Erick Beltrán, "22 trains through an archive of archives: Athens must always be rescued from Alexandria." 2024

At the invitation of the SKD's research department, Mexican artist Erick Beltrán (*1974) realised the expansive work "22 Trains through an Archive of Archives: Athens must be rescued from Alexandria again and again" in cooperation with the ADA. Beltrán spent over a year researching the materials of the ADA, focussing on its networking structures of radical ideas and utopias of the avantgardes. This resulted in a 22-part work on the research platform, which is an offer to understand the ADA as an archive of archives based on an infinite variety of combinatorial possibilities. In thoughts with Aby Warburg, terms such as "myth" or "monster" or "migrant" become orientations in order to playfully grasp nodes, contacts and distances in the archive. This method is used by magicians, artists and philosophers, but also by researchers, librarians, psychologists and historians. The result is a constellation of hidden and visible knots that cannot be kept in a locked treasure trove. The archive is a living organism that is constantly changing in the here and now, and at the same time, it is bound up with traditions of thought. The archive lies in the eyes of the reader. 

A free print object is published with the installation.

Erick Beltrán

Erick Beltrán (*1974) is a Mexican artist based in Barcelona. His research-based practice focuses on power structures and mechanisms that define, evaluate, classify, reproduce and disseminate images, thought patterns and discourses to create social, cultural, political and economic behaviours and values in contemporary societies. Erick Beltrán was artistic director of the documenta fifteen editorial project lumbung. which was conceived as an active offset print shop. Since 2023, he has been responsible for the collective Lumbung Press in the Hangar in Barcelona.