The Riverine Archive is an attempt to catalog the various activities of Phi Books; a project carried out since 2008 by artist-researchers Alexandra Antonopoulou and Eleanor Dare.
The core of Phi Books is the development of methodologies for communication and learning across disciplinary barriers. Inspired by the legacy of algorithmic and interactive forms, the project appropriates the book as a model for structures shared among different ways of knowing and seeks to explore the contingencies of this and other writing platforms as a springboard for collaboration.
Often, Antonopoulou and Dare make use of informational spaces as a meeting point between their practices, playing with the loss of control and the friction with the environment in order to generate performances, graphics, stories, and simulations.
In this memory project, it could not have been any different. The Riverine Archive uses the changing shape of the river to produce a dysfunctional collection, in which the records float with the waves and can only be accessed in a fragmented way.
This Brechtian gesture invites us to take critical distance and creates suspicion about the forms of immersion and automation of empathy promised by virtual reality. Perhaps technology will not be able to free us completely from the threat – or the promise of liberation – symbolized by oblivion.