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薩阿丹． 阿菲夫

Saâdane AFIF

On the occasion of the Taipei Biennial 2016, Saâdane Afif announces the upcoming 2017 tour of his project The Fountain Archives, to coincide with the one hundred year anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. Presenting the website documenting the Archives alongside a poster making the announcement, this presentation both propagates and anticipates the further circulation of an artistic icon in a multitude of settings.

Begun in 2008, Afif’s ongoing project comprises an ever-growing collection of publications containing reproductions of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 readymade Fountain. The archive today contains around eight hundred entries and will be finished once one
thousand and one documents have been collected. The pages that depict Fountain are torn out, framed, and redistributed worldwide through exhibitions and sales. Meanwhile scanned images of the pages are uploaded onto the dedicated website, thereby expanding the project into digital territories beyond the possibilities of physical dissemination.A strict protocol and rigorous classification procedures produce a unique database on the intricate genius of Duchamp.

What remains of the publications is then stored on the shelves of a bookcase in the artist’s studio. These “negative” archives act as a mold of the project, becoming in turn sculptures themselves. These are the objects—the bookcases and their contents—that will be exhibited in the 2017 world tour.

The production of this archive tackles the thorny issue of representation, presenting many viewpoints on one given object to uncover that which is hidden in the work of art: its subjective form.