why archive?

As an artist, I'm way more excited about the new ideas I'm about to delve into than about presenting an older work. So why should I care about writing on [[nature morte 1 |a 10 years old project?]] As I'm writing this, for the first time in my career I get to present an older collaboration in which I feel a bit stuck. The piece is closely associated with the exhibition it's part of, so much that I never presented it outside of that context. As a whole, I appreciate the proposition. I'd even say the exhibition theme and angle being a bit dated gives it some appeal, inviting the audience to closely inspect a pre-AI internet mindset through the vision of a great variety of artists. This older project was very formative to me, but presenting it again didn't bring me much. It is now clear that I value the story and the connections created by this experience far more than the artworks themselves.

Here's how my brain works when I'm invited to present a work in three months: I naively believe it's realistic to present, in three months, what I'm working on today. Every single time, I lay down this trap for myself. I convince my collaborators it's a good idea, they feel my enthusiasm and go with the flow (they trust me), and then I fall in. In some cases we made it work.

Calling it a trap is playful, but it isn't really one. The enthusiasm is not the problem, and honest scheduling is not its enemy: I can want to show the frontier of my work and still be truthful about where that work actually is. What changes is the form of what I present. If the freshest thing I have is unfinished, then the honest object to show is the unfinished thing itself: a sketch, a documentation of the process, the archive of how the idea is taking shape. That is not a downgrade. It can invite the audience into the thinking while it's still warm, which is often more alive than a resolved piece that has stopped moving. Should I avoid the risk of trusting the audience to bridge the gap themselves?

This points to what I actually provide. I can take risks more easily than the structure can. When I take a risk and it fails, the structure can stand back from the blame: that asymmetry is the upside I offer as an artist. Art is exactly the place where failing should be allowed, because the outcome of a real risk can be worth far more than the safe proposition. By asking artists to fit the mold, the structure lowers its own risk. But repeating the same form over and over does something subtler: it stops responding to the work and starts prescribing it, telling the artist how to behave instead of adapting to what's actually arriving. Do we really need more of the same, just because it sits neatly in the traces of what was presented in that spot before?

I don't think the rigidity comes from bad faith, and I'm honestly not sure I've untangled it myself. Money is part of it: most structures are underfunded, and rigidity is often what scarcity looks like from the inside. But I don't think that's the whole story, because many institutions have already started showing process, sketches, works in progress. The harder problem might be communicating that intent to an audience that doesn't always expect it. And maybe that difficulty comes from somewhere more delicate: a desire to respect a heritage, a pressure to hold a level tied to a notoriety acquired earlier. When a place gives too much attention to that past notoriety instead of staying in the action, in what's arriving now, perhaps that's where the confusion sets in. I'll admit I'm confused by all of it. But the role itself seems to have shifted: a gallery, a museum, an art center is no longer only a place that presents finished objects. Part of the role now is to support a process and to host the risk that comes with it. Usually, when I see an exhibition through this lens, I tend to appreciate it better too, but it’s not always clear that it was the intent.

In return, it's our role as artists to open every door and window of our homes, to let the fresh air move through and to make the creative process shareable and transparent. If the story means more than the artwork, then the story has to be shared. It would be selfish of me to expect everyone to master what I'm still struggling to master myself. My research angle is sometimes free and absurd, and not every fragment of it is a meaningful insight worth passing on for the greater audience, but it is our responsibility to tie it back to a story about our passion and our drive, and to keep a thought going about what could be in there for the audience.

These traces are not mediation, where the matter is processed and adapted for a public. They are something more modest and more honest: a set of tools meant to leave marks, to document the parts of a practice that involve more than the practice itself. This is why I archive: the archive is not a record left beside the work. More and more, it is the work.