Constant (Nicolas Malevé and Michael Murtaugh) have developed a series of
experiments in connection with the archive of Erkki Kurenniemi, the Finnish
artist and technology pioneer of the 1960s. Over the years, Kurenniemi has
obsessively documented his everyday activities, collecting vast amounts of
audio-visual-textual material to make a digital 'back-up' of his life. The
archive is an attempt to provide the necessary materials for someone in the
future to be able to reconstruct human life once computers are powerful and
intelligent enough to perform the task, reflecting what Kurenniemi considers
to be inevitable by 2048, and thus enacting the fantasy of
artificial consciousness.
Over the duration of dOCUMENTA (13), Constant explore Kurenniemi's work as a
database-body in progress - as a living archive in the spirit of his project.
Their approach to this task is not to follow standard archiving procedures of
processing, ordering and classifying data but to speculate on the nature of
the materials themselves by running a series of experiments using human and
machine processes. Their interpretation of Kurenniemi's archive is aimed to
uncover aspects of what is not directly apparent.
A project page and a blog documenting their ongoing experiments can be found
at http://kurenniemi.activearchives.org/logbook/
On Friday 14 September 2012, 11 am - 1.30, at La Lutherie, Constant give a
workshop on Active Archives, the Kurenniemi project, and invite participants
to explore different interpretations of archiving.
The project is initiated by Joasia Krysa, commissioned by KURATOR (Joasia
Krysa) and dOCUMENTA (13) in partnership with Central Art Archive of the
Finnish National Gallery (Perttu Rastas), and Contemporary Art Museum KIASMA,
Helsinki. Supported by Arts Council England.
