Archive Event II – Shelf Life
14 April 2019

A one-day performance by Elena Khurtova and Marie Ilse Bourlanges
A lecture by Alena Alexandrova and a conversation between her and the artist duo

Throughout its history as a cardboard factory, beer bottling plant, and its current use as an exhibition space, Looiersgracht 60 has had many functions - all of which have left their traces on the building, inspiring the launching of the Archive Series. The Archive Series events are unique, site-specific temporary installations investigating the theme of archiving, combined with theoretical talks and discussions with the artist.

For the second edition of the Archive Series events, on the 14 April 2019, Looiersgracht 60 presents ‘Shelf Life’, a unique performance by artist duo Elena Khurtova and Marie Ilse Bourlanges followed by a conversation with researcher and writer Alena Alexandrova.

‘Shelf-life’ is a term widely used to imply the longevity of commodities or the time-frame between the production and expiration of goods. In this one-day performance created specifically for Looiersgracht 60, Khurtova and Bourlanges pay special attention to the idea of the “afterlife of archives”: instead of keeping the archive preserved from changes to endure time, their approach embraces its living potential, finding new purposes and continuity.

The duo recently completed a four-year project using the acquired archives of Jacques Bourlanges, who authored a theory co-relating star constellations and the geography of France. Over the course of his lifetime Jacques Bourlanges produced an extensive archive, which the artist duo restructured by adding and altering, intervening and performing with between 2014 and 2018. This project was concluded in October 2018 at their major solo show in Arti et Amicitiae leading Khurtova and Bourlanges to pose questions such as: what happens once everything has been unfolded, registered, processed, labelled, and boxed again? Does intervening with an existing archive result in preservation or destruction? Is there a ‘shelf-life’ for archives and is it really over when one says it’s over?

In this transient performance where archival elements are created, fragmented, shelved, and erased, viewers will delve into the duality of the interpretation of the ‘archive,’ whereby the need to preserve clashes with the desire to keep something alive.

Shelf Life
Archival Structures

In 2016, London based architects, Dyvik Kahlen developed a bespoke archival system that houses Looiersgracht 60’s archive. Fashioned out of steel and consisting of four movable parts that can be grouped together or used independently, these part-display, part storage units, contain all the information on Looiersgracht 60’s previous exhibitions. Stemming from Looiersgracht 60’s commitment to preservation and to promoting dialogue between the past and the present, the archive is a prominent physical addition to the space and is accessible to public at all times.

During ‘Shelf-Life’ the artist duo Khurtova and Bourlanges, will be interacting with the orange archive structures of Looiersgracht 60 and the archives themselves. The duo takes, as a starting point of this exercise, the anecdotal story of the archives of Jacques Bourlanges (grandfather of Marie ilse Bourlanges), which, through a series of oddly times co-incidences found itself in the storage containers of Archives Nationales- an honour generally reserved for institutionally recognised relics of utmost importance. Jacques Bourlanges’ archives despite not being officially part of the Archives Nationales, by simply residing in the institution’s boxes, inherited a lofty position- and it was in these boxes that Khurtova and Bourlanges found them. This pivotal incident spurred the artists to ponder and re-evaluate the mechanisms at work which give things historical meaning and importance and led them to develop methodologies which would be frowned upon by institutionalist archivists as destructive but in fact help to prolong the ‘Shelf-life’ of the archives.

In each of the four vitreous structures dotted around the space, Khurtova and Bourlanges present us with relics of such an archive, but not in the conventional sense of the word. Whilst one structure displays an exact replica of the boxes of Jacques Boulanges rendered in clay which upon firing, exploded and was ergo destroyed, another vitrine contains paper thin shreds of porcelain which were created by casting pages from Jacques’ notebooks in clay and then being fired, resulting in the loss of the pages themselves but the petrification of the casts.

Through such explorations of the urges to preserve that ultimately destroy, to the destruction of the source in order to create something new, to tampering with things so they remain the same forever, from artists’ books that fade in sunlight to terracotta boxes that ultimately turn to dust and consequently back into clay, within the structures of the Looiersgracht 60’s archive, the duo explore what it means to archive an already archived archive, continually reconfiguring the meaning of the words ‘archive,’ ‘permanence’ and ‘history’.

Artists
Khurtova and Bourlanges is an Amsterdam based artist-duo comprising Elena Khurtova (1982, Samara, Russia) and Marie Ilse Bourlanges (1983, Paris). Actively collaborating since 2009, the works of Khurtova and Bourlanges are a sculptural investigation that conceive the work as a process. Equally fascinated by the conceptual and narrative qualities of materials, the duo often employ those materials that overcome the gap between form and content whilst still maintaining their temporality and vulnerability.

Speaker

Alena Alexandrova is a cultural theorist, independent curator, and a lecturer at the Fine Arts and Photography departments, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam.Her research is focused on those contemporary artists who re-evaluate the materiality of the archive and make visible the apparatuses, structures and operations that claim to give historical identity to objects. Her research is expounded upon in a forthcoming book Anarchic Infrastructures exploring the conceptual figure of anarcheology.

We are open from 12:00 – 20:00.
Performance: 14:00 – 17:00.
The talk starts at 16:30 on the 14th of April, 2019, followed by a Q&A with the audience, after which the event will close with some light refreshments. Admission is free. Please reserve a seat by emailing: valeria@looiersgracht60.org