In my research I am looking into death and the afterlife within different approaches to collecting. A cabinet, the Internet, a graveyard, institutional archives but also hobby clubs such as a miniature club could all be seen as parallel worlds from the one we live in. We store something there as an attempt to extend our memory or our life.

An archive is a place where documents are collected, from the past, the present and the future. We don’t create new content in it, we store it. It functions because it is heavily ordered.

1001 B.C.

I giggle, my mom is undressed and whispers into my dad’s ear. I make myself invisible; they don’t seem to notice me. My dad is carving into a bone white piece of clay, I try to make up what the shapes portray, but I cannot see it clear. It seems to take forever, I silently watch my mom unravel the story of the goddess she worships. Her words sound like a hymn, it mesmerizes me. I forget that they don’t know that I am there, and seemingly silently hum along. She jumps up in fear, like a deer that that notices our presence. She covers herself, scolding at the sudden disturbance of tranquility. Like my mom covers herself, my dad covers the tablet with another layer of clay.

They later had to fled their house due to a fire, destroying everything. They left and found a new place to live. But what they didn’t know is that the clay tablet survived the fire. It made the tablet hard and durable, and was later found and opened by a traveler that took it to the east. It ended up in Mesopotamia and collections of these clay tablets will make up the very first archives. These archives where at the root of the first libraries.

It’s always been said that there is one certainty in life (or two: taxes as well as): Death. To escape that we extend our life in different ways: like storing information for generations after. But life-extending technology has become a booming business in Silicon Valley. Yet Bergwall’s assertion that the truth about death isn’t going to change is exactly what’s in contention. It’s not hard to find real scientists who talk about the development of new medical treatments leading to “escape velocity,” the point at which human life expectancy will begin increasing by more than a year for every calendar year that passes.

In the next chapter you see an archive I made. In this archive I show the need for people to share their realization that life is finite. It is a reason for people to share the proof of their own existence. A common belief is also that you are not really dead if there are still people to remember you, your legacy or your ideas. To share a picture of your passed away beloved one online is a way to prevent the loss of information, to extend their existence.

What to include in the archive is also a decision about what we are most likely to lose. We must archive lest we forget. Since human memory can only contain so much, memories have to be deposited in a different container. The social media container not only functions as a place to deposit your memory, others easily access it. They can add to your memory, share their valuable stories and even rate your memory by liking, sharing or upvoting it.

I take these death related single deposits and give them a new place; I created an archive for them. Committing something to the archive is necessary to save it from the death drive (amnesia) within the individual. If a memory is not placed in the archive it will eventually be forgotten due to the finiteness of human memory.

When doing my internship in Shanghai, China at a big corporate design studio my collecting urges took a more obsessive turn. I had the strong feeling of being watched. I felt no control over who and what I had to give my information to.

In the place I was working I had to enter everyday with my fingerprint. There was a long line of people waiting to clock in, all scolding the people in front of them to hurry. Clocking in more then 5 minutes late is marked as an hour less pay. It felt weird, where was the information behind my fingerprint stored and who has access to it?

In Chinese folk mythology there are two states of human being. First there is Yinjian, the world of the dead. Second, there is Yangjian, the world of the living. This is not only a physical state, but they are also seen as a possession of a parallel existence. You live in Yangjian and after you die you move to Yinjian. It is also possible to be in a Yinjian state during your life. Your subconscious Yangjian exists as a human consciousness in the form of knowledge or as a myth. If you look back at ancient times, Yinjian often appears in visual form. Bao gong [Bao Zeng, link], for example, wrote with both hands simultaneously when he wrote a verdict. What he wrote with his left hand was in mirror image of what he wrote with his right hand. The script in mirror image was intended for those in the Yinjian state. This also happened in ancient Chinese mausoleums. Texts in mirror image were meant for the dead as soon as they entered the Yinjian state. 


For me, writing in mirror image is not an unknown phenomenon. I started doing this because I did not want others to be able to read certain writings. Soon I noticed that what I wrote in mirror writing with my left hand was more personal. I did this unconsciously. Words flowed automatically and I did not care about my writing style. Looking back at the writing, holding my sheet of paper against the light, I became aware of what I had actually written. The space of Yinjian thus became the non-physical space, one that is subconscious and apparently one of truths. My own filter disappears during writing. I guess you could compare this with writing on a computer and being able to press CMD + Z. You will always unconsciously know that you have this option. If you write on a typewriter there is no way back so you might as well just keep going, there is no erasing of truths, or mistakes if you will.

Where an epilogue concludes, an archive has just started.

I fell into my grandmother’s drawer and became so small compared to its content that I got lost. I had to find its boundaries and accept that I could not possibly wander in its content forever.

I, and with me many others if not all others help contribute to fill the cabinet. We create a lot of noise and store it far besides our own memory. We rely on something outside ourselves, from big commercial companies to libraries to store our information. To make the decision of what is important enough to keep and we keep sharing what we perceive is worthwhile remembering.

In church names are being called to not be forgotten. As long as people read your name, hear your name, see your picture there is a memory. If this stops happening, memories will fade.

In 5.09 I wrote that ‘ only new art then, is alive’ and that is in contradiction with what I have been writing as well: I state that archiving is a way of keeping it alive.

I feel that this sums up what this research was about. We store to remember and not forget, to extend our life. But by doing so the matter that we store ‘dies’.

Death is a big and heavy topic. All topics in here have something in common. People find seemingly light ways of dealing with it.