THE WHOLE LIFE ACADEMY DRESDEN 19.5 -25.5.2019 READER 1 Original Marzona Collection Archival Folders Archiv der Avantgarden, Japanisches Palais, Dresden, 2019 Photo: Laura Fiorio 2 INTRODUCTION We are looking forward to the one-week Whole Life Academy in Dresden and would like to share, together with the tutors, the following reader with you. Within the framework of The Whole Life: Archives and Reality, the internal program of the international Whole Life Academy takes place in the week of 19.5-25.5. The Academy seeks to tackle current issues through practical research methods. Launching from the transformative moment of the Archiv der Avantgarden, 60 participants will address, together with a number of distinguished tutors and tutors teams, the status of archives and their contemporary relevance. The Academy provides settings in which cooperative and interdisciplinary forms of inquiry on situated knowledges and site-specific genealogies can emerge, and where the subsequent steps of preserving, presenting, and interpreting archive items can happen in different sequences, or simultaneously. The format of the Academy is an attempt to bring together interdisciplinary experts and objects in order to explore archival material, locate traces, and narrate biographies. It invites an interdisciplinary assemblage of international case studies, connecting historical events, specific sites, and settings through new archival methodologies and practices, enabling different forms of visibility, readability, and palpability. Central to the Academy is the linking of specific places, institutions, and sites, in Dresden, as well as in the surrounding area with object biographies. This expansion of a spatially limited archive concept, and the mobilization and activation of archival locations is developed as a methodology of a new archival practice. The project sees itself as a nomadic curriculum, which activates certain places in Dresden and, therefore, the Academy will collaborate with other collections, archives, and institutions in Dresden and relate to AdA and back. The AdA itself is not yet a public archive. During this transitional period, access is limited and the status of objects and materials remains ambigous. While preparing for their seminars, the tutors undertook this challenging task of researching at the AdA; as it is only partly inventoried, searching and locating are complex endeavors. Yet these difficulties provoke alternative formats of archival inspection that emphasize the context of the archive, its socio-political structures, and its narrations against a one-sided Currently the vast majority of items in the AdA are stored in A4-size office binders not organized according to standard archival practices; not chronologically, nor by type, nor by size. Instead, these folders condense instances, figures, and material into a format that dissolves traditional distinctions of medium and scale and offers instead a curated insight into a past moment, movement, or process. In their totality, however, these folders constitute an alternative archival arrangement. We would like to provide an insight into this complex structure in various formats, and emphasize an approach that draws, around the AdA, a constellation of discursive and practical networks in an attempt to rethink the very gesture of archival research . We wish you an inspiring and insightful week and are looking forward to welcome you all in Dresden. The Whole Life Academy Team Caroline Adler, Stefan Aue, Lama El Khatib, and Olga Sievers 3 GENERAL PROGRAM 9 A.M. SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY 10 A.M. 11 A.M 10 A.M - 1 P.M. 10 A.M - 1 P.M. Morning Sessions: Morning Sessions: 12 P.M Excursions & Research Excursions & Research Various Locations in Dresden Various Locations in Dresden 1 P.M 12 P.M. - 2:30 P.M. Registration Japanisches Palais 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. 2 P.M Break Break 3 P.M 2 P.M. - 5 P.M. 2 P.M. - 5 P.M. 2 P.M. - 5 P.M. 2:30 P.M. - 5:30 P.M. Afternoon Sessions: Afternoon Sessions: Afternoon Sessions: 4 P.M Introductions & Working & Discussing Working & Discussing Working & Discussing AdA Tour Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau / Albertinum Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau / Albertinum Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau / Albertinum Japanisches Palais 5 P.M 5 P.M. - 6 P.M. 5 P.M. - 6 P.M. Break Break 6 P.M 6 P.M. - 7 P.M. Dinner 6 P.M. - 7:30 P.M. 6 P.M. - 7:30 P.M. Lipsiusbau 7 P.M Tiny Desk Lecture Tiny Desk Lecture Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau 8 P.M 7:30 P.M. - 8:30 P.M. 7:30 P.M. - 8:30 P.M. Dinner Dinner Lipsiusbau Lipsiusbau 7 P.M. - 11 P.M. 9 P.M Opening: 8:30 P.M - 10 P.M. 8:30 P.M - 10 P.M. Exhibition Evening Program Evening Program Lichthof im Albertinum Gewölbe im Lipsiusbau 10 P.M Japanisches Palais ARCHIVE VIEWING ; MONDAY - WEDNESDAY; DAILY 10 A.M. - 6 P.M. 4 Closed Academy Sessions Public Program Semi-public Presentations *invited guests only WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY 10 A.M - 11:15 A.M. 10 A.M - 11:15 A.M. 10 A.M - 11:15 A.M. Methods Session 1 Methods Session 3 Closing Session 10 A.M - 1 P.M. Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau Gewölbe im Lipsiusbau Morning Sessions: Excursions & Research 11:45 A.M. - 1 P.M. 11:45 A.M. - 1 P.M. Various Locations in Dresden Methods Session 2 Methods Session 4 Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau 11:15 A.M. - 3 P.M. 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. Congress Program Lunch Lunch Break Lipsiusbau Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau 2 P.M. - 5 P.M. Afternoon Sessions: 1 P.M. - 2 P.M. Closing Snacks Working & Discussing Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau / Albertinum 5 P.M. - 6 P.M. 2 P.M. - 10 P.M. 2 P.M. - 10:30 P.M. Break Congress Program Congress Program Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau 6 P.M. - 7:30 P.M. Tiny Desk Lecture Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau 7:30 P.M. - 8:30 P.M. Dinner Lipsiusbau 8:30 P.M - 10 P.M. Evening Program Down by the Water 10:30 P.M. - OPEN END Party Gewölbe im Lipsiusbau ARCHIVE VIEWING ; MONDAY - WEDNESDAY; DAILY 10 A.M. - 6 P.M. THURSDAY - SATURDAY ; IN RELATION TO CONGRESS 5 GROUP DAILY SCHEDULES 6 7 NOTES 8 THEMATIC A SOCIALITY OF THE ARCHIVE / THE ARCHIVE OF SOCIALITY 9 Archiv der Avantgarden Japanisches Palais, Dresden, 2019 Photo: Laura Fiorio 10 A. THE SOCIALITY OF THE ARCHIVE / THE ARCHIVE OF SOCIALITY A collection of documents, material, or traces becomes an archive the moment it becomes understood as an instrument of a community or society – in other words, it is an archive when a community or society recognizes the instrumental power in preserving or forming it. Archives, therefore, are always social actors, but the types of social activity and effectiveness differ: and can determine their character, both epistemologically and politically. The practical and theoretical handling of archives should, primarily, be concerned with their consequences for the communities and societies involved (and affected); and, where appropriate, pressure should be exerted on a found or silently presupposed sociality of the archive. With this view, the institutional logic and production of knowledge in and through archives is always connected to the establishment and operation of a critical meta-archive that can observe archival objects as monuments or indices of historical struggles. As such, archives can give alternative knowledge-types validity and visibility while challenging given power relations and thus supporting other socialities, a social otherwise 1. How can the sociality of the archive / an archive of socialities be grasped? How is social reality reflected in archives? TUTORS - DUŠAN BAROK - BIK VAN DER POL - DUBRAVKA SEKULIC 1 Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “The Woman on the Other Side of the Wall: Archiving the Otherwise in Postcolonial Digital Archives,” differences, vol. 22, no. 1 (2011), pp. 146–71. 11 GROUP 1 MEMORIES OF A WAYBACK MACHINE DUSAN BAROK To be searched, to find matches and to display results. In the times of digital plenty, a world of ghosts exists behind the interface. Subjected to digitization and platformization, archives seem to occupy the roles of processing machines, archivists those of bots. But what is the nature of invisible labour behind the screen? How could we transform the features such as online search and recommendation engine by approaching them as social practices? In this scenario, post-digital archives are communication centers connecting interested parties. When it comes to the Archiv der Avantgarden, this digitizing process in now underway. As such, it is possible to observe, remark, and interfere within both the visible interface and its ghosts. How can we critically engage with this invisible labor that now produces the AdA as a public platform? How can we contribute at this stage – through the production of methodologies and prototypes – to this digitizing process in order to rethink the subsequent processes of search that will ensue? Dušan Barok is a researcher, artist and cultural activist based in Amsterdam. He is founding editor of the arts and humanities wiki Monoskop and works as a research fellow at the Media Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. His practice involves networked media, digital libraries and participatory events. Dušan convened a series of seminars on media aesthetics, entitled The Extensions of Many, prepared in collaboration with Bergen Center for Electronic Arts and hosted by Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, Norway. The series was followed by the symposium, Ideographies of Knowledge, prepared with Barbora Šedivá in Paul Otlet's archives in Mundaneum in Mons, Belgium. More recently, together with a large group of Monoskop collaborators, he created the Exhibition Library containing thirty catalogues of imaginary exhibitions.