ATLAS OF ARCADIA

The ATLAS OF ARCADIA aims at creating a new social history of the world after the Cold War based on images instead of text. The project is inspired by a commitment to our immediate present. A present predominantly presented as the logical and inevitable outcome of a past that is meant to serve as explanation, why things could not be any different than they are. The ATLAS OF ARCADIA ("Arcadia" standing for the utopia of a better world) aims to show on the contrary, that there always are, have been and will be alternatives to the current course of history. What is at stake here is the assertion that our present is not forever predetermined by the past and that history could have taken a different turn at any stage of its making. The ATLAS OF ARCADIA borrows its tools on the one hand from Walter Benjamin`s manuscript of a social history from the 19th century Paris, "The Arcades Project" (1927-1940, first published in 1982 under the title "Das Passagenwerk") and on the other from Aby Warburg`s "Mnemosyne Atlas" (1924-1929, a reconstruction was published in 2000), a visual form of [art] history through Plates with carefully selected and arranged images. The ATLAS OF ARCADIA re-appropriates Benjamin`s Arcades Project for the late 20th century following his methodological approach. It collects materials according to criteria developed by Benjamin and makes notes and comments in the spirit of the author. Instead of the 19th century Paris, the appropriation will focus on international urban spaces and their new phenomena in the recent past: precarious satellite towns or slums around mega cities, theme park towns like Las Vegas or Dubai, gated communities, shopping malls or video surveillance systems for public space, like in London etc. Beyond Benjamin`s textual approach, the project will focus mainly on images and as such refer to Warburg`s practice. It assembles post cards, newspaper-clippings and pages from journals as well as drawings and photographs made by us. Any text included will serve only to let the images "speak" for themselves. Just as is the case with Warburg`s Plates text is neither the only, nor the most important means to allow images "to speak for themselves" but this is equally achieved through the size, juxtaposition, selection and arrangement of images etc. Benjamin`s methodology will serve to disentangle the mythical and archaic elements of dominant historiography from utopian ones, to decompose historical elements, thus undermining the perception that only one course of history is possible, and to visually re-arrange them in a way that leaves it up to the present to decide over history`s fate. The working progress of the ATLAS OF ARCADIA will be documented online. The finalised arrangement of the collected material will be shown in a travelling exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue. For the purpose of moving the exhibition display, which is an integral part of the ATLAS OF ARCADIA, it will be designed in a way that it is easy to set up, dismantle and to transport. Possible models for such a display could be the plug-in cards used for example by Charles Eames and others or the exhibition displays designed by Frederick Kiesler in the 1920`s (International exhibition of New Theatre Techniques, 1924 or City in Space, 1925).

The ATLAS OF ARCADIA project outlined a new form of social history in images. The aim was to develop a materialist-visual account of the world after the Cold War. The model for this process was the posthumous publication in 1982 of the Arcades Project [Passagen-Werk] (19291940) by the philosopher Walter Benjamin (18921940), which was an outline of a social history of the 19th century based on the city of Paris which is essentially a montage of excerpts from letters, historical works, and other sources. The themes of the Benjaminian history of the industrial age have been carried forward into the recent past, especially during the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The theme of the mirror from the Arcades Project emerges once more in ATLAS OF ARCADIA in the guise of digital photography and social media, and Haussmannization in the form of contemporary technologies for controlling public space, such as video surveillance, and so on. In ATLAS, Benjamins method of literary montage is translated into image montages. In our era, the image is more than its crucial role in communication and knowledge transfer, and Benjamin himself would probably have enjoyed working with images. In the Arcades Project he wrote, I neednt say anything. Merely show. (GW, V.1 p. 574, our translation) and thus urged that we consider his text montages as graphic elements. Thus far, the results have been exhibited in four solo exhibitions (VBKÖ and Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Vienna, 2013; Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, 2014; xhibit space, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2015) and a number of international group-shows (National Theatre Zenica, Bosnia Herzegovina; Fabra i Coats centre dart contemporani de Barcelona and Galerie Wedding, Berlin). Parts of the series have also been integrated into museum collections in the Austrian Albertina and the National Museum of Upper Austria. The projects final presentation, an extensive solo exhibition, took place in the xhibit space at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (March 12May 17, 2015). The show was accompanied by a number of guided tours and the international conference READING THE WORLD. WHAT IS VISUAL KNOWLEDGE? (April 1011, 2015), and a comprehensive publication is forthcoming in 2016. ATLAS OF ARCADIAs method of visual knowledge cuts across classical academic categories of knowledge and thus develops sensitivity on issues hitherto hidden by the separation into different categories and institutions in order to draw attention to new links and connections between seemingly different matters. ATLAS developed a concrete and differentiated notion of visual knowledge that was shared with a larger public by means of exhibitions, lectures and publications. The results of the project prove that a visual account of social history can compete with traditional means of academic analysis.