Re-Assembling the Archive

Exhibition

This project explored society’s relationship with the archive; past, present and future. In our current time with seemingly limitless access to information digitally, the archive as a physical object holds a certain compound interest. The archive is at once thought of as open, neutral and communal, yet is actually contingent on power systems, selection, and exclusivity. 

The first stage of the project consisted of researching the world over for all types of physical archives, from open access vinyl records, secured seed depositories, sealed correspondences of centuries past, to the foundations of national identities. 



To reassemble the archive today asks how the selection and ordering of information, often carried out in a closed and exclusive environment, could be opened and transformed into a discourse that is inclusive to a range of voices and their corresponding forms of information.

By rejecting its static and isolated nature, the exhibition resituates the archive as a site of the gathering and participation  of people and ideas. 

Transforming the spectator of the exhibition into a participant, both physically and intellectually is the purpose of ReAssembling the Archive.