Substance Data

Can the archive support intruders, subjectivity and paradoxes?


Substance Data (insertion into a collection database) is a project designed by The Mental Masonry Lab. It responds to the invitation by Hôtel Charleroi to 're-enact or re-interpret' Games of Stones that took place in 2014 in Charleroi, a work that wondered about the stone in a construction site of the city. As The Mental Masonry Lab wonders about urban situations and mechanisms, the Lab focuses its attention for this project rather on the institutional mechanisms of the M HKA (the host) and its archiving modalities.


After the dematerialisation of an artwork, where goes art?


During a three days’ workshop (28, 29 and 30th of April 2017) we unwrap, observe, record, describe, construct and rewrap the art work The Possessed Can Witness in the Court (2015) by the Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan. The workshop invites specific profiles to collaborate with such as an architect, a drawer, a photographer, a writer and so on to help us to record and encode the work in the collection (ensembles.org) of the M HKA.


At the start of the workshop a scientific member of the collection staff introduces proceedings and modalities of archiving a new piece of art. On that basis, the workshop can start wondering about archive methodologies seen from an artistic point of view.


Art after art. The workshop has a goal and would like to fulfil the assignment of the recording of the art work The Possessed Can Witness in the Court (2015). At the same time the workshop is a free platform to discuss archive methodologies, ways of imaging/recording a piece of art and wherein the public of the museum is the witness of the action.


Participants:

Jan(us) Boudewijns, Achiel Buyse, Ruben Castro, Griet Dekoninck, Riet Eeckhout, Matilde Everaert, Bert Joostens, Ephraïm Joris, Miyeon Lee, Eva Maréchal, Jeanne Noël, Anne-Marie Sampaio.