Movement, Becoming, and the Cybernetic Archive

ARC25 SIGHTLINES | Anthology of Reflexive Contributors

The archive is not a fixed matter. It is changing with transforming inquiries: what do we make of things, what do we value, what do we consider information? The matter of the archive brings us into conversation. How do we navigate this matter such that the past is a present and presence?

These questions, I think, could not be more relevant in modern societies driven by a desire to archive and document. Twenty years ago, Hal Foster wrote of an archival impulse in art practice (Foster, 2004). This impulse has now extended far beyond the domain of those who consciously consider themselves artists. The archival impulse may now be re-presented by the figure with the phone in the raised hand, their gallery the massive archiving apparatus that is social media. We could say that archiving has replaced experience, but that would overlook another experience: that of archiving. The modern archival impulse speaks to a very basic tendency toward collection and re-collection, categorisation, and creation. Photography has shown us two sides of the realisation (s) of this impulse: a ready access to creative archival artistry/­an enabled pursuit of proof and fixity. We walk the line upon which a production of thingness can exchange experience into commodity and stasis.

The notion of the “cybernetic archive” is valuable if only in that it infuses the archive with movement. This movement largely comes from the cybernetic concept of the eigenform—the idea that objects are “tokens,” seemingly stable forms emergent from social-behavioural (including linguistic) exchanges over time and in change (Kauffman, 2003). Heinz von Foerster wrote about the eigenform in a 1981 paper titled “Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)behaviors.” I often look to Louis H. Kauffman’s contemplation of von Foerster’s paper, which, Kauffman says, seeks “not to deny an underlying reality that is the source of these objects, but rather to emphasise the role of process and the role of the organism in the production of a living map that is so sensitive that map and territory are conjoined”(Kauffman, 2003). He continues:

The notion of the eigenform is inextricably linked with second-order cybernetics. One starts on the road to such a concept as soon as one begins to consider a pattern of patterns, the form of form or the cybernetics of cybernetics. Such concepts appear to close around upon themselves, and at the same time they lead outward. They suggest the possibility of transcending the boundaries of a system from a locus that might have been within the system until the circular concept is called into being, and then the boundaries have turned inside out. (Kauffman, 2003)

If the objects of the archive are eigenforms, what are the processes involved and evolving? Here, I find it useful to contemplate Francisco Varela’s idea of the embodied mind, which proposes a cognition in the recursive terms that Kauffman explains the eigenform (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). The photograph in the hands becomes with and through the movement of the embodied cognition, which is ever-forming a perception by the ongoing dance of experience and memory. The notion of the eigenform thus infuses a realisation of movement in every image, recording, or other piece of “stuff.” The forms of the archive are becoming, perpetually anew