ods "ho, according to their testimony, prompted them to take the action. 4rom the point of vie" of rational historiography %including 8ar#ist analysis, "hich "ould "ant to look at such a strike from the point of class relations&, such an event %a strike prompted y local deities& cannot easily e e#plained rationally in order to a sor ed into the archive of local history: -=et me call these su ordinated relations to the past Hsu altern( pasts. *hey are marginali1ed not ecause of any conscious intention ut ecause they represent moments or points at "hich the archive that the historian mines develops a degree of intracta ility "ith respect to the aims of professional history. In other "ords, these are pasts that resist historici1ation..+2 *hese -minor. pasts resist inclusion into the archive to the e#tent that

+F

they cannot e su sumed under one of the universal historical narratives that make up that history. In tracing the contours of a type of method that might avoid the marginali1ation of -minor. pasts like the one mentioned a ove, <hakra arty argues for a t"ofold approach: the first refuses to historici1e or other"ise interpret such -miracles., allo"ing them instead to e#ist as a "ay of eing in the "orld that is contemporaneous "ith ours. In the cited e#ample, this means to accept the locals( invocation of a miracle "ithout interpreting it as irrational, or a lapse in class consciousness. *he second approach involves an engaged historical approach that vie"s instances such as this as %necessary& stages on the "ay to greater )ustice and democracy. 'ccording to <hakra arty, oth of these mutually e#clusive approaches need to e considered together: -*o stay "ith the heterogeneity of the moment "hen the historian meets "ith the peasant is, then, to stay "ith the difference et"een these t"o gestures. >ne is that of historici1ing the Santal in the interest of a history of social )ustice and democracy$ and the other, that of refusing to historici1e and of seeing the Santal as a figure illuminating a life possi ility for the present..+3 What I call the hori1ontal archive hints at a similar dou le take. >n the one hand, it responds to the post-archive condition, the reali1ation that the archive as a singular entity founded on an ordered approach to history can no longer function. >n the other hand, "ithin that reali1ation, it suggests "ays in "hich a different history ased on connection and connectivity, and focused as much on the present as on the future, can e imagined. *o illustrate the point, let me riefly discuss a film y 5e" ?elhi- ased Ba!s 8edia <ollective entitled The Capital Of ccu!ulation %+D1D&. Based on found footage

+I

as "ell as material accumulated y the artists themselves, The Capital Of ccu!ulation is a t"o-screen video installation commissioned as part of the 9oethe Institute(s -7romised <ity. pro)ect that "rites an o li!ue narrative of the relationship et"een different metropolises and the "orld ased on the effects of glo al capital and migration. >n a vast hori1ontal plane the film veers ack and forth et"een the cities of Bom ay, Berlin and Warsa", esta lishing asymmetrical analogies and )u#tapositions. What appears like an archive- ased detective storyGthe search for the missing ody of 7olish- orn Bosa =u#em urg, "ho "ent to school in Warsa"Gsoon turns out to e, at the same time, a study of the cyclical dynamics of capital and its e#pansion and contraction in different parts of the "orld. It is as if =u#em urg(s 1E12 ook *he 'ccumulation of <apital, a rather dry analysis of the reproduction of surplus value in the capitalist economy, "as here taken as the asis for an approach that moves as much y poetic analogy as y analysis. *he t"o screens of the installation fulfill a dou le function. >n the one hand, they recall =u#em urg(s analysis of ho" surplus value is accumulated: -So that that part of surplus value that is destined for accumulation really can e capitali1ed it has to take on concrete form. >nly that form ena les it to function as productive R capital. 4or this to happen it is necessary that the surplus value ,R/ e divided into t"o parts, a constant one consisting of dead means of production and a varia le one that is represented in la or "ages..+A If this statement o li!uely hints at *ret(iakov(s dialectical approach to the archive, *he <apital of 'ccumulation also goes eyond that approach, su stituting the principle of accumulation %connection$ collating& for the kind of progressive history favored y *ret(iakov. We may see in this gesture an effort to enact <hakra arty(s

