The issue of the archive has been a central element of art discourse throughout the 1990s. It resonated as much with the advanced possibilities of digital memory that touched upon diverse scientific and social areas as it did with contemporary discoveries in brain research and the dramatic growth of commemorative culture that marked the turn of the millennium.

In doing so, it gave a whole new impetus to the artistic possibilities of using and reimagining the archive itself. The art of the time addressed the function of memorials, the creation of application possibilities for image archives, the formations of collective and individual museums but also questions dealing less with the backward-looking, retrospective character of archives than their relevance for the present and future. The process-like, dynamic and flexible orientation of these artistic positions allowed for a handling of archives - an archival practice - that focused on the operative aspects of cultural archives such as collecting, preserving, classifying and mediating. They thus further developed the methods of institutional critique exemplified by Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke and Michael Asher in the late 1960s, and shifted them away from an analysis of given conditions to the creation of parallel, alternative processes.¹ That these methods are under consideration again in the middle of the first decade of 2000 is testimony to the highly topical discourses that the archive weaves together. At stake are issues that revolve around the status of the image, the implications of curatorial work, and,