The Archive of the Transcendental Archive

Project Description

'The Archive of the Transcendental Archive' is a project currently managed by Lucas Battich and Benjamin Antman, working through an application controlled by procedural Dadaist algorithms. Seeking to try the limits of the traditional archive and the new media archive 'The Archive of the Transcendental Archive' was first conceived over a group-reading on Derrida and Foucault together with Thomas Walskar and Eliza Marcu.

Project Notes

Note 0.1: Toward the development of a methodological approach to the Transcendental Archive (and its Archive) by way of pataphysical questioning

Question 42: What?

Given that there may (or may not) exist a realm completely unknowable to human thought, it may be inferred that such realm would contain (or not) a series of objects/artefacts/manifestations which may (or may not) be archivable. The Transcendental Archive is composed of such unknowable noumena. It may even contain itself as the Archive-in-itself, the Dinge-an-sich.

Question 3: Why?

In 1923 George Mallory was asked by unsympathetic journalists 'Why climb Everest?' He supposedly replied with the now famous words: 'Because it's there.'

We, on the other hand, cannot know whether the Transcendental Archive is there or not. It is for this reason, however, that we sense the urge to develop an Archive of the Transcendental Archive.

Question 2.0: How to access the T.A.?

Direct access to the T.A. is prohibited to human beings. Entities such as God, for example, would probably have access, but at the same time these entities will be archivable objects inside the T.A. – thus lacking the authority of the archivist or 'archon.'

It has been previously suggested ^{[citation needed]} (in 1790), that it would be possible to have an indirect glimpse into the Transcendental Archive through the experience of the sublime. Yet even this experience is rather unsatisfactory, in terms of open access and democratic archive control. The sublime would only suggest to the human mind at most 2 or perhaps 3 objects contained in the T.A. And even then, we cannot be sure.

Questioning through Stating, and Tracing

There is no archivable content, there is only the process. The process of discourse. The structure of the machine makes any attempt at interpretation destructive. The archive is the process and vice versa, always there but changing. Transcending their original form, the archive is the movement, the moment surrounding us to extra-medial depths. Contained by the media, yet attempting to escape a superimposition occurs, letting the message that is ours become sublime, beyond an interpretation deeper than its shell.

The discussion(s), interpretation(s), questions, answers, etc, contain the archive's form, and the archive forms the message. The Archive of the Transcendental Archive is metaphysical by its nature, but its process contains its material traces.