Archives

The online archive is a project formulated for the centennial of Kunsthalle Bern. Since 2018, we offer audiences a new way of interacting with our archive through an online platform that is formulated by creating research threads and content visible to the user. The project is conceived as a connecting thread, whereby users of the physical archive digitize the materials they handle, allowing a more comprehensive access to information than was possible in the past, while also offering different perspectives on the process of archiving.

The Online Archive of Kunsthalle Bern can be accessed through the website archiv.kunsthalle-bern.ch.

The cataloging and conservation of an archive raises countless questions, not least that of digitization. Since a complete digitization from A-Z is enormously time-consuming and costly, and in our case not necessary for conservation reasons, we found an unconventional approach in collaboration with Astrom/Zimmer & Tereszkiewicz and implemented a solution specially developed for the Kunsthalle Bern to digitize a selection of the documents:
The researchers who use the archive make the selection based on their research interests and the digital copies are created together with them through their use of the documents. In this way, research interests and content-related connections of reception can become visible.
In concrete terms, this means that the dossiers are fitted with RFID chips during the cataloguing process and a worktable produced for the Kunsthalle Bern allows researchers to create digital images of individual documents at the click of a mouse. Thanks to the RFID chips, the images are linked to their respective physical folders and stored accordingly in the database. The researchers use a computer interface to add the necessary metadata. In this way, they are provided with a tool that allows them to consistently document and easily create reference materials while simultaneously populating the digital archive and gradually opening it up to external users.
As the digital archive grows, the documents can be placed in a narrative context with inbuilt links to other documents in the collection. Threads thus run through the archive, overlapping and making connections visible that would otherwise remain hidden. This tool can be understood as a device recording the use of the Kunsthalle Bern archive.

This project is both an experiment and a working tool. We are developing it further in close collaboration with archivists, consultants and researchers and with the generous support of Kultur Stadt Bern, Swisslos Kultur Kanton Bern, Burgergemeinde Bern, UBS Kulturstiftung, Jubiläumsstiftung der Mobiliar, Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung, Memoriav, Ursula Wirz Stiftung, mmBE Akzent and Gesellschaft zu Mittellöwen.