Archival Activations—Nam June Paik between Text and Object

This chapter offers insights into the ways of understanding—and different modes of existence—of the archive. Being both of time and of material, as an index of evolving attitudes towards objects and subjects, contingency of time, and discourse and culture, the archive takes on an active role in creating the identity and maintaining the continuity of works of art. In its physical form, it harbors a variety of documentation of the work’s past manifestations—reports, instructions, scores, contracts, correspondence, and manuals. Further, the archive takes on a non-physical dimension of tacit knowledge, memory, skill, and metadata related to its own functionality.