âANARCHEOLOGYâ appears at the beginning of Christoph Kellerâs film of the same name in large, white letters against a black background. The image that follows offers an unobstructed view of a black-and-white photo of the Ponto Rio Negro, a large bridge near Manaus in Brazil. This formal dichotomy of the cinematographic image arises time and again in what follows: Text panels on a black background alternate like a travel report with photographs of deserted landscapes in the Amazonas. âThe text I want to write is about archeology as a paradigm in the western tradition of art,â are the first words to come from the toneless narrator, who communicates exclusively by means of script.
In written words reflections on the relationship between language and historiography arise, about whether and how âoral historyâ can be translated into written language and hence, knowledge in general â after all, as the narrator puts it, âwriting changes it allâ. The panels can be subdivided into three text passages in varying literary styles: First there is an examination of the title âAnarcheologyâ, which progresses seamlessly into a personal story, which then links to the creation myth of the Yanomami, an indigenous people of the Amazonas region.
A non-history of thought
But what exactly does the term âAnarcheologyâ describe? It is âa semiotic divisor splitting the world into halves, the archeological and the non-archeological. It is a term that evokes something not yet known,â says Keller, explaining the term in an interview with culture theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto.
The concept was first introduced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lecture âDu gouvernement des vivantsâ in 1980. Kellerâs work follows on from Foucault, who gave his methodological concept of an âarchaeology of knowledgeâ a radical twist with the introduction of the concept of âan-archeologyâ, a ânon-history of thoughtâ, as it is called in the film. This ânon-history of thoughtâ could be conceived as the precise opposite of the scientific understanding of history, which is limited almost exclusively to written knowledge, as a form of understanding that includes the living, non-written, and hence the mystical world to a much greater extent.
After these thoughts eventually culminate into a quote from Foucault, the narrative pivots abruptly towards the unexpectedly intimate story of a nameless woman, her experiences in the La Borde psychiatric clinic, her subsequent life in the Amazonas, and her relationship with her parents.
Anarcheology is a semioÂtic diviÂsor splitÂting the world into halves, the archeoÂloÂgiÂcal and the non-archeoÂloÂgiÂcal. It is a term that evokes someÂthing not yet known.
In the end, while the grainy black-and-white images show ever more expressive shots from the Amazonas region, the focus returns once again to the mythical tales of the Yanomami, to which the work refers right at the beginning.
Science as a basis for art
In previous works the Berlin-based artist Christoph Keller has repeatedly tackled scientific concepts: In âEncyclopaedia Cinematographicaâ he uses film material from a project of the same name by the Institute for Scientific Film in Göttingen, which set itself the task of documenting the entire objective world in âtiny thematic unitsâ. In other works Keller, who initially studied Math, Physics and Hydrology, addresses marginal scientific fields: In the âCloudbuster Projectâ at the P.S.1 in New York, he carried out reenactments of the later âweather experimentsâ by Austrian physician and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, while in works like âThe Chemtrails Phenomenonâ he examines conspiracy theories.
In the exhibition âAether â from Cosmology to Consciousnessâ (2011) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, he focuses on the correlation of science and modern art, starting with the concept of aether, while in the film and the exhibition âSmall Survey on Nothingnessâ (2014) Keller examines the connection of ânothingnessâ to western culture in different episodes.
With âW.R. â Misterije Organizmaâ by Serbian director DuĆĄan Makavejev, the SCHIRN will subsequently screen a film that was banned in Yugoslavia on its release in 1971 until the 1980s. As the acronym âW.R.â in the title hints, here we once again encounter the ubiquitously active Wilhelm Reich. In a brilliant montage of documentary shots and movie scenes, Makavejev weaves a work that initially appears to be a documentary about Reichâs time in the USA, his imprisonment and the orgone therapy he developed, but then morphs into an essayistic film on sexual liberation and political revolution.
Paving stones, fire, bullets, slogans, songs. The same with movies. We can use everything that comes to hand: fiction, documents, actualities, titles. âStyleâ is not important. You must use surprise as a psychological weapon.
The narrative, sometimes surrealist-seeming framework plot about the highly politicized Milena, who propagates sexual liberation as a means of countering fascism and suppression, is interspersed time and again with sequences from Mikheil Chiaureliâs propaganda film on Stalin, âKiyatvaâ or shots of Tuli Kupferberg, beatnik, poet and founding member of the American band âThe Fugsâ, who marches in military manner armed with a toy machine gun through Downtown Manhattan. Perhaps DuĆĄan Makavejev summarizes this cinematographic tour-de-force best himself in a commentary about subversive film styles: âPaving stones, fire, bullets, slogans, songs. The same with movies. We can use everything that comes to hand: fiction, documents, actualities, titles. âStyleâ is not important. You must use surprise as a psychological weapon.â
