Abstract

In the final destruction, the decaying effects of organic bodies, as well as the global conditions that sustain life (light and heat), are considered in relation to the material objects of culture. In Part 1, the question of material destruction is considered in the context of the ethics of the archive. The relationship between digital and analog film and photography is addressed in relation to issues of access and exclusivity, as well as how the choices are made about what is preserved is an act of destruction itself. The apparent durability of the digital dematerialization of the film and photographic archive is then reversed in Part 2, where the non-linear destruction of digital objects (glitches), accelerating obsolescence and digital accumulations create digital cultures less permanent and stable than their analog counterparts.

Keywords: archive theory, archival destruction, digitization, new materialism, volatile matter, digital media

In the case of the cinematograph, the duration of exposure […] lasts as long as 2/45 of a second, 15 images being exposed every second, each of them appearing for 2/3 of 15th of a second […] by virtue of the jerky movement to which the strip of film is subjected, it can survive its passage through the apparatus scarcely more than 300 times.

One knows, a priori, that a piece of fireworks is ephemeral. It has, even so, an effective life incomparably longer than a projectile fired by a mechanical weapon or the cinematographe's projected photograph, because it lasts several seconds. However paradoxical it may seem, this conclusion is quite rigorous; it can be confirmed by a simple bit of arithmetic, and is yet another instance of how dangerous it is to trust appearances.