+E

suggestion for a type of historiography that does not reduce the heterogeneity of life"orlds to universal principles and methods. In the <apital of 'ccumulation, the scenes sho"n on oth screens of the installation are for the most part not symmetrical, and their differences are not dialectically su lated. *hus "e are sho"n ho" Berlin e#pands in the 1Eth century, s"allo"ing up the surrounding villages and countryside, "hile Bom ay contracts in the "ake of the massive te#tile strike of the 1EFDs, "hich leaves a vast empty space at the center of the city. *he t"o images are placed ne#t to each other, and no overarching narrative ridges the differences et"een them. 'nother such )u#taposition or paralleli1ation in the film %<=I7 1F:1A& concerns the te#tile "orkers( strike in Bom ay in 1EI+, com ined "ith references to the post"ar reconstruction of Warsa", "hich included a stadium and the esta lishment of the Bosa =u#em urg light ul factory at the very heart of Warsa". 8uch like the former te#tile district of Bom ay in the early 1EIDs, so the light ul factory too lies in ruins at the end of the 1EIDs, ready to e lo"n a"ay y the force of capital much like the te#tile factories in Bom ay had a decade earlier. 'gain, these events are collated on a vast hori1ontal plane "here they e#ist ne#t to each other. Interestingly, the artists connect their archive "ork "ith the present as much as "ith the past: -*hat is "hy, )ust as the recovery of memory and history %of defeats and dispersal, of po"erlessness and servitude as much as of survival and creation&, and the painstaking reconstruction of an archive of lost and scattered meanings is one of the first cultural tasks on the agenda of the insurgent, a critical engagement "ith a documentary mode of practice too ecomes %for the same reason& one of the key undertakings of the contemporary art practitioner "ho seeks to e#press contemporaneity as much as sJhe engages "ith art. *he contemporary moment, nothing if not a contest of images that seek

2D

to define Hglo ality(, demands documents as counter"eights to its o"n Hdocumentary( record..+C >ne of the crucial -archival. scenes in the film has the ED-year old nephe" of Bosa =u#em urg, "ho lives in Warsa", leaf through a photo al um "hile he reminisces a out his childhood and his encounters "ith his aunt. 'nother scene sho"s animals in the Berlin Soo and speculates on ho" animals might have een "itness to the grisly murder of Bosa =u#em urg and Larl =ie knecht y the 5a1is. Such "itnessing is part of a general pattern in the film that links documentary, as a "ay of producing truth, to other forms of production. 4or instance the notion of -solidarity. rings a strike in Bom ay in the early 1EIDs together "ith the 7olish union movement of the 1EIDs. 'nd if Bosa =u#em urgG"ho herself organi1ed a general strike in her early political careerGand her ook *he 'ccumulation of <apital are central to this )ourney, there is also her HIndian( counterpart y the name of =u#me Sora gur, a scram le of the letters in the name Bosa =u#em urg$ also, in Ba!s( video, Berlin is not only the place "here Bosa =u#em urg "as killed ut also host to the film studios that during the 1E+Ds produced a series of -Indian. themed movies. 4oucault distinguished et"een t"o types of kno"ledge, savoir and connaissance. 'ccording to him, -savoir. is systematic kno"ledge, it is -the process "hich permits the multiplication of kno"a le o )ects, the development of their intelligi ility, the understanding of their rationality, "hile the su )ect doing the investigation al"ays remains the same.. <onversely, -connaissance. is -the process through "hich the su )ect finds himself modified y "hat he kno"s, or rather y the la or performed in order to kno". It is "hat permits the modification of the su )ect and the construction of the o )ect.. Savoir is -kno"ledge. that e#ists independently of the

21

su )ect and of the conditions under "hich it "as produced. Connaissance, on the other hand, is -kno"ing. "ithout a final product that takes into account the la or that "as necessary to produce it, and the influence this has on the su )ect. *o an e#tent, savoir is congruent "ith "hat Boland Barthes, in his study of photography, refers to as studiu! %systematic meaning&, "hile connaissance is closer to "hat he calls punctu!, the rupture of studiu! in a moment "ith a high affective charge. *he distinction et"een connaissance and savoir might e useful for <apital of 'ccumulation, too. 7erhaps "ith the hori1ontal archive, too, it is a matter of %re-& connecting the archive "ith a plurality of heterogeneous life practices.

