Archiving Power, 2018/2024
"Past events, it is argued,have no objective existence, but survive only in written record and in human memories.The past is whatever the recordsand the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it."
George Orwell, 1984
I began Archiving Power with a formerly secret, coded list of names connected to the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). The list was part of the bureaucratic system through which people were recorded, classified and organised.
Rather than reproducing the documents as they appeared in the archive, I digitally overlaid and edited selected pages, inverting them so that white numbers and letters appear in columns against a black background. Vertical gaps interrupt the information, creating areas of absence and making the original structure of the documents difficult to read.
While working with the lists, I began to notice the surnames Fuchs, Ehrlich, Richter, Adler and Frei. Detached from their original context, these names have ordinary meanings: fox, honest, judge, eagle and free. Within the coded lists, however, they belonged to individual Stasi officers recorded as part of the surveillance system.
I became interested in this tension between the anonymous structure of the archive and the individuality contained within it. The names could be read as words, but they were also traces of people who had existed within a particular system of power.
The installation consists of twelve image pairs created from these names. Presented as diptychs in two rows, the arrangement retains something of the order of the original lists while introducing new relationships between the words and the surrounding information.
A slideshow of 170 images drawn from the same source material accompanies the installation. Presented over ten minutes with sound, it extends the process of moving through, selecting and transforming the archive. https://www.dropbox.com/s/mow51vburkly2lb/Archiving%20Power-hevcmp4.mp4?dl=0
12 image pairs, presented as diptychs
Slideshow, 170 images, 10 minutes with sound
George Orwell, 1984
I began Archiving Power with a formerly secret, coded list of names connected to the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). The list was part of the bureaucratic system through which people were recorded, classified and organised.
Rather than reproducing the documents as they appeared in the archive, I digitally overlaid and edited selected pages, inverting them so that white numbers and letters appear in columns against a black background. Vertical gaps interrupt the information, creating areas of absence and making the original structure of the documents difficult to read.
While working with the lists, I began to notice the surnames Fuchs, Ehrlich, Richter, Adler and Frei. Detached from their original context, these names have ordinary meanings: fox, honest, judge, eagle and free. Within the coded lists, however, they belonged to individual Stasi officers recorded as part of the surveillance system.
I became interested in this tension between the anonymous structure of the archive and the individuality contained within it. The names could be read as words, but they were also traces of people who had existed within a particular system of power.
The installation consists of twelve image pairs created from these names. Presented as diptychs in two rows, the arrangement retains something of the order of the original lists while introducing new relationships between the words and the surrounding information.
A slideshow of 170 images drawn from the same source material accompanies the installation. Presented over ten minutes with sound, it extends the process of moving through, selecting and transforming the archive. https://www.dropbox.com/s/mow51vburkly2lb/Archiving%20Power-hevcmp4.mp4?dl=0
12 image pairs, presented as diptychs
Slideshow, 170 images, 10 minutes with sound
