With “Speicher fast voll” (Memory almost full), a comprehensive publication on the subject of collecting and ordering in contemporary art is being published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn.
Both the exhibition and the publication locate the importance of collecting and ordering for contemporary art – a phenomenon that can be traced through all epochs of cultural history – especially in the exponential growth of virtual archives on the Internet. In fact, many artists today create large, mostly highly subjective and unsystematic archives as a basis for their work. Media and the Internet, archives, science, museums and everyday life serve as inexhaustible sources and frictional surfaces. Scepticism and fundamental doubts about the systematizability of the world often characterize the artistic approach. Failure, subjective selection procedures and ironic-irrational counter-designs are revealing reactions to the flood of information. The individual logic of appropriating and classifying the world opens up unusual perspectives and possible alternatives.
This publication presents thirteen contributions in this field of tension. From the photographic inventory to the inventory of historical objects, from the graphic recording of the world to the thematic collection of images, the volume brings together very different artistic positions along with a detailed text by the curator Sabine Rusterholz.