The Horizontal Archive is 'ncreative() In his criti!ue of the humanist archive, the sociologist 'r)un 'ppudarai has argued for the %post-& archive as a space "here connectivity allo"s for the construction of tentative identities.+I 4or 'ppudarai it is not a matter of creating a community on the asis of an archive of shared eliefs or convictions %the <onstructivist model&. What interests him is a form of community that is not uild on a face-to-face history and hence not on the archive of traces: -Where natural social collectivities uild connectivities out of memory, these virtual collectivities uild memories out of connectivity..+E *he collectives that ase their e#istence on the archive 'ppudarai has in mind are not founded on kinship, genealogy, and intimacy ut on invented or mimed identities and -cloned socialities. developed through social media. *his %post-& archive is manifestly not the archive of historicism, "ith its assumption that everything in order to e understood has to e historici1ed, or modernism, "ith its trust in the necessity to find a voice for memory:

2+

-*he very preciousness of the archive, indeed its moral authority, stems from the purity of the accidents that produced its traces. In this vie", any hint of a deli erate effort to produce or protect a trace is a taint, to e spotted and eliminated y the historian(s tools of triage..2D 'ppudarai(s criti!ue of the humanist archive focuses on the possi ilities the nonhumanist, diasporic archive might offer to migrant populations. In his film >ne ?ay %+DD2&, 'kram Saatari investigates a population "hose history, much like that of the migrants addressed y 'ppadurai, had until recently een "ritten almost e#clusively y outsiders: the Bedouines that once populated the 'ra ian peninsula. >ne ?ay egins "ith a ook, a history of the Bedouines "ritten many years ago y a Western scholar, and moves from a dou le take on this volume %in :nglish and in 'ra ic& to a se!uence that sho"s an archival file containing the photographs that had een used in the ook. @o"ever, Saatari(s film is not a documentary in any straightfor"ard sense of that term. Bather than historical narrative, as "as the case "ith Bedoya as "ell, Saatari is interested in scale: rather than looking for the right -height. from "hich to approach and understand the 8iddle :ast %the correct perspective, the -archive point.&, Saatari assumes a hori1ontal %post-archive& position: like Bedoya(s, his film often focuses on long takes from a 1ooming vehicle that create lur rather than analytical clarity. *he film com ines found photographs and sounds "ith se!uences short y Saatari himself. Instead of using the many archival images and documents % oth visual and audio& that appear in his film as o )ectifying sources of kno"ledge, Saatari su )ects these materials, or their o servers, to a radically desta ili1ing, dis-orienting force, as if to suggest that the meaning of an archival photo or document is as fleeting as the speed "ith "hich "e scan over it.

22

Sometimes that force is the camera itself as it scans the surface of a photograph in such a "ay that it loses its coherence ,KI?:> <=I7 E:AD/. In the preceding clip, Saatari changes the scale of the recording: suddenly the archival photographs "e have seen efore in the archival o# appear as close-ups, then they appear as slides, lo"n up, etc. *he effect is disorientation: as no medium has any specificity any more, the archive loses its a ility to asign or ena le transparent meaning. *he result is desorientation, ut also a higher affective charge, a heightened, more intensely physical e#perience of the space and its images. It is as if Saatari has to un-kno", or de-inform, the document efore he can summon it to testify: mindful of the pro lems inherent in -information., yet una le simply to return to the naive enthusiasm for the -"hole earth. that animated the 1ECDs %W:<&, Saatari attempts to find a different approach. 8ore often than not, the force of disorientation in >ne ?ay is speed, "hich is also not coincidentally the defining force in every "ar %KI?:> <=I7 +1:2F$ 23:2I&. Saatari(s pro lem seems to e that it impossi le to settle for a normal pace, a 1ero degree of kno"ledge and understanding, as any documentary practice esta lishes, or imposes, its o"n speed. In this "ay, he suggests a different form of an archive: one that does not so much esta lish a history as it seeks to e contemporaneous "ith its su )ec#t matter %that(s "hy Saatari intervie"s a current Bedouin&. *his is already in evidence "hen at the very eginning Saatari, his hands covered y gloves, flips through an archive of historical photographs taken in the 1EADs ,KI?:> <=I7 1:3D/. *hen there is the slo" speed of the camels that populate the desert ,KI?:> <=I7 3F:+A/. When the artist films the road and landscape outside the "indo" of his moving S6K, the landscape flattens and gets lurred, haunted y the flat gray figures from historical images that Saatari finds in a historical

