PROGRAM FOUR: ARCHIVE FEVER
“Le mal d’archive,” “archive fever” is Jacques Derrida’s term for the necessary place of disjointedness in the structure of archivization. Any concept in the process of being formed, of being archived, “always remains inadequate relative to what it ought to be, divided, disjointed” between the two forces of the death drive and the pleasure principle. So it is that Breder, Legrady, Piper, and Woolery seek not simply to validate canonical histories nor even to wrap emergent histories into canonical archives but to prompt reflection on the enigmatic residues of colonialism, fascism, and totalitarianism as well as the personal and social struggle for virtual relocation in the digital era. By stressing the divide, the disjointedness, and the remainder of the archives of Nazi brutality, Cold War uniformity, and the varying legacies of African slavery, their digitized projects permit individual users to engage in an invested journey through the vestiges of collective account, historical artifact, institutional site, and encrypted memory. Juxtaposed together on the screen of a computer, these haunting artworks dwell on the complicated scenario of archive fever in which desire and identification envelope the atmosphere of representation in something of the shadowy haze of history and the flickering light of virtual reality.

Hans BREDER, The Nazi Loop, 1996 (USA)
George LEGRADY: An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War, 1994 (Canada)
Antoni MUNTADAS /Anne-Marie DUGUET, Muntadas: Media, Architecture, Installations, 1999 (Spain/France)
Keith PIPER: Relocating the Remains, 1997 (Britain)
Reginald WOOLERY, Million Man March/ World Wide Web, 1997 (USA)