In an Archive Fever

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by Nayia Yiakoumaki

The archive is considered as the absolute gathering of information where data is meticulously and methodically stored and preserved. This act of archiving could be the need to preserve something that no longer exists, therefore create a mausoleum of what has been no longer active almost as a duty and homage to it. On other occasions the act of archiving takes place concurrently with the action of the body, which it is aiming to archive. Institutional archives have similar function and their archivists gather items at the same time whilst institutions are in operation. There is no certainty about who will access an archive and this fact already triggers many possibilities. The way it will be read, interpret and altered is my concern in the following text. Considering the great interest of curators and artists in institutional archives I would like to discuss the archive as a rigid entity in flux taking as impetus Derrida's Archive Fever [1] .

Derrida starts precisely, by the elliptical archival search for the etymology of the word archive. [2] This etymological investigation already introduces the notion of origin into the concept of the archive and links it with an authoritative principle. In this movement towards etymology, Derrida traces a deep semantic link that discloses arkhē both as origin and commandment. Here, what is relevant is the unfolding of the concept of the archive as the place of co-existence of origin and law.

Derrida’s proposition, deriving from the examination of the archaic function of archives, becomes significant as it allows me to proceed with the comparative study and analysis of institutional archives such as the archives held within art museums, which I will refer to later on.

According to Derrida, the archive functions both as a nomological (the document of law) and a topological (the place of law) entity: nomological, due to its constitutive contents; topological due to its physical presence. [3] Consequently, the archive is the locus from where power is exercised. Accordingly, the house - oikos [4] of the archons, those in command, becomes the edifice, which gathers these nomo-topological definitions, the archeion.This archetypical archive - that place of commandment and origin - contains official documents, which relate to the public and are, under a certain regime, at the public's disposal. The citizens have restricted access to these documents since the archeion is simultaneously private and public; the documents cannot be taken away but can be used within the conditional accessibility, regulated by the state. Moreover, these same documents are those, which constitute law, those that contain what regulates the citizens. Therefore the archive becomes the 'provider' and the 'preserver' of its own subject matter: the official documents. The archive is the public depository of normative laws holding features of a private and public space.

The complex structuring and practical formation of archives in art museums is reflected by institutional control on issues relating to accessibility, dissemination of information and interactivity with the user. The possibilities of external interventions on museological archives through curatorial practices become very narrow as there are prescribed ways of accessing and interacting with the material been held. Together with the limits, I would like to think towards the potential of curatorial practices within the constitution and disruption of visual archives. Curatorial potentials might emerge by the possible inversion of a prescribed methodology for accessing and researching an archive. The condition of museums to integrate and many times appropriate the private and public sphere, in the case of institutional archives this condition becomes more significant and determinative. “The dwelling, this place where they (the archives) dwell permanently, marks the institutional passage from the private to the public…” [5] This deep interrelation between private concealment and public visibility is constitutive of the archives and the museums' structure, as the private concealment regulates the public exposure and vice versa. Archives and museums can in fact fluctuate, simultaneously, from private and confined areas that resemble exchequers [6] to spaces which are open to everyone. The continuous transition from private to public places them in an ambiguous condition where it is difficult to recognise exclusive characteristics of the private or public field. In this transition the archive is affected profoundly and loses its definitive nature. Within this new condition that the transition creates, a curator can dwell his or her own intervention. What we can think about is if the archive itself loses or gains something through the shift from a dwelling to a communal space and vice versa? [7] It surely loses its cryptic nature but at the same time, through this openness, it contributes information and data, which were previously concealed. It is this play of enclosure and disclosure that designates archives and museums as topologies of privilege. [8] This designation is what gives the archive the authority. “It is thus the first figure of an archive, because every archive is institutive and conservative…An eco-nomic archive in this double sense: It keeps, it puts in reserve, it saves, but in an unnatural fashion, that is to say making the law (nomos) or making the people respect the law”. [9] Derrida’s assumption here predetermines every archive as an authoritative entity. The archive incorporates law; it becomes indicative of power.In the institutional domain, an archive will reflect the archive of the institution: the principles that govern the institution. The archive, which has been created, maintained, and housed by an institution, could reveal this institution’s scope through the systematic observation, research, study and analysis of its structure and contents, the systems of classification, the taxonomical order, the strategies of acquiring new acquisitions, the accessibility to the public or the frequency of changes in managerial strategies. Hence it reveals ‘something’ of the institution. From a vehicle reflecting power it becomes an indication or how power is incorporated through an institution’s agenda.

