the Archeology of Sealed Surfaces

a publication from 'a future museum of the present'

The Archeology (Archaeology) of Sealed Surfaces was the first book produced in the sequence. It take’s as it’s starting point the tension between the conventional and empowered position of the formal Archaeologist, and the informal artist observer/explorer of urban space.

The formal Archaeologist arrives at the ‘site’ as an individual with the authority to ‘dig’ and gain knowledge through a process of the excavation of surfaces, which are rendered ‘porous’ either through age, underdevelopment or systematic rupture with sharpened tools. Within this process, ‘excavation’ becomes an expression of power. ‘Knowledge building’ becomes strategic a process of transformation, of ‘territorial inscription’, with the body of the site inextricably marked through the act of cutting. The informal artist/observer on the other hand, especially when faced with the ‘over-developed’ civic spaces of a contemporary ‘first world’ urban landscape such as Dordrecht, is confronted by surfaces which are non-porous, sealed and set. The act of knowledge gathering is therefore confined to scanning the visible ‘skin’ of the land/cityscape. The documents which result from this process reveal the dense patterning of surfaces, but systematically confound our ability to ‘read’ beyond or beneath that ‘skin’.