Atlas. How to Carry the Weight of the World?
View of the exhibition. Courtesy: MNCARS
Atlas. How to Carry the Weight of the World? is one of the most suggestive projects from the last two years, and it highlights the importance of knowledge based on the activation of relationships. It takes as its starting point the conceptual legacy of Aby Warburg, through his Atlas Mnemosyne, and continues his discourse in the extensive essay of the catalogue-book, written by the curator Georges Didi-Huberman.
The exhibition is presented as a device which encourages a reflection on the meaning of images in the interpretation of the world. Although the starting point of the show is Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne (the essay rigorously examines this perspective), the exhibition does not aim to illustrate his thought, but to defend its significance, by enabling a critical reinterpretation of the meaning of the archive, rescuing projects which simulate or appropriate the “archive" as a work methodology.
“The Warburg Atlas is an object designed on the basis of a commitment. The commitment to the idea that images, when presented in a certain way, offer the chance-or rather, the endless resource-to conduct a reinterpretation of the world" claims Didi-Huberman in his text. In the face of the archive which aims to bring together an entire body of material, the Atlas is presented as a selection defined by a decision, a plan, a programme. In this way, the exhibition tends to reformulate itself as a space for thought (Warburg’s Denkraum) applied to the images of our time and memory, suggesting frictions and vibrations between very different images and projects, with the aim of bringing about new patterns of visual analysis, where relationships are not based on similarity but on productive affinity.
In a project of these characteristics the most important elements are the relationships and what they suggest, the discovery of new and unimaginable paths for reflection. The division of the exhibition into chapters could suggest a bookish format; the works themselves ensure the flexibility and tension of a fascinating journey. It includes a selection from the archive –made up of almost 30,000 images from the First World War--, on display for the first time, compiled by Warburg since the beginning of the conflict (the impact of the war and the German defeat caused him severe mental disorders and he had to be admitted to a Swiss clinic which he did not leave until 1924). In the face of this fragment of an archive, the show includes images and texts on the Second World War, gathered together in notebooks by Bertolt Brecht on the basis of press cuttings, which was the subject of a book by Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images.
The selection of works avoids any kind of chronological or historical discourse, to instead highlight the active function of the exhibition device. The works themselves aren't as important as what they are capable of activating when they vibrate with the other pieces. This is not an exhibition of works but a display of relationships between works; it is also important to observe the singularity of the work as the conceptual architecture generated by the group. In this way, the role of the exhibition is critically reviewed, and here lies the importance of the show. There is no doubt that the fact that Didi-Huberman is not a typical curator, but a writer and thinker, has aided this reconsideration of the exhibition format.
However, the absence of detailed information on each work turns the project into a difficult and almost overwhelming task for the wider audience, and requires, in all cases, a supplementary effort which only the book-catalogue can offer.
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