The archivist builds and maintains what has already been built before him. In Steven Poliakoff’s film Shooting the Past [10] , the main archivist claimed, and proved later on in the story, to have memorized thousands of photographs that constituted the photographic archive of the film. In Poliakoff’s archive the archivist had a total knowledge of the material and was also able to draw new links between what was deposited there, giving birth to unpredictable stories. From what was meant to be unique and historical images he created, through a laborious and genius effort, new meta-original material. The archive is not a neutral place; archival material of the past is not simply stored, in fact, its infrastructure determines its content. The archive formats as it accommodates. "The archivisation produces as much as it records the event." [11] The various systems of archiving have an affect on how the contents of the archive are accessed and consequently affect how these contents are read and interpreted. Returning to Poliakoff’s archivist, his dramatic discoveries would have never been the same under the research of another archivist. His continuous contact with the material under his care and the unlimited access enabled such a ‘whole’ view of what had been kept. In the film the archivist is presented as an erudite of his own subject matter. Classification is not so important and it is almost as the archivist’s brain is the classifying agent. Technology and all the applications used in organised archives greatly affect the ways that specific data are made available to users, and in consequence affect the way that the same data are preserved for future use. Hence they influence the way that data are perceived. Issues of access for example, affect researchers especially where staff ‘supervise’ or ‘assist’ the user. These methodological differences affect greatly the choices that users make, in order to select material for viewing, the time they spent over their research, and as a consequence have an effect on the users’ overall interaction and perception of a particular archive.

A process of augmentation takes place every time an archive is read and interpreted. There is no effacement of a researcher’s investment due to the investigation of another. "The archivist produces more archive, and that is why the archive is never closed. It opens out to the future." [12] The archive is permeable to investigation and research. Each researcher alters it by charging it with his/her interpretation. It can, therefore, accumulate layers of interpretations and meanings. It expands notionally by continuous research and readings. Complementary to this conceptual expansion through the contributions of researchers is the structural enhancement of an archive, which could be traced through a historical investigation of its formation. The changes that have taken place throughout its history could reveal multiple transformations that have formed the archive as we find it in its present condition. Such a search enables a view of the archive in evolution both theoretically and structurally since it reveals much more than the archive's structure and contents. It becomes a tool for the examination of these precise systems, which have formed the archive of the archive in question, in its synchronic and diachronic dimension. The archive, because of its supposed specificity offers a fascinating and challenging field to curators and artists. Its ‘rigidity’ invites for projects which will re-conceive it in fluctuation, and its structure invites practices which will expose it as chaotic.

Thus curatorial practices instigate a kind of fundamental change. If we view the archive as an organic entity, then this condition as ‘organism’ makes it subjected to contamination and disturbance. If as an organism it is prone to transformations, then there are possibilities of influencing its substance. Could these potential influences ever alter its conceptual basis and structure by profoundly undermining its settled formation? [13] The archive, as the entity which incorporates an element of transformation, consequently becomes vulnerable to possible contamination. In the field of art and in the cases of contemporary institutions and museums we could speculate that actions coming from external sources, such as independent curators and artists somehow have the potential of altering the archive by the insinuation of disassociation or heterogeneity as the outcome of their interference. Projects with a focus on institutional archives would initiate a ‘forced’ modification to the archive, one that does not derive from the institution itself but comes from outside as a corruptive element. The role of the contemporary curator in relation to the role of the archivist is to unsettle rather than put in order. The curator or artist use the archive and when the intervention finishes the archive is abandoned it in its previous condition. There is more interest in the interference and interpretation than any in another facet of the archive. A new reading has been made and the archive cannot be the same again. The intervention has been incised somewhere in the archive of the respective archive. An incision the archivist might not be keen realising.

