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![Dionysus consoling Ariadne, from Mr. Washington’s copy of Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1959 [The November 12, 1976 issue of The Medium can be seen in the scan jutting out from the book itself, it is amongst the various documents found in this and many volumes in the archive.]
“…the earliest known archives contained objects neatly strung up on suspended threads, ‘one thing after another.’ These archive strings functioned as navigational tools-a kind of cybernetic feedback-that allowed their users to keep their bearings in time and space, much like the thread that once helped Theseus navigate his way through Daedalus’s labyrinth. And, as a way of submitting chance to successful symbolization, Ariadne’s thread had often been viewed as a metaphor for the production of art. For example, Walter Benjamin observed:
‘To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on the Ariadne’s thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, the rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully would skein-isn’t that the joy of all productivity, at least in prose?’
If on the one hand the artist submits willingly to chance, on the other hand, she or he relies on the feedback provided by the thread to mitigate its effects, using it to suture a gap or hole at the very center of the symbolic. Fingering the thread, stitching it into a text, the artist in Benjamin’s account occupies a place simultaneously inside and outside of contingency, finding a rhythm in or through the waywardness of chance.”
-The Big Archive: Art From BureaucracySven Spieker](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l77g482nLC1qzpvkgo1_r1_400.jpg "Dionysus consoling Ariadne, from Mr. Washington’s copy of Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1959 [The November 12, 1976 issue of The Medium can be seen in the scan jutting out from the book itself, it is amongst the various documents found in this and many volumes in the archive.]
“…the earliest known archives contained objects neatly strung up on suspended threads, ‘one thing after another.’ These archive strings functioned as navigational tools-a kind of cybernetic feedback-that allowed their users to keep their bearings in time and space, much like the thread that once helped Theseus navigate his way through Daedalus’s labyrinth. And, as a way of submitting chance to successful symbolization, Ariadne’s thread had often been viewed as a metaphor for the production of art. For example, Walter Benjamin observed:
‘To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on the Ariadne’s thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, the rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully would skein-isn’t that the joy of all productivity, at least in prose?’
If on the one hand the artist submits willingly to chance, on the other hand, she or he relies on the feedback provided by the thread to mitigate its effects, using it to suture a gap or hole at the very center of the symbolic. Fingering the thread, stitching it into a text, the artist in Benjamin’s account occupies a place simultaneously inside and outside of contingency, finding a rhythm in or through the waywardness of chance.”
-The Big Archive: Art From BureaucracySven Spieker")
Dionysus consoling Ariadne, from Mr. Washington’s copy of Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1959 [The November 12, 1976 issue of The Medium can be seen in the scan jutting out from the book itself, it is amongst the various documents found in this and many volumes in the archive.]
“…the earliest known archives contained objects neatly strung up on suspended threads, ‘one thing after another.’ These archive strings functioned as navigational tools-a kind of cybernetic feedback-that allowed their users to keep their bearings in time and space, much like the thread that once helped Theseus navigate his way through Daedalus’s labyrinth. And, as a way of submitting chance to successful symbolization, Ariadne’s thread had often been viewed as a metaphor for the production of art. For example, Walter Benjamin observed:
‘To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on the Ariadne’s thread. What joy in the mere act of unrolling a ball of thread! And this joy is very deeply related to the joy of intoxication, just as it is to the joy of creation. We go forward; but in so doing, we not only discover the twists and turns of the cave, but also enjoy this pleasure of discovery against the background of the other, the rhythmic bliss of unwinding the thread. The certainty of unrolling an artfully would skein-isn’t that the joy of all productivity, at least in prose?’
If on the one hand the artist submits willingly to chance, on the other hand, she or he relies on the feedback provided by the thread to mitigate its effects, using it to suture a gap or hole at the very center of the symbolic. Fingering the thread, stitching it into a text, the artist in Benjamin’s account occupies a place simultaneously inside and outside of contingency, finding a rhythm in or through the waywardness of chance.”
-The Big Archive: Art From Bureaucracy
Sven Spieker