Oral History Archive WE ARE AVANT-GARDE!

Oral History Archive WE ARE AVANT-GARDE!

A digital documentation and research project with filmed conversations about the history of the Archiv der Avantgarden (ADA) – Egidio Marzona

With Egidio Marzona’s donation of the Archiv der Avantgarden (ADA), the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden received one of the most important private art collections in the world. The ADA includes around 1.5 million works of art, objects, photographs, documents, books, magazines and other materials that bring to life the artistic approaches, politics, thoughts, passions, social structures and utopias of the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century.

The ADA will open its doors in May 2024 in the renovated Blockhaus in Dresden as a new institutional format: a hybrid between a research center, archive and museum. In parallel with the formation of this institution, the project WE ARE AVANT-GARDE! is taking advantage of the singular historical opportunity to document the background and history of the archive – including its vision, structure, development, historical context and provenance – through filmed conversations with relevant protagonists. Conceptually, the project is a significant extension of the ADA, one that examines the collection’s revolutionary character and its uniqueness. 

In view of the advanced age of many of the protagonists, an urgent need arises to document their highly personal and socio-historically relevant viewpoints, knowledge and experiences which brought this incomparable archive into being. Finally, it is also about clarifying provenance and about the history of the collection.

To make the rich pool of specific knowledge captured in the films accessible for education and research purposes, the conversations will be transcribed, carefully edited and indexed and translated from various languages into German and English. In this manner, they will become part of the digital archive created during the course of documenting the collection and contribute to making the ADA an internationally recognized research center of the future. The project thus reflects ADA founder Egidio Marzona's concept of making the artistic and social impulses of this archive accessible to future generations. The title “WE ARE AVANT-GARDE” describes both the protagonists involved and the approach of using the oral history method to explore the multi-layered content of the Archiv der Avantgarden.

The central aim of WE ARE AVANT-GARDE! is to establish and promote the international visibility of the Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona. In practice, this means using the film material to facilitate multiple approaches to the collection, whether as a primary source for visitors and researchers, in exhibition settings or in social media. For collection visitors – either in the Blockhaus or online – the film sequences pertaining to relevant objects and materials are primarily intended to provide an incentive to delve deeper into the collection. For these diverse purposes, a specially designed, online accessible “archive of the archive” will be created in which the films and their transcriptions will be presented. In this way, they can be used for a wide range of purposes related to education, research and study.

In terms of content, the project aims to explore this “web” between the objects of the ADA as well as the interrelations between them, the collector and all the people associated with his project, in accordance with a broadened principle of oral history. In discussions with Egidio Marzona himself, with gallerists through whom he acquired various archives, with artists whose work he included in his collection, with other collectors, heirs and executors who entrusted estates to him and with countless other people from his global network, the histories of individual objects are addressed as are the artistic and societal questions and visions associated with them, and the relationships and histories between the people for whom these objects and their place in the collection were important. The protagonists and especially Egidio Marzona himself tell their stories about the objects, collections and archives in addition to discussing overarching themes. The conversations are recorded at relevant locations that are usually inaccessible to the public, with some taking place in carefully planned and arranged settings and others occurring more spontaneously, such as during the handover of a collection. Through the manner in which the protagonists show, speak about and interact within the material diversity of the respective sub-collections, it is possible to capture elements of what lies beyond the (in turn highly complex) archival material and bring it to life in different ways.

Available online at: https://archiv-der-avantgarden.skd.museum/oral-history

Duration
ongoing since 2020

Project leadership
Monika Branicka and Dr. Pirkko Rathgeber

Project Organizer
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / Archiv der Avantgarden – Egidio Marzona: Dr. Rudolf Fischer, Director, ADA; Friederike Fast, Scientific Researcher/Curator, ADA; ada(at)skd.museum