++++ The Manifesta archive consists of text, sound and visual recordings provided by the artists we spoke to over the nine months spent researching and developing this project. From the outset of this prospective phase we thought that this heterogeneous collection of documentation would offer a striking reflection of our exchanges, our methods and our way of looking at art. Also, we have also known intuitively that this archive room could not be allowed to remain closed or secret, but should constitute a nerve centre, a space for work and reflection open to other researchers and visitors, whether professional or not, enabling them to apprehend the diversity of contemporary artistic practices.

++++ All through our travels in an extended Europe, this project of a public archive centre was constantly pushing us to work and reflect on our approach to the coming exhibition, on our criteria and methods, on the differences between us, on our relations with the artists and with past and present art, on our systems of inclusion and exclusion and, finally, on our roles as curators. Founded on the objective fact of encounters with some thousand artists and/or their work, this space gradually took on a metaphorical dimension as the partial and intensive image of a community of people who live, think and make art. The archive includes background material about artists that do not as well as do participate in Manifesta 4. That is because one of the functions of the archive is to make available the wider context of a particular work included or not included in the exhibition. Any exhibition is restrictive by necessity, so the logic of the archive is based on a comprehensive combination of contexts that will make the exhibition less restrictive and more informative about contexts of countries, media, generations, trends, artistic trends. The archive is expanding on the context of each artist and his/her work in Manifesta 4 by providing the background of colleagues, other works, other issues, and vice versa. Conceived by French artist Mathieu Mercier as an open construction site, this space brings to light the geographies, materialities, crossovers and modes of mobility, exchange and transport informing thinking on contemporary art today.

++++ The Curators