Re-grounding the Archive
mattering, exhibition, forum
YEAR:
2026
CITE:
Friends Making Work, Re-Grounding the Archive, in OPEN ACCESS: Exploring 130 Years of American Design, Van Alen Institute, Brooklyn NY, October 5—November 12, 2026.
TYPE:
Group exhibition from open call
Link︎︎︎
2026
CITE:
Friends Making Work, Re-Grounding the Archive, in OPEN ACCESS: Exploring 130 Years of American Design, Van Alen Institute, Brooklyn NY, October 5—November 12, 2026.
TYPE:
Group exhibition from open call
Link︎︎︎
Where is the ground in architectural and urban representation? Re-grounding the Archive opens up Van Alen’s history to an archeological examination of its institutional attitudes towards the ground, land, environment, and the city over time. Through a series of speculative “core samples” made of paper pulp and clay, these tactile artifacts are encoded with various attitudes toward the ground.
Each “core” references competition proposals at a various moment in the institution’s identity, particularly projects that articulate a position toward the ground. Heeding Bruno Latour’s call to bring climate change politics “down to earth,” Re-grounding the Archive examines how the archive has represented (or not) architecture’s relationship to the ground over the last 100 years. Visitors are invited to handle the core samples, read them as material indexes of the archive, and have conversations about the institution’s layered history.
Each “core” references competition proposals at a various moment in the institution’s identity, particularly projects that articulate a position toward the ground. Heeding Bruno Latour’s call to bring climate change politics “down to earth,” Re-grounding the Archive examines how the archive has represented (or not) architecture’s relationship to the ground over the last 100 years. Visitors are invited to handle the core samples, read them as material indexes of the archive, and have conversations about the institution’s layered history.