W elco me to the Higher Se mi nar i n

rethi nki ng res earch practices i n Art, Technology and Des ign!
AN ARCHIVAL METABOLISM
O n building archives and how those archives build us.
by
DOREEN MENDE
curator and theorist, professor HEAD in Geneva;
founding member of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin
Friday, November 11, 1.30 4pm at Konstfack (room: Zickerman)
The seminar is organized in collaboration with CuratorLab.
The concern is not only whats the research question? But what is the archive? and how are we
going to investigate it? as Griselda Pollock recently started a work-session with students. The Higher
Seminar will connect to that and propose that building an archive is absolutely necessary for a research
process, if this process shall release the potency for subjectivation. Who are 'we' in a research process?
Where do 'we' speak from? How can we understand our concern in relation to the world? What can a
research do to the means of production, i.e., how can we build our own means to articulate a practice-led
thinking? Therefore, engaging with the question of the archive introduces the political horizon laying
the ground for undertaking the research beyond academic degrees, disciplines and the institutionalisation
of learning.
This approach invites us to turn the 20th-century-concept of the archive upside down: If the archive
had been defined as an ordering system with a forest of shelves, an accumulation of materials,
architectural manifestation, institutions and heritage, then the 21st-concept of the archive with its
digitized files, (obsolete) data-formats, algorithmic knowledge economy (see Marquard Smith), xeroxcopying and continuous archiving (see DM text on the data-center) demands to take Jacques Derrida's
proposal serious: Let's take the archive as commencement: What has been given to you as a gift that
you could not refuse (see Jean-Paul Martinon)? What is the situation that makes you struggle, the
question that keeps you from sleeping, the image that you have copied too many times or the book that
you carry in your bag as if it was a permanent silent/active interlocutor? Instead of placing 'us' in the
position to define what an archive is, the session would like to understand that the archive with its
technologies, infrastructures and materialities is close to an actant that produces 'us.' We are products of
an archival metabolism (see DM interview) that invites us to think towards a post-historical sociability
(see Boris Buden).
We will create three to four groups, each of it is supposed to render more precisely a particular
approach towards the need of building an archive with the help of the Library (see below).
The work-session has been conceived in relation to the public talk that Doreen gives on November 10,
2016 at Tensta-Konstall.
Please kindly prepare:
1.) Please bring into the session one example that planted the seed for your research process: an image,
a digital glitch, a lost object, an absent figure, an observation, a lived experience, etc. This element
needs to be materialised in one form or the other.
2) Please read the texts from the Library
3) When registering, please specify your motivation for taking part
Doreen Mende is a curator and theorist. Since 2015, Head and Professor of the CCC Research Master
and PhD-Forum at HEAD in Geneva (https://head.hesge.ch/ccc/turbulence/). In 2013, she was awarded
with a PhD in Curatorial/Knowledge, University of London. She is currently working on the final steps
of editing the books Thinking Under Turbulence (Motto Books) and Visual Agitation. KP Brehmer
(Koenig Books). Mende is founding member of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin with an archive that
is intended to collect, i.e. secure what is there, and produce, i.e. initiate what is not yet there. (HF)

Library:
Jean-Paul Martinon, Theses on the Philosophy of Curating, in: Philosophy of the Curatorial, 2013,
pp. 25-34. (PDF attached)
Boris Buden, "The Public Intellectual after History Remembering Saids 'Speaking Truth to Power'," in:
Adania Shibli, A Journey of Ideas Across: In Dialog with Edward Said, published by HKW, Berlin,
2013, http://journeyofideasacross.hkw.de/edward-said-in-the-here-and-now/boris-buden.html
Marquard Smith, "Theses on the Philosophy of History: The Work of Research in the Age of
Digital Searchability and Distributability," in: Journal of Visual Culture, 2013 12: 375, pp. 376403. (PDF attached)
Julia Nyman and Salvatore Elefante, "Of Distances within the Archive's Nervous System. Interview with
Doreen Mende" in: Nora Sternfeld (ed.), CuMMA PAPERS#3, 2013,
https://cummastudies.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/cumma-papers-4-2.pdf
Doreen Mende,"The Rack, the Worker and the Submarine," in: Research Center for Proxy Politics,
Hailweed at autoitalia, June/July, 2016. http://rcpp.lensbased.net/autoitalia/doreen-mende
Griselda Pollock, "From the virtual feminist museum to the analysis of biennial culture: Curatorial
challenges and the politics of critical thinking, reading and making art," in: Thinking under
Turbulence, published by CCC Program HEAD Geneva and Motto Books (forthcoming.
DOCUMENT DRAFT - do not circulate)
We have a limited number of places, so please rsvp Joanna.warsza@konstfack.se
The hig her semi nar seri es aim to provide a platform for a continuous and dynamic exchange on
matters pertaining to research within Konstfack at large senior researchers, faculty, practitioners,
doctoral candidates and students as well as with students, researchers and practitioners in affiliated
fields and institutions. The higher seminar series is open to the public.
WELCOME!