Fictive Archive Investigations is a collective of 16 researchers from a variety of locations and artistic disciplines, whose questions converge around fiction in the archive.
Fantômes de roches – Rock Ghosts
Balthazar Blumberg (born 1993, FR, lives and works in Brussels) is a visual artist. His research began in the field and with scientific collections. He is inspired by geological elements to create drawings and fictions in order to reveal the layers of memory that they crystallise.
Territoires Infinis – Infinite territories
Claire Ducène (born 1986, BE, lives and works in Brussels) is a multidisciplinary artist fascinated by memories and the passage of time. Her taste for narrative is perceptible in a work that is built around the past, what remains and a memory that is constantly transformed by our emotions, time and different forms of forgetting.
I(s)land
Exploring the idea of memory, the artist has crafted her work by travelling through time and spaces, imagined, virtual, or physical. Her starting point was her stay in Mallorca and her interaction with the Planas archive, which collects images relating to the island’s cultural heritage and its transformation as a result of the development of mass tourism, between the 1950s and 1970s.
Farfara Archives
Farfara Archives is a collection of artefacts belonging to five historical figures, spanning nearly three centuries. The collection presents all possible evidence of the existence of the island of Farfara, which is located off the coast of Malta and appears on several maps dating from the 17th century.
The Imaginary Library of Asuncion - La Biblioteca Imaginaria de Asunción
The starting point of this work is the discovery of a box filled with hundreds of photo- graphs belonging to Asunción Axela Lasarte, abandoned in a rubbish bin in La Barceloneta. During the pandemic, Cecilia Hurtado and Claire Ducène spent months talking about this woman, identifying with her and travelling, through her eyes, around the towns and cities of these pictures.
A Cloud with a Name
Loïe Fuller’s Ghost Dances
The artist says he is tormented by the work of Loïe Fuller, a pioneer of modern dance. An American-born dancer who built her career in Paris, she was noticed from her first appearances at the Folies Bergère in 1892 for the veils she wrapped around herself, creating waves and ripples that floated in space.
Missing People II
For her installation Missing People, the artist had access to a database that archives portraits of missing people from all over the world. This database contains a multitude of faces. An artificial intelligence has merged them, like a set of personal stories, to produce generic portraits of the missing over time.
Try to Fit in
Try to Smile Before You Die
Quatre saisons au Centre Saint-Bernard
(Four Seasons at the Saint Bernard Center)
The works exhibited here are the result of her research with inmates of Berkendael prison in Brussels, and in a Belgian psychiatric hospital where she visited a woman who was being interned while awaiting her euthanasia.
Graphical Math for Dance
Graphical math for dance is an installation made up of four pieces that aim to bring together the practice of dance, Laban kinetography or Labanotation (a system of written notation of movement), graphic scores and mathematical thought.
Frontlines & Borderlines
For the purposes of this project, the three artists shared personal family archives relating to the part played by one of their ancestors, in one of the world wars. Philippe provided photographs relating to his great-grandfather Nikolaus Beck, member of a Re- sistance network during the Second World War; Sam provided letters and photographs of his great-grandmother Molly, a globetrotter; Julian presented photographs and a diary from his grandfather, Frederick Walker, a First World War veteran who suffered a gas attack that left him visually impaired.
Résurgences Mnémosynes
Résurgences Mnémosynes is a constantly evolving project conceived via several databases of video archives of vernacular imagery, i.e. captured without artistic intention, ordinary. The installation was thus constructed from various film extracts: landscapes, meteorological and technological events, stories and ways of living and inhabiting, which have survived over the years.
Vanished
Executio in effigie
The process of making the piece Vanished from the series The Archives of Oblivion involved the collection of vintage photographs of monuments of once illustrious figures, now removed from public view. The artist is interested in the way public statuary has always been used both for its ideological function and for its accessibility.