Sven Spieker Proposes 'Slow Archive' Concept in ARTMargins Online Article

In an article for ARTMargins Online, Sven Spieker presents a manifesto advocating for a 'slow archive' approach. He argues that archives should no longer be viewed as passive repositories or destinations for knowledge. Instead, Spieker redefines archives as active practices themselves. This perspective challenges traditional archaeological methods of uncovering historical layers. Within contemporary art, archives are not equivalent to knowledge as an endpoint. The concept emphasizes processes of combining, concatenating, reformatting, and rescaling information. Spieker suggests that everything possesses archival qualities to some extent. His manifesto shifts focus from archival content to archival methodology as creative practice.