The conversation with Marcelo Rezende and Rudolf Fischer on the Archive of the Avant-Garde took place online on November 25, 2020. The event was originally scheduled as part of the two-day symposium «Finders Keepers» in October 2020 and had to be moved to the virtual space due to the Corona pandemic. We thank Rudolf Fischer and Marcelo Rezende, co-directors of the Archive of the Avant-Garde, for their flexibility and exciting exchange. Under the filter Finders Keepers you will find further summaries of conversations also conducted in this format.
The Archiv der Avantgarden (AdA) in Dresden holds one of the most extensive collections of artworks, objects, and documents of the artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth century. The holdings were collected by one person, Egidio Marzona, who was interested not only in works of art, but also in the artistic process, and collected invitation cards, stickers, sketches, photos, and correspondence. All the objects in this collection—typed notes as well as signed artworks—are dealt with on an equal level.
Altogether, holdings of roughly 392,000 archival documents, 190,000 monographs and periodicals, 10,350 posters and plans, 3950 artworks, furniture, and design objects, and 1,266 AV media (films, Super 8 films, video cassettes, etc.) were brought together and presented to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden as a gift in 2016.
A Place for «Ongoing Research»
How does one deal with such a heterogeneous collection? In a conversation with Fischer and Rezende, co-directors of the AdA, on November 25, 2020, the two of them presented their central concept of «ongoing research.» What is particularly fascinating about it is their approach to transporting the central ideas of the avant-gardes into the present and linking them to contemporary discourses so that they can be considered and understood from the perspective of today. Rezende and Fischer adhere to this principle on all levels, whether in their exhibition projects, research programs, or the conception of the new blockhouse in which the AdA will be housed as of 2022.
«From the Present to the Past to the Future»
Just as the objects in the AdA are not subjected to any hierarchy in the sense of being valued differently, Rezende and Fischer also take a non-hierarchical approach to mediating knowledge. The methodology that they have established might thus be titled with the motto «from the present to the past to the future.» It develops from a fascinating list of questions based on the position that avant-gardes are not phenomena that have come to an end, but instead an ongoing process:
What relationship to the past does one want to develop? How can an archive as an institution leave a passive position behind it and actively take action so as to fulfill a relevant function for society? On this basis, how can a critical perspective toward what an archive is be developed? What relationships can be established? How can one learn from an archive?
Giving the Sovereignty of Interpretation Back to Visitors
Rezende explains one way of reacting to these questions based on a wonderful example: Various issues of a magazine from the 1920s are lying on a table. Portraits of workers can be seen on their covers. Magazines with portraits on their covers are also lying on the other side of the table: they are Andy Warhol’s well-known portraits of artists. How should this juxtaposition be interpreted? Workers were the stars of the communist regime. Is this why they were depicted on the covers? Are stars actually the workers of the entertainment industry? The answer that one can give to both of these questions: «It’s possible. You made the connection, I didn’t give it to you.» The sovereignty of interpretation is given to visitors, whereby the AdA resolves a central issue of every archival practice in an innovative way.
«Is This Tomorrow?»
So, it’s about finding meaning beyond museological and historical claims and asking about the context in which historical documents can act. Fischer presented another example of this way of working based on the exhibition Is This Tomorrow?, which was presented at the Zentrum für Baukultur Sachsen (ZfBK; Center for Building Culture Saxony) in Dresden in 2018. Starting from the historical exhibition This Is Tomorrow, which took place in London in the mid-1950s, the two directors of AdA asked how this exhibition might serve as a tool for them to provide a commentary on the current problems of today. They did not attempt to reproduce the historical exhibition, but instead to update the ideas, the concepts of the exhibition by interrogating the topics of «urban scale» and «social coexistence.» The ideas and experiences from this exhibition have also flowed in turn into the conception and realization of the new blockhouse.
The Blockhouse: A New Building in an Old Building
One challenge that Fischer described during our conversation is that of «transmission»: How can knowledge be passed on to visitors? Central to this is the vision of an interconnected workspace in which all the processes that take place at the AdA—from research to exhibiting mediation projects—merge with one another. In a modular space, with a reference library, exhibition areas, archive space, a gallery with workspaces for guests and employees that links everything by means of visual axes, this vision is being realized with the design of the interior of the blockhouse. The multifunctional space will be realized in a historical Baroque building with a completely new interior design and thus also activate the past on the level of the architecture.
How does the research flow through users into the archive?
One of the most important focuses of the AdA is on «ongoing research,» by both artists and scholars, since, as Fischer explains: «The process is pretty much the same, but the result is different.» An artist perhaps creates a film, the scholar perhaps an essay. From the very beginning, Fischer and Rezende have advocated for an expanded concept of research that regards every activity in the archive as a research process. The task of the institution is to systematize the archive in such a way that it is also able to learn things itself. The archive is thus permeable and receptive to the knowledge that is generated by the work in and with it. By giving researchers the feeling that they are part of a larger whole and contribute to the growth of the archive by means of cooperative work, it is also possible to motivate researchers to share their personal processes—an idea of which Fischer is convinced.
Small Is Beautiful
To conclude, we wanted to know what new projects are envisioned for the coming year, what questions with respect to avant-gardes are current in 2021? Naturally, the corona pandemic has also turned these plans upside down, but this does not seem to have dampened the almost limitless and positive energy that Fischer and Rezende bring with them in any way. As the two of them explain, questions dealing with the expansion of the archive are central for them. But in no way in the sense of a material expansion, but rather in connection with the AdA’s learning process: How can one create a system, a process that allows the AdA to learn, to absorb new contents—for instance, from private archives—without actually, thus physically, possessing them. Or in Rezende’s words: «It’s about stopping the necessity to buy and get bigger and bigger. Small is beautiful. The idea of collecting hasn’t stopped, but it is going in the direction of sharing.»
We thank Rudolf Fischer and Marcelo Rezende for making available a wide range—of older as well as still unpublished—texts that provide insights into the work and aims of the Archiv der Avantgarden.
