ARCHIVES AND EMOTIONAL CAPITAL
with Raluca Grosescu, Clara Mares, Norbert Petrovici, Florin Poenaru + BCM

*ST replaced BMR at the job at the Center for Individual Study

The debate was around the emotions regarding discovering, reading, interpreting archives. There were four points of view presented: Clara Mares - a researcher working on the Securitate files (CNSAS), Florin Poenaru - the anthropologist's approach in studying the communist past and the reinterpreting of this past today, Norbert Petrovici - from his perspective as a sociologist working around issues such as urbanism and BMR's concern with fictionalized archives (such as Stanescu/Ghirtoiu). We were interested in the artists's involvement with wrapping, designing and animating the archives, creating interfaces for the delivery of these archives into the public space. The ideological and political role of artists in this process needs careful attention and analysis. On the other hand, it was clear throughout the discussion that the same ideological role is to be assigned to the experts researching the institutionalized archives (mainly the Romanian Securitate archives).

We further discussed about their involvement with fictionalizing archives and the problems around interpreting files written by people about people, with loads of autobiographical and personal content to be processed under the name of objective historical data. Another interesting aspect was the discussion about the ordering, classifying and hierachization of the archives which was made possible only by the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. There was also the question of truth in archives and statistics. Florin's interest was in the anthopological role of studying the archives and ethnography as a knowledge tool about the modern state (an analogy with the Securitate employees and the amount of collected data they left behind).