Abstract
We have observed ubiquitously, although not yet exhaustively, academics and practitioners alike catching archive fevers and chasing archival impulses down rabbit holes. We have borne witness to historiographical and archaeological turns in art and art history, in the chasing and longing for irretrievable pasts. We have found refuge in these milieux de mémoire. For what are archives but time-traveling machines; portals between unfinished pasts and reopened futures? What are archives but the mirrors of civilization, perpetually reflecting us as we are?[1] Cloistered away within Arctic mountains sits the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (fig. 1). The Judd-esque structure, also known as a doomsday vault, houses the globe’s largest seed archive, one that is perpetually protected and isolated from the threats and dangers of the outside world. It includes backups of seed samples extracted from crop collections all around the world, which endeavor “to stand the test of time and the challenge of natural and man-made disasters.”[2] It was conceived as an apparatus of survival against the promise of ominous futures of deserts, deforestation, and desolation, very much feeding into humanity’s cultic celebration of permanence and its fetish of continuation.
Highlights
We have observed ubiquitously, not yet exhaustively, academics and practitioners alike catching archive fevers and chasing archival impulses down rabbit holes
The Judd-esque structure, known as a doomsday vault, houses the globe’s largest seed archive, one that is perpetually protected and isolated from the threats and dangers of the outside world. It includes backups of seed samples extracted from crop collections all around the world, which endeavor “to stand the test of time and the challenge of natural and man-made disasters.”[2]. It was conceived as an apparatus of survival against the promise of ominous futures of deserts, deforestation, and desolation, very much feeding into humanity’s cultic celebration of permanence and its fetish of continuation
As we transcend into the Pyrocene—with forests, museums, and cathedrals blazing into flames—we must consider the prevailing crises of fire as intellectual discourse, academic discipline, and critical practice
Summary
Not yet exhaustively, academics and practitioners alike catching archive fevers and chasing archival impulses down rabbit holes. With the conflagration at the Museu Nacional as foundational premise, this article considers the ways in which material and digital archival methodologies (along with anarchival practices) are intrinsically embedded within the process of reconstruction of a collection. It does so by acknowledging the process of reconstruction in its literal understanding as building something once again after it has been damaged or destroyed, highlighting the role of archives as tools of reconstruction, and by placing archivomuseology at the crossroads between the real and the imaginary, the Total and the fragmented, which allows for alternative forms to emerge as living archives. It should not be considered as a definitive or complete whole, but rather as a starting point that attempts to catalyze critical interchange and encourage further action
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