Archive Crisis is a visual essay in a book form by artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos based on a series of previously unpublished images from Greek (media) archives. Tsivopoulos (ISCP alum, 2011) will be joined by Hilde de Bruijn (Editor, Archive Crisis and Curator, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam) and Lanfranco Aceti (Associate Professor of Practice and Director of Arts Administration, Boston University) to discuss this book, published by by Jap Sam Books, and supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

Tsivopoulos collected and appropriated material for Archive Crisis after extensive research in both private and public media archives that lasted over a period of seven years. The book explores the mechanisms of visual culture in a mediated democracy, and their effect on the production of collective memory. The book’s fascinating visual material is intrinsically linked to a broader European and global context, such as the Cold War, Greek-United Sates relations, and the more recent economic crisis. Tsivopoulos is interested in these documents as visual by-products of tumultuous political times, marked by, among other things, nationalist propaganda, crypto-colonialism and terrorism. He reintroduces them as the remainders of an unsettling past and a present in crisis.