23

ook a out the no" lost lifestyle of the Bedouoines %the 9reat 7irates of 'ra iaT& that seem to move efore this ackground at their o"n reakneck speed ,KI?:> <=I7 23:2A/. @ere "e could e "itnessing a 4ata 8organa$ or perhaps such haunting is the general condition of the archive once it has een freed from the constraints of representation: oth the images and their o servers are in motion, at different speeds, and the effects thus created e#ceed any -truth. "e might e#pect an archive to perform. *he key to Saatari(s handling of the archive is one of the hallmarks of the hori1ontal archive, its scala ility: as "e move from one archival record to another, "e reali1e that the only thing that mediates et"een the records is their differing scale, the many different resolutions and formats, and different vie"ing speeds. Bather than a glo al -message. %say: -the 7alestinian-Israeli conflict.&, it is these differences in scale that create the only unifying principle int the archive. 5ot history then, only connectivity, the linking of different scales and approaches "ithout creating any kind of synthesis. 's a result, history, in ->ne ?ay,. is not the hori1on for these speed-induced -distortions.$ it is not the condition that allo"s us to e#perience the documents used in the film as real, or to translate them from a state of latency or potentiality into positive kno"ledge. *he -documentary. images do not e#ist -as such.$ they e#ist only as series of aggregate states Gfast$ slo"$ clear$ lurred, etc.Gthat prevent them from over eing self-same$ they cannot e translated. >r rather: they can only e translated. 't one time, a female voiceover that provides an academic commentary on an old photograph moves ack and forth seamlessly et"een :nglish and 'ra ic, as if to suggest that the archive is not the condition of translata ility$ rather, it is the space "here translation occurs, or does not occur. While at times the -caption. provided y the female voice is perfectly clear and

2A

academically transparent, at others %in the 'ra ic passages& it ceases to make sense for non-'ra ic speakers. >r rather, it does make sense, ut that sense does not travel through language(s e#pressive function, as if to say that the practice of kno"ledge production is not here tied to such transparency$ things can happen even in the a sence of translation. ,,KI?:> <=I7 A:1D/ 8uch as "as the case "ith Bedoya and Selander, the paths traveled y Saatari, oth in the real landscape of the 8iddle :ast and as he scans the surface of historical photographs and documents, does not serve the goal of orientation and a regulated transfer from one point to another. Saatari elieves that his archival practice is not involved in the reconstruction of the past ut in "hat he calls a -potential history. of 9a1a ased on -possi le ,rather than o )ective/ facts.. %@ommi Bha a has recently compared archives to -the road not taken.&. *hought of not as a tool of memory ut as an active practice of remem rance that )oins the fragments of many "orlds in an open ended process, Saatari(s film tell us a out the present$ yet at the same time it may also offer momentary glimpses of a future yet to come. 's a hori1ontal archive, >ne ?ay has little in common either "ith the vertical archive "here spatial relationships "ere al"ays ready to e translated into temporal ones, or "ith the aesthetic of shock used y the histortical avantgarde to de unk that model. Saatari does not create a collage or a photomontage. 5or does he vie" himself as a kno"ledge "orker in the tradition of *ret(iakov. Instead his film must e seen in the conte#t of other recent efforts to reframe the process of artistic production, "ith an emphasis a"ay from originality and authenticity to one focused on connectivity. Without focusing on the implications of his ideas for the theory of the archive, the

2C

curator 5icholas Bourriaud has referred to this state of affairs, in the sphere of art , as -postproduction,. a suggestive tern y "hich Bourriaud meant a form of postautonomous art production that creates linkages and connections et"een e#isting forms rather than creating ne" ones.21 In postproduction, the lines separating production and consumption, the medium and its contents, are forever lurred. 's an e#ample, Bourriaud !uotes the kind of playlist you may find on an i7od: a postproduction artist uses and manipulates e#isting forms rather than using ne" ones. If this procedure is archival, it is so not in any archeological "ay. 5o past is eing accessed or reconstructed$ a present is constructed out of e#isting fragments, and the virtuosity of this undertaking lies more in the process than in the result. Belated concepts include 8ar)orie 7erloff(s -unoriginal genius. or Lenneth 9oldsmith(s -uncreative "riting. "ith its charge that literary "riting today is a process of collating much more than a process of invention driven y an original genius.2+ Such collation is y definition hori1ontal, and a andons the vertical orientation that had characteri1ed the traditional archive. In all these cases it(s not a matter of construction. 'nd so this kind of hori1ontal archive is very different from the archive of material traces. Its focus is remediation, not the isolation of individual media. @ito Steyerl has created a related concept, -poor images.. By poor images Steyerl means images "hose -!uality is ad, its resolution su standard. 's it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a previe", a thum nail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distri uted for free, s!uee1ed through slo" digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remi#ed, as "ell as copied and pasted into other channels of distri ution..22 Steyerl refers here to the "ay in "hich information deteriorates "hen it is transferred from one format to another, and the "ay in "hich the resulting - ad. images might e

2F

today the only refuge for a use of images that seeks to resist their endless re-purposing. In all these cases, I "ant to suggest, the post-archive is used to re-connect, ho"ever tentatively, "ith the emancipatory criti!ue of the archive that "as undertaken y artists and curators in the 1ECDs and FDs. 's I have suggested, that criti!ue "as not simply a continuation of the critical approaches to the archive that "ere a hallmark of the early +Dth-century avantgarde %photomontage$ shock, etc.&. In their emphasis on net"orks and in their glo al orientation, the post-archives of the 1ECDs and FDs cannot e separated from the political realities as "ell as the technical developments of the post"ar era. In reconnecting "ith these approaches, artists and curators "ho use archives today seek to create an alternative to corporate glo alism.

