"[...] the archive is also that which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken line [...] but are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations."

–Michel Foucault, "Archaeology of Knowledge", 1969

"Marginalia" started up a year ago as "a critical laboratory to reactivate the Pepe Espaliú Library". The common process should now be described as a joint model to approach the spheres of memory, affect, the document, representation and circulation of knowledge in a place which is here suggested as simultaneously combining encounter and conflict: the library. A library that, in line with Foucault, no longer belongs to the repertory of mythical forms but rather to the "archive". A library that, furthermore, in our case, takes many forms: the one set by two proper names, Pepe Espaliú and Arteleku; the library made up of the more than four thousand books that the artist collected during his life and of which he read a part; the one that used to be his personal collection and become patrimony, under the inscription of AIDS; the one that, subject to the disciplines of architecture and design, is more furniture than place; the one that during two decades was consulted by other artists that some called "community" and who would gradually leave; the one that has witnessed many of the changes of the institutional framework that hosts it and which it resists with its physicality; the one that is, in short, a remnant, but also a promise, of a multitude of experiences.

During a year, that "approach model" has been developed around the processes of reading, notes, meeting, exchanges, documentation... (partially referred to in the online consultation area http://lab-marginalia.tumblr.com/), which have resulted in four archive and artistic productions that are now being presented here – run by Jeleton, Antonio Gagliano, Pablo Marte and Susana Talayero (in collaboration), and Equipo re –, and in research underway on the final work of Pepe Espaliú (1955-1993), taken as a symptom and condensation of a series of critical criteria mutations, whose results will be unveiled in a second phase to showcase the project.

"Marginalia" has sought to vindicate the operational and political dimension of any "margin"; thus, these four archive and artistic productions have addressed "the library" from some of its various limits and opportunities: as a context where to raise questions about the regulations in the access to and meaning of cultural artefacts (Jeleton); asserting its material waste to trigger an experimental device for the free circulation of knowledge (Antonio Gagliano); questioning, with the dialectic potential of the image and montage, its emblematic nature of culture and civilisation, and as a spectral body that contains "the difference" (Pablo Marte and Susana Talayero); and as a framework to start to reflect on the instability of the archive from the perspective of AIDS politics in the Neo-liberal context (Equipo re).

In order to generate a multiple agency and contagious situation, these four productions are now brought together in a session of presentations and debate, which includes the spatialization of materials related to some of the work processes, in different areas of the first floor of Arteleku , and the "interpellation" of as many other external voices, oscillating between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable*.

Aimar Arriola
Donostia-San Sebastián, February 2013

*"Like the librarians of Babel in Borges story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable."

–Georges Perec, Penser / Classer, 1985 (Think / Classify 1986)

PROGRAM – Saturday 16 March

12.00 noon – 1.00 p.m. – "Marginalia" Presentation – Aimar Arriola + introduction – Santiago Eraso

1.00 – 2.00 p.m. - "Anarchivo sida" Presentation - Equipo re (Nancy Garín and Linda Valdés) + interpellation - Nicolas Malevé

2.00 – 4.00 p.m. - lunch

4.00 – 5.00 p.m.– Presentation "The Free Mimesis Project" - Antonio Gagliano + interpellation - Tamara Díaz Bringas

5.00 – 6.00 p.m. – "Principios movedizos y provisionales" presentation- Pablo Marte & Susana Talayero + interpellation - Julia Morandeira

6.00 – 7.00 p.m. - "Paris Is Burning oharduna"* presentation - Jeleton + interpellation - Dora García (non-presential)

(*) this action will be preceded by the "Paris Is Burning oharduna" production meeting run by Jeleton at Arteleku from 11 to 15 March (http://www.arteleku.net/programa-es/201cparis-is-burning-oharduna201d).