Dust Archive – ‘A.D. 2020’
On 23/09/19 at about 12 (CEST) a cardboard box was found at the front door of our studio. The only information on the box (handwriting all caps) was a small code (A.D. 2020) and the cryptic warning “KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS”. As we opened the box a smell of old attic spread like if the content was sealed in there since forever. Inside the box we found 12 dusty folders, each including a variable number of magnetic tape spools and disparate items (paper material, prints, photographs, VHS tapes…). The puzzling findings unfold a high degree of space-time discrepancy, with dates, locations and names that don’t add up, certainly leaving the awareness of being faced with a very strange puzzle, way too elaborate to be a joke, too full of meanings to be a fake. Unable to tell what it was, we decided to start an archive to catalog and publish the content of the box, one folder at the time. We called it: Dust Archive.