Open Archive # 1: Trajectories in Audio-Visual Culture
Argos – Centre for Art & Media
Werfstraat 13 Rue du Chantier, Brussels 1000, Belgium

The archive is often thought of as a forgotten repository of faded documents and dusty objects: it is an image of and from the past, a mundane picture whose identity is slowly transforming into a dynamic, digitally coloured notion of storage and memory. The archive, as an innovative concept, need not embody the past as such, but rather the promise of the past into the future. Its essence is to be found in the way it addresses yesterday’s potential, opening up to the unknown, the unexpected and unpredictable, and to a new future.

With that in mind Argos opens its doors and its archive with the project Open Archive #1. Argos’ extensive collections are both a starting-point for genealogy and archaeology, as well as sparking off a multitude of associations and correlations. From the numerous media works, catalogues and publications several trajectories can be drawn, and diverse frames of reference for reflections on culture, art, media and society today can be created. In this way the archive is used as a public space, which does not merely take stock of the past and classify it, but reinterprets and re-activates it as well.

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