Notes On Storage

Thomas Struth's Aoyama Cemetery 2 illustrates several common tendencies found in his work. Similar to the black-and-white photographs Struth first exhibited in the late1970s, buildings are his main subject matter here. In this work there is a distinct absence of people and motion. It first appears straightforward and depicts what might be, at a glance, an ordinary location. However, after closer inspection paradoxes appear. In the foreground the gravestone's regular rectangular shapes echo the city's architecture in the background. All the elements in the photograph come together to create an abstract composition. Moreover, Struth is interested in how architecture is a bearer of history. Here there is a tension between the two histories: of the foreground and background, of the cemetery and the looming city.

Struth, Thomas. Aoyama Cemetery 2, 1996.

https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/collection/1710-thomas-struth-aoyama-cemetery-2

Moore, Jerry D.. “The Prehistory of Home.” (2012).

"Sedentarism and domestication developed when people had too much stuff"

Com pot definir-se una poètica de l'acumulació sense que el cúmul d'objectes no destrueixi pas llur naturalesa significativa, sinó que els meni a evocar conjuntament quelcom que ja ha esdevingut, que ja ha estat dit, que ja ha estat fet? Altrament, com qualificar aquesta operació si dóna per sobreentès un gest irònic, fins i tot afectuós, que ens fa l'ullet?

Eco, Umberto. "Sobre Arman." ARMAN, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Fundació "la Caixa". (2000)

"From 1961 through 1965, the Bechers worked mostly in the German Ruhr District and in Holland making comparative photographs of the pithead towers and preparation plants of coal and iron-ore mines, blast furnaces, coke ovens, and oil refineries. These structures and others such as water towers, cooling towers, gas holders, high-tension electrical pylons, and lime kilns are built to perform particular economic functions. When these structures no longer serve their purposes efficiently they are abandoned. The photographs of the Bechers record the transient existence of purely functional structures and reveal the degree to which form is determined by the invariant requirements of function."

Andre, Carl. "A Note on Bernhard and Hilla Becher." Artforum. Vol 11, No. 4 (1972)

https://www.artforum.com/features/a-note-on-bernhard-and-hilla-becher-209912/

'There were many things new to me.' 'For instance, hay-racks in the trees ...'

'There were many things new to me.' 'For instance, hay-racks in the trees ...'

Founded in 1996, UbuWeb is a pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant-garde artifacts.

Excerpted & adapted from Kenneth Goldsmith, Duchamp is My Lawyer

https://ubu.com/

Urban Stocks is a spatial installation that takes a look at the flows of building materials through landscapes and cities.

2023, LLRRLLRR (Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, Maria Helena Luiga), Museum of Estonian Architecture, Tallinn, Estonia

https://llrrllrr.com/urban-stocks/

'Durant els anys de després de l'escola se m'havia anat acumulant una petita biblioteca: llibres, quadres i records; els manuscrits començaven a amuntegar-se en paquets voluminosos i, a la llarga, ja no m'era possible d'arrossegar constantment en maletes aquella càrrega benvinguda. De manera que vaig llogar una petita cambra a Viena, però no pas amb la intenció que fos un domicili permanent, sinó tan sols un pied-à-terre. Perquè el sentiment de provisionalitat va presidir misteriosament la meva vida fins a la Guerra Mundial.'

Zweig, Stefan. “El món d'ahir. Memòries d'un europeu.” Quaderns Crema (2001): 203.

'There were many things new to me.' 'For instance, hay-racks in the trees ...'

'There were many things new to me.' 'For instance, hay-racks in the trees ...'

Starting from Giddens's concept of mutual knowledge, in this article I argue for an expanded definition of storage as a situated practice through which groups construct identity, remember, and control knowledge as part of a moral economy. Drawing on ethnographic and archaeological examples from a range of societies, including those of the Trobriand Islands, Neolithic Europe, and Mesoamerica, I consider the spatial and social meaning of utilitarian, household storage. Many of the social meanings embodied in utilitarian storage are found to also inform other kinds of storage, especially those categorized as burials and votive offerings, or caches.

Hendon, Julia A.. “Having and Holding: Storage, Memory, Knowledge, and Social Relations.” American Anthropologist 102 (2000): 42-53.

https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2000.102.1.42

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28 (2001): 1 - 22.

"We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us."

https://doi.org/10.1086/449030