Dismantling the Archive

Archives haunt our imagination. They migrate from old storage spaces to new storage technologies. They legitimize individuals at the intersection of institutions, social media, and private collections. They hover between personal hard drives and anonymous web servers. They write the laws of what can be said. The project Dismantling the Archive - The Art of Disappearance makes archives disappear in order to uncover the paradox of archival practices and thus participate in the development of a contemporary form of archive. At a time in which the archive has become the central metaphor for preservation, The Art of Disappearance is dedicated to the development and reflection of an Aufhebekunst that illuminates and irritates our relationship to collected material. This term exploits the threefold meaning of the German word "Aufhebung" [sublation]: in the sense of to store; in the sense of to abolish, to make disappear; and in the sense of to lift into new contexts. Therefore, the Agentur für Unabkömmlichkeitsbegründungen (AGFU) will access the archive of the former artist collective Fritzpunkt (AF) with the aim of recognizing and questioning the tensions inherent in the objects on the one hand and making the archive disappear consistently and completely on the other. These artistic processes are put to the test by documentation techniques introduced into the Aufhebekunst, which endanger the Art of Disappearance in its consequence. Exemplary multiples produced by the AGFU in the run-up demonstrate to us the hypostatizing of disappearance which the performative installations of The Art of Disappearance will systematically play through: Working notes from the AF cast in epoxy resin are preserved in the multiples and at the same time forever withdrawn from us. Project leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Roland Innerhofer, Institut für Germanistik der Universität Wien Kontakt: roland.innerhofer@univie.ac.at Research partner: Ass.-Prof.in Dr.in Rosemarie Brucher, Zentrum für Wissenschaft und Forschung der MUK Wien Kontakt: r.brucher@muk.ac.at Art: Agentur für Unabkömmlichkeitsbegründungen Kontakt: buero@agfu.at

No additional funding sources recorded.