The gathering of collective memory. A pre-literate notion of memory, in a communal way, something commemorative rather than putting a memory in a container. What we thought it was going to be changed completely. We are in that way changing our memory of what it was supposed to be. What are you able to collect? Memories? Objects? People? A collection of texts and people, collecting and composing each other? Somehow it's not even important that we have all the knowledge, what's important is the living, generative sense of the collection.

indexing

Simon Browne

indexing

see also human reading, inter-depending, scanning

Most books contain an index. Most books are also indexed in some type of cataloguing system, to present the collection and inter-relationships between the texts contained within, and those outside of the library. This set of cards is an unbound index, which can be reshuffled, added to and reduced as the reader pleases. Reducing a text to an index opens it up for the reader to complete it as they read, drawing on what they have read before and creating a mental network of associations. A book is a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. I use my index finger to trace over the text, moving down the page as my eyes scan for keywords.


Image: Alejandro Cesarco, Index, exhibited at the gallery formerly known as Witte de With Contemporary, September 2019 – January 2020