Living Archive

Archiving as a contemporary artistic and curatorial practice

The Arsenal - Institute of Film and Video Art e.V. has amassed a collection of some 8,000 different films since it was founded almost 50 years ago. The collection represents a half century of international film art outside the mainstream with films by such renowned artists as Derek Jarman, Manoel de Oliveira, Andrei Tarkovski or the documentary film epic Shoah by Claude Lanzmann.
The project Living Archive has invited 30 curators, filmmakers and artists, including musicians and performers, to develop projects based on works stored at the association’s archive. Potentially, the projects could be curated film programmes which connect the old with the new, or highlight thematic and formal elements and develop special educational programmes to accompany them. The participants are free to create new installations or films which use the archived material, or refer to or integrate the films in the archive in a different form, e.g. in contemporary musical scores for silent films or performances. The project will conclude with a festival at the Kino Arsenal and the Salon Populaire in Berlin where the participants will present and discuss their projects in film programmes, lectures, performances, compositions and exhibitions.

Artistic director: Stefanie Schulte Strathaus; Artists: Heinz Emigholz, Harun Farocki, Angela Melitopoulos, Avi Mograbi (IL), Constanze Ruhm (AT), Hito Steyerl, Ian White (UK/D), Madhusree Dutte (IN), Brent Klinkum (F), Darryl Els (ZA), Alá Younis (JO) and others
Berlin, Arsenal, 1 June 2011 – 30  July 2012