On File, Bucharest

Unsichtbar machen (after I have been trying
to make visible the lemon writings
on the wall), 2013.
Lemon juice, brush, white wall,
invisible writings.

ROAMING. ON FILE
28th June 2013

Platforma Space, Bucharest

Sigurður Atli Sigurðsson, Ermanno Cristini, Alessandro Di Pietro, Irena Lagator, Giancarlo Norese, Andrea Palasti, Alice Pedroletti, Luca Scarabelli, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (Alina Popa, Irina Gheorghe), Paolo Tognozzi

Ph. by Alice Pedroletti
Web: Simply.it
Cur. by A. Castiglioni, E. Cristini

The intake of the archive in the arts is a significant trend of contemporary artistic research. Forms, procedures, methods that traditionally belong to the bureaucracy are filled with expressive values assuming meanings that transcend their instrumental character.
The bureaucracy is a hierarchical form of the state that needs to practice first and foremost the construction of an archive.

According to Derrida (Mal d'archive, une impression freudienne, Paris, 1995), the etymology of the word comes from Archè, "command": the archive is a "clearance" which presupposes a "guardian" means the authority which holds hermeneutic power, and the bureaucracy is the exercise of that power.
The archive therefore is never neutral but constitutes a containing the shape of which determines the quality of the content. From this point of view the archive is a language to all effects.

ROAMING wants to deal with the archive, focusing the attention its effects on identity. The first effect of burocracy is the control of identity.The archive underlying this control is a finite collection and indexing. The archive of the bureaucracy is a tool for flattening identity because in his role of linguistic system it names the being as a closed form.

Viceversa the archive, ideally, is a form being opened, as required by Umberto Eco (The vertigo of the list, Milan, 2012), the form of the list a place that "almost physically suggests the infinite."
The bureaucracy making use of the archive at its foundation in fact denies its nature. The meeting in Bucharest is built around this assumption, analyzing it under three different view points: the experiences of denunciation of the bureaucracy as a practice of control, those where the archive becomes an instrument of identity reconstruction and those that reflect on the web and the
archive as liquid form.