The Archive

This work comes as two forms, a VR based film and a single channel HD video file.

The Archive (2017) is a video made inside the Hans Tasiemka Archive, using 360-degree filming technology. This sprawling resource was run by 94-year-old Edda Tasiemka (died 2019) from a 1920s semi-detached house in Golders Green, London. Amassed over decades, the collection held hundreds of thousands of idiosyncratically catalogued newspaper cuttings forming a web of interconnected stories and information. Masses of cuttings were kept all around the house, from the toilet to her garage, categorised through subjects as diverse as ‘The Family’, ‘Isis’ and the ‘Kardashians’. Using a VR headset the viewer is deposited into the centre of the sprawling, obsolete accumulation, able to examine the mess, which is overlaid by a rhythmic narration about memory and our ability to record knowledge.

Made in Collaboration with Claire Barrett

Producer & Camera: Claire Barrett

360 Camera: Peter Collis