Containers in shades of inexperienced, chronologically lined up, sorted by exhibition, a brand new tone for every director. On the desk in entrance of it; order, system, guidelines, white gloves. The whole lot that passes that desk is recorded and integrated into this moss-green order. The archive of the Kunsthalle Bern shops many issues: correspondence, images, movies, paperwork associated to the establishment and the exhibitions, publications, press articles, contracts, set up plans, notes. For a very long time, the archive was to not be discovered on this order, it was to not be discovered in any respect, because it was not accessible or processed. It consisted of bins in corners of places of work, piles of sheets, folders, dusty cabinets with forgotten notes, however above all tales and rumors from Bern instructed all around the world.
Some issues have been documented up to now and, above all, some issues haven’t. Whereas researching, it’s typically exactly the gaps that stand out. What has not been written down turns into obvious and a focus shifts to the unknown and the snippets that by no means made it to the submitting cupboard. Likewise, it turns into palpable, that which was perceived as incidental and was by no means even written down. What’s between discovered traces can solely be guessed at. And on the organized desk, the uncategorizable is lined out—the place to place these footwear, these two stamps—that doesn’t match the scheme.

Within the exhibition “Archival Ramblings,” the Kunsthalle Bern workforce attracts out these loopholes, these ricochets and these gaps themselves. As an alternative of framing discovered puzzles, there are moments of silence with out shortly filling them up with tales. Thus, this exhibition begins from open questions, from discontinuities and query marks that will also be learn as beginning factors.
The choice began from private pursuits and day by day occupation as directors, press officers, mediators, technicians, assistants, folks working in, with, and across the Kunsthalle. Thus, the way in which by which the exhibition happened is marked as a lot by subjective selections because the archiving exercise itself and now reveals a set of fragments. The randomness of the compilations of those completely different snippets in flip turns into one thing consultant that refers past itself to a lot else. The archive is thus expanded to incorporate ideas that we, as caretakers and contributors, have concerning the archive’s work. The choice highlights silences and erasures inside exhibition-making and likewise provides to the archive the voices of the workforce as contributors in its dissemination. The varied pursuits discovered within the exhibition must be taken as an invite to the general public to have interaction extra intently with the archive of Kunsthalle Bern by sharing their very own tales.

at Kunsthalle Bern
till July 9, 2023