" Archive Fever " is, as Derrida claimed, both the need for archives, as well as the phenomenon of frantic searches for our beginnings, an intrinsic impulse which defines human existence. Gathering, collecting and organising materials are... more
" Archive Fever " is, as Derrida claimed, both the need for archives, as well as the phenomenon of frantic searches for our beginnings, an intrinsic impulse which defines human existence. Gathering, collecting and organising materials are natural human needs which stem partly from longing for the past and partly from the desire to place oneself within the history itself, in relation to what was and to what will happen with the participation of future generations. A database is a new form of archive, which unlike the earlier analogue forms of cataloguing information, such as library or cabinet of curiosities, offers previously impossible ways of quick searching and filtering. The main topic of my paper is the artistic practice " in the age of information overload " , in times when artists are more often as Peter Dunn claimed " context providers " rather than " content providers ". This new aesthetic situation is reflected in a plethora of works of art that take the form of the database and which I would like to present as an example of collaboration of artists and audiences within the network understood as a contemporary Library of Babel.
