The master thesis (Documentation of the material – Materiality of documentation) is questioning the obsessive need for documentation of everyday life. It focuses specifically on the appearance of documentation in artistic performative practices. The term synonymous to the accumulation of documents in philosophical contexts that keeps appearing inside the art theory literature is the archive. The etymology of that word proves its ancient origin and use. Different technologies not only seem to be a variable component of the archive, but can also determine its appearance. Reasons for the current archiving mania could therefore be found in a specific technological progress of the recent history. A psychoanalytical parallel can be placed in the concept of the archive where obsessively accumulating materials or the archive fever works as a strategy against the memory loss and deals with the death drive. The archive seems to be a contemporary extension of the human memory, the storage of global knowledge, the (bio)political tool and the medium of art creation.
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