Sven Spieker, =os 'ngeles

2I

1 The 19th-century archive model was built on the assumption that whatever accumulates in the archive ends up there by accident. Archival documents, in this reading, were traces of activities inasmuch as they were not created with the archive (with memory or history) in mind. As a result they allowed their users to access the past as present: in an archive we witness transcripts of chance, protocols of accidents, of a present without a future. Indebted as it is to a certain understanding of the medium of photography--which not coincidentally is often referred to as the most archival of media--, this idea of the archive is frequently linked to the problem of (individual) memory, the recovery of the past, etc. 2 As I have shown in my book The Big Archive (2008), these values are for the most part associated with a certain understanding of masculinity, as archivists were by definition thought to be male. 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining. Accessed 07/13/2013. 4 In the process, our understanding of data and information has also changed: where traditional archives store documents, in the post-archive condition, what is being stored is often meta-data. 5 Seregei Tretiakov, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Aufbau, 1985) 6 See Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Gerhard Richter's "Atlas": The Anomic Archive, October, Vol. 88, (Spring, 1999), pp. 117145 7 Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer. Here cited from http://www.berkedu.com/VisualStudies/readingList/06a_benjamin-author%20as%20producer.pdf. Accessed 07/13/2013. 8 See Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Gerhard Richter's "Atlas": The Anomic Archive, October, Vol. 88, (Spring, 1999), pp. 117145 9 R. Buckminster Fuller, Oprerating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Zurich: Lars Mller Publishers, 2013), p. 25. 10 Ivan Ilich, Deschooling Society (London: Marion Boyars, 1970), p. 21-22. 11 Luis Chamnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007) 12 Ivan Ilich, Deschooling Society (London: Marion Boyars, 1970), p. 22. 13 Whole Earth Catalogue (Random House, 1971). 14 Allan Sekula, "Notes for an Exhibition Project" (for Witte de With, Rotterdam), 1992, unpublished manuscript (xerox), p. 1. Cited from http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/162. Accessed 07/23/2013. 15 Fish Story can be viewed as a reaction to what has been described as the nomadism of the 1990s. Nomadism is a reaction formation to the twofold problems with globalization: first, to the way in which it is perceived to level and homogenize everything. And second to the backlash against globalization that was becoming visible in many parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, in the form of a resurgent nationalism. The artist-nomad who could, on occasion, become an archivist, is a compulsive traveller who is adrift in knowledge. 16 R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Zurich: Lars Mller Publishers, 2013), p. 28 17 Ibid., 29-30 1I What Gasilewski refers to as allegory, and what must not be confused with Walter Benjamins use of this term, builds to an idea rather than building on an idea, a process Gasilewski has compared to the peeling of a banana. It is as if the parts of the allegory are empty, even as they all build to an idea once they have been connected. 19 Jacques Rancire, Aesthetics and Its Discontents (Polity, 2009), p. ... 20 Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia UP, 2005), p. ... 21 Felix Vogel, The Anterooms of the Real, Approaching Lina Selanders, Around the Cave of the Double Tombs, http://linaselander.com/pdfs/Felix%20Vogel%20text.pdf. Accessed 07/13/2013. ++ Ibid. 23 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 103 24 Ibid., p. 108 25 Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital. http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/. Accessed 07/22/2013 26 Raqs Media Collective, http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/images/pdf/b1c525b6-b75f-450c-b876-d693c6e60ba3.pdf. Accessed 07/13/2013. 27 I take the term uncreative from Kenneth Goldsmiths recent book Uncreative Writing (2012). 28 Arjun Appadurai, Archive and Inspiration, . 29 Ibid., p. 17 30 Ibid., p. 16 31 Nicolas Bourriaud, Post-Production (Lukas & Sternberg, 2007). See also Also Hal Foster, An Archival Impulse, October, Fall 2004, No. 110, pp. 3-22 32 Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing (New York: Columbia 33 Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/. Accessed 07/13/2013.