2022-12-03 –, Room 112
The Broken Archive was initiated in 2020 during the recent pandemic. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin was working on their long-term project “The Whole Life: An Archive Project” and took an interest in our critical artistic research projects related to Florence (The “Cuddle of Renaissance”) and the Mediterranean region. Only at this point we started to consider that we never reflected upon our own institutional archive as Villa Romana. Which logics did it follow? These (and other) reflections led us to create The Broken Archive. This site brings together artistic projects that investigate the history of and present-day life in the Mediterranean region. The archive is “broken” because the region’s cultural wealth is barely perceived anymore. The Mediterranean region has become a buffer zone between the comfort zone of the North and the conflict zone of the South. The archive is also “broken” because the website is not designed as a canonical archive, but as an open, variable, dense network. A variety of artistic projects are organized into twelve cluster terms. These projects are presented with images, texts, PDFs, and films or trailers on the corresponding artists’ pages. Keywords and a search function offer additional orientation and a range of references. The Broken Archive seeks to create rhizomatic references across the transcontinental Mediterranean region where artistic works and texts emerge like archipelagos in search of community, resonance and connection.
Broken Archive is an initiative of Villa Romana in Florence and HKW Berlin. The Broken Archive brings together artistic projects that investigate the history of and present-day life in the Mediterranean region. The archive is “broken” because the region’s cultural wealth is barely perceived anymore. The Mediterranean region has become a buffer zone between the comfort zone of the North and the conflict zone of the South. It seeks to create rhizomatic references across the transcontinental Mediterranean region. Artistic works and texts emerge like archipelagos in search of community, resonance, connection. The Broken Archive is a project curated by the Villa Romana team under the directorship of Angelika Stepken. As a starting point, it brings together the numerous projects that have been carried out here in recent years. The intention is to develop the archive in a dynamic and interactive manner and offer a common platform to many other artists and projects to come.
In presence
Angelika Stepken is a curator, writer and researcher, living between Florence and Berlin. Between 2006 and 2022 she was director of the artist house Villa Romana in Florence and from 1998 to 2006 director of the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe. Since 1988 Stepken has curated more than 150 exhibitions and international collaborations and authored numerous catalog texts for international artists. She is co-curator of the international IfA traveling exhibition "Future Perfect". Recent book publications include Lara Vinca-Masini, Scritti scelti 1961-2019, Arte Architettura Design Arti applicate, ed. by Angelika Stepken and Alessandra Acocella; Florence 2020; Ketty La Rocca, You - works and writings 1964-1976. ed. by Angelika Stepken, Berlin 2017; Unmapping the Renaissance, ed. by Angelika Stepken, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Mariechen Danz, Vienna 2016; On One Side of The Same Water, Artistic Practices between Tirana and Tanger, Jahresring 59, Kulturkreis der Deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V., Stuttgart 2012.