SAMPLER #4: Things that Happen

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Image courtesy of MACBA.

Since its inception, MACBA’s historical archive has been dedicated to conserving, cataloguing and disseminating all the documentation generated by the activities produced by the Museum. Over this period, its exhibitions, concerts, publications, study programs, workshops, lectures, radio broadcasts and various meetings have already generated over sixty-thousand documents, forming a historical archive under permanent construction.

To celebrate the museum's 25th anniversary, Enric Farrés Duran has developed a project with the Museum's Historical Archive. Through a process of research, the artist has delved deep into the archive, reviewing the limits of its definitions to reveal its inner core. An archive is not only made up of the documents it contains, but also everything that allows them to be available. The notion of archive that as addressed here refers to fundamental aspects such as the different spaces where these documents are kept, the data structures into which they are inserted and the people who interact with them. All of these elements are parts of the common construction of the meaning of the document, a constantly shifting meaning for an ongoing archive.

By immersing ourselves in this archive, some questions have arisen such as: Are the documents always at our disposal? Are the documents the props of our research? What data does a document contain and what hierarchies are established between that data? Can a fungus constitute the contents of a document? If by definition we consider that an archive is open and that the user has permanent access to its contents, what does it mean to exhibit an archive? To whom are we exhibiting it? What does it show and what does it hide? And finally, how is it shown? These questions have been fundamental to the conception of this project, composed of a program of public activities and an exhibition. The way in which the activities are conceived and relate to the exhibition and the archive challenges the usual operating logics of the institution, while underlining, pointing out and making them visible.

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