Monday, October 19, 2020

Thoughts on the Archive

 'Archival remembering can never be separated from forgetting'

Do we archive to remember or forget? Do we write to remember or forget? There are things we write to remember, and there are things we write to forget. But what about the permanence of writing or the archive? What do we read off permanence? Does permanence tell us whether it means to remember or forget itself?

The escape / release of a trapped thought contained within the mind is no longer a part of the body once it is archived. The archive thus is a way of forgetting, created only in order for a provisional remembering when the body wishes to reoccupy that old time-space. A certain time can be reinvigorated back through the archive, or its consumption.

The archive simultaneously reveals and buries certain pasts.

'Art archives do not just construct, they also bury colonial pasts'

For everything archived, there is so much that is overlooked. The archive blinds us to many things behind its face.

No comments: