Nadarchiwum
Supra-archive

Summary/Abstract: Each time when I am in the Archive I talk with its staff about the shape of the collection and the ways of obtaining and preserving it. These conversations produce an image of the Archive as a place constantly created by the people establishing it. Decisions about what should be kept and what should be got rid of, what material should be placed in the area of first accessibility and what should be hidden deep in the basement, are made within the narrow group of the archive team, sometimes composed of a single person. In addition, the more subjective the product the more it appears to be interesting - outlining by means of its narration not only a trace of the selected topic but also the archivist or the author of the given complex of material. This is so in the case of, e.g. the archive of Mariusz and Karol Tchorek. This is the also the situation of private collections, often created due to the need of the hour or the outcome of a sudden impulse, which results in years-long work interrupted by the author’s death, which from the perspective of the collection always seems to be unexpected and leaves behind vast thematic realms incomplete and not arranged in order. With good luck - as in the case of the Tchorek archive – someone continues the work of the author. Worse, when the archive becomes abandoned.Then it faces total oblivion, marginalisation, and, in the worse scenario, dispersion. The place, which it created now falls apart and the material left behind is merely a trace, always incomplete, of the utopian conceit, a record of sorts that calls for deliberation and interpretation. In the course of the latter and a subsequent supra-construction there emerges a successive being – something that may be described as the Supra-archive.

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