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[1] Original lecture given on 5 June 1994 'The concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression'. Bibliographical reference Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press 1996.

[2] The word archive derives from archeion - initially the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons. The term refers to the Greek word arhkē, which means commencement.

[3] The reference to the topos, the place of its foundation.

[4] Here, the term oikos refers to a number of nomo-topological definitions, namely, the place and domicile, the institution and lineage.

[5] Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press 1996, p.3

Derrida’s argument that the archive incorporates the private and the public is apparent in cases where a museum, prior to its foundation as public space, was a private residence. A relevant example is the Freud Museum in London, Sigmund Freud’s original residence after leaving Vienna. Changing from Freud’s private house to the museum of ‘Freud’s private house’, with an entry fee and invigilating staff, the Freud Museum becomes itself a paradigm of this ambiguous condition. The museum is viewed and perceived simultaneously by the visitor, as the ‘home of Freud himself’ and the ‘home of psychoanalysis’.

[6] An edifice that bears similar characteristics to the archetypical archive mentioned earlier - the archeion, a place governed by eco-nomic principles. Go to footnote 9 and p.7 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press 1996

[7] Derrida’s use of the term dwelling creates a bridge to Heidegger's notion of the dwelling.

In Being and Time, Heidegger considers the dwelling as an enclosed and protected entity. Any expansion or interaction between the dwelling and the public is invasive towards the former. Precisely, he refers to this notion (the dwelling) as the realm of non-representation where the Being lives an original presence. When this is exposed to the public sphere or is invaded by technology it becomes a site of homelessness. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time trans. John Maquarrie and Edward Robinson, San Francisco: Harper 1962, p.140 and Mark Wigley Heidegger’s House-The Violence of the Domestic Public No 6 1992, p.100

[8] Even the practical arrangements which result from this shift between private and public and relate to the regulations of public access, such as specificity of opening hours, prescribed routing suggested by signage and strict control over the level of interaction between visitors and the archival contents or the museum’s displays, enhance the perception of these domains as unique and exclusive.

[9] Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press 1996 p.7

The use of the term eco-nomic reveals the dual function of the archive. One as a private domain: oikos (the house in Greek); and one that refers to the public domain: nomos (the law in Greek). Derrida takes advantage of the etymology of the term economic and is explicitly using it in his text as a synthetic word: eco-nomic; revealing, the origin of the terms economy and economics which are commonly used to address financial systems, finances etc. Thus he is achieving two things: associating the archive with money, therefore power, and making sure that the reader will become aware of the play between the two compounds, eco and nomic. Consequently Derrida implies the connection between money i.e. power, with the association and interchange between the private and the public sphere as the synthetic word indicate. Without the interaction of both domains the concept of power could become redundant since power needs precise referents in order to be exercised.

[10] Shooting the past, written & directed by Stephen Poliakoff, Talkback Productions, BBC, 1999  (195 mins)

[11] Ibid., p.17

[12] Ibid., p.68

[13] In Archive Fever Derrida considers the secret and the death drive as major threats to the archive. The former because it becomes the element of disruption and of non-integrity and the latter because, as a destructive force, it opposes to the aim of the archive. "But of the secret itself, there can be no archive by definition. The secret is the very ash of the archive" Ibid,. p. 100

and "The death drive destroys the possibility of its own archive since it always operates in silence. It does not leave traces, as it becomes inconspicuous, therefore anti-archival". Ibid., p.11