Lexicon for an Affective Archive (Book)

To study an archive or archival materials is to encounter an affective and critical practice involved in the construction of memory. Lexicon for an Affective Archive is an international collection of these encounters, offering glimpses into the intimate relations inherent in finding, remembering (or imagining) and creating an archive. 

Edition

To study an archive or archival materials is to encounter an affective and critical practice involved in the construction of memory. Lexicon for an Affective Archive, edited by Giulia Palladini and Marco Pustianaz, is an international collection of these encounters, offering glimpses into the intimate relations inherent in finding, remembering (or imagining) and creating an archive. Bringing together voices from a variety of fields across the humanities, performance studies and contemporary art, and engaging in a multidisciplinary analysis, this beautifully designed and fully illustrated volume advances the idea of an “affective archive” as a useful conceptual tool – a tool which contributes to an understanding of an expanded notion of an archive and its central role in contemporary visual and performing arts.

A co-publication with NInA and Live Art Development Agency.

Giulia Palladini is an independent researcher and guest professor at Kunsthochschule Weissensee, Berlin.

Boxes
Alessandra Violi
 
Vnučka (Granddaughter)
Kateřina Šedá
 
Kres (Limit)
Dorota Krakowska
 
Warning
Rabih Mroué
 
Ordigno (Device)
Claudia Castellucci
 
Bewegung (Movement)
Franz Anton Cramer
 
SIDA (AIDS)
Elisabeth Lebovici
 
Recombinations
Bettina Knaup
 
Einmachglas (Preserve Jar)
Erik Göngrich
 
Cardboard Box
Zdenka Badovinac
 
Schubladen (Drawers)
Annemarie Matzke, She She Pop
 
Index Cards
Tim Etchells
 
Steward
Paul Clarke
 
Biel (Whiteness)
Małgorzata Szczęśniak
 
Drzazg (Splinters)i
Małgorzata Dziewulska
 
Immemorial
Graeme Miller
 
Testigos (Witnesses)
Heidi & Rolf Abderhalden, Mapa Teatro
 
Condominio (Condominium)
canecapovolto & Elisa Abela
 
Volver (Return)
Paola Di Cori
 
Unanswered
Joe Kelleher
 
Stasis
Tina Campt
 
Specchio (Mirror)
Alina Marazzi
 
Tumbas (Graves)
Paolo Vignolo
 
Ephemera
Ann Cvetkovich

'This beautiful compilation, which appeals to the senses like an exhibition catalog, invites the reader to engage with multiple reflections on specific archives, to think critically and holistically about the field of archiving, and to contemplate the monograph in itself as an affective archive (i.e., an endless process of memory-making). Interdisciplinary, multinational, multilingual, and multicultural, each of the work's distinguished contributing authors was asked to provide an entry or visual intervention that, to them, represents a particular archive, and to assign one word that sums up its affective core. Together, the entries that make up this lexicon show that the vocabulary of archiving is anything but definitive or prescriptive—it is personal, contextual, and variable. Blank space is also provided in the volume, inviting readers to record their own thoughts and functioning as an impetus to make them notice the impact of their own process of archiving or recording memories. This printing of the English edition is the product of the project's curators Palladini (Kunsthochschule Weissensee, Berlin, Germany) and Pustianaz (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy), and is based on the original 2015 publication, Leksykon Archiwum Afektywnego, edited in part by Katarzyna Tórz, head of programming at the Polish Audiovisual Institute.' 

E. Millspaugh, Choice
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