Archive Talks is a series dedicated to discussing, unlearning and envisioning common understanding on, about, with and through archives from a transdisciplinary perspective. As Open Resource Center we aim to contribute to the development of artistic research methodologies in relation to archival studies and practices at HfG. Running parallel to the work of the student assistants who already started to digitize and catalog the diploma and project collections of their corresponding departments under ORC coordination, every session will focus on a particular aspect of archival work.

ORC kicks off Archive Talks with Oliver-Selim Boualam, Barbara Zoe Kiolbassa and Michael Gärtner who worked together on the documentation of documenta fifteen, one of the biggest art events of the world, offering a 100-day art events and installations program taking place in many different locations throughout the city and including many live and time-based formats. The question is simple but complex: how to deal with such a scale? Barbara, Michael and Oliver will give insight into their working methods and experiences and discuss various strategies for documenting such an extremely diverse and extensive art program.

Barbara Zoé Kiolbassa M.A. is a researcher, art mediator, and curator with a passion for community based practices between art, media, and ecology. Apart from her freelance projects, she has worked as a Curator of Education at the ZKM Karlsruhe, as well as Digital Coordinator at documenta 15. For her research project “Mediating Media Arts” she visited collectives from the lumbung network in Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Michael Gärtner is a team member at documenta archiv. He already worked in various areas for documenta gGmbH during his studies of fine arts. After his artistic graduation, he was taken on full-time in the archive and has since worked in the Art Library and Media Archive departments, among others. In 2022, the Documentation & Production department was founded, which he is in charge of. One of the main tasks of the new department last year was the video documentation of documenta 15.

Oliver-Selim Boualam lives and works as an artist and designer in Karlsruhe. His participatory sculptures and experimental objects are always search for the fun and unusual in everyday routines. He is part of the design duo BNAG and belongs to the FAN collective. He studied product and communication design at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and has been a scholarship holder of the Kunststiftung Badenwurttemberg. In 2022 he worked for the documenta archiv in Kassel as a videographer and photographer to document documenta 15.