Riverine Archive

The Riverine Archive is an attempt to catalog the various activities of Phi Books; a project carried out since 2008 by art- ist-researchers Alexandra Antonopoulou and Eleanor Dare.

The core of Phi Books is the develop- ment of methodologies for communica- tion and learning across disciplinary barriers. Inspired by the legacy of algorithmic and interactive forms, the project appro- priates the book as a model for structures shared among different ways of knowing and seeks to explore the contingencies of this and other writing platforms as a springboard for collaboration.

Often, Antonopoulou and Dare make use of informational spaces as a meeting point between their practices, playing with the loss of control and the friction with the environment in order to gen- erate performances, graphics, stories, and simulations.

In this memory project, it could not have been any different. The Riverine Archive uses the changing shape of the river to produce a dysfunctional collec- tion, in which the records float with the waves and can only be accessed in a fragmented way.

This Brechtian gesture invites us to take critical distance and creates suspi- cion about the forms of immersion and automation of empathy promised by virtual reality. Perhaps technology will not be able to free us completely from the threat – or the promise of liberation – symbolized by forgetfulness.