Die Flut der Dinge / The Flood of Things

About Preserving, Archiving and Storing

Since man passes on it’s knowledge, skills and experience to the subsequent generations not only orally (communicative memory), but visualizes, objectifies and puts them into writing (cultural memory), the collective memory has been growing constantly. This is true for both, the memory of certain ethnic groups as well as the memory of mankind in total. From the inscriptions on tombs and funerary object of old Egypt to the archives of registration offices and manuals of vacuum cleaners, we’re trying not to loose a single bit of information. It is getting more and more difficult to deal with those hardly manageable amounts of collected objects and knowledge, which puts us in urgent need for new concepts and adequate filters for a reasonable dealing with these archives.
This is especially true for the enormous numbers of human artifacts that we horde in our cellars, attics, apartments, storage rooms, libraries and museums.
We will approach this topic by reading relevant texts, visiting archives and getting to known different positions from the art and science world. As a result, we’ll try to interweave all that into our own work. From conceptual work to furniture; everything is allowed. How do we deal with the flood of things? Where and how do we store all the objects? What should be transferred from the profane space to the cultural archive?
Part of this project was an excursion to various archives in New York City.