The Archive (2017)

The Archive, 2017
Video on virtual reality headset, cardboard boxes, single channel video on monitor
5 minute 19 seconds
205 x 250 x 111 cm

Installation images at Seventeen, London
Photo credit: Damian Griffiths
Camera Stills: Claire Barrett

This work comes as two forms, a VR based film and a single channel HD video file.

The Archive (2017) is a video made inside the Hans Tasiemka Archive, using 360-degree filming technology. This sprawling resource is run by 94-year-old Edda Tasiemka from a 1920s semi-detached house in Golders Green, London. Amassed over decades, the collection holds hundreds of thousands of idiosyncratically catalogued newspaper cuttings forming a web of interconnected stories and information. Masses of cuttings are kept all around the house, from the toilet to her garage, categorised through subjects as diverse as ‘The Family’, ‘Isis’ and the ‘Kardashians’. Using a VR headset the viewer is deposited into the centre of the sprawling, obsolete accumulation, able to examine the mess, which is overlaid by a rhythmic narration about memory and our ability to record knowledge.

Made in Collaboration with Claire Barrett
Producer & Camera: Claire Barrett
360 Camera: Peter Collis

Works in this exhibition were made with the generous support of Arts Council England.
The artist would like to thank The Tasiemka Archive, Edda Tasiemka and Peter Collis.

Press links:
Time Out London
Art Agenda
MovingImageLondon
2-Times
AQNB