LOOKING INTO (OUR) ARCHIVES

Looking into (our) Archives provides a central moment to Fotogalleriet’s 40 year anniversary program, in time – and thought. Supporting and challenging the overall jubileum year, Fotogalleriet’s archives have been defined, examined, contested and reinvented in an archival system based on both scientific and artistic research.

The theoretical starting point and method for Fotogalleriet’s Archives was inspired by the German art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), pioneer for experimental art-historical approach through ’constellations’ that would explore new associations, meanings and (hi)stories within a given collection. Based on his own photographic archive, Warburg experimented with classifying images according to their motifs (iconography), instead of classifying their meanings (iconology). This revolutionary form of science theory considers images as vehicles and traces for continuity, juxtaposing documents as a method for analysis and new understandings in history.

Looking into (our) Archives is not conceived as an exhibition but sets the archives’ working-stations as a laboratory open for external participants’ contributions, and practices ‘working through objects’, publicly inviting key figures of Fotogalleriet’s history to participate as archeologists of knowledge to locate the archives’ concealed layers and cultural meanings – determined through forty years by the different conditions set to defining the archives.

All public is welcome to take part in the exchanges and the ongoing work displayed.

Photo: From the Archives: VG August 13th 1977, (from left:) Øyvind Hagen, Tom Martinsen, Gry Martinsen, Jamie Parslow and Tom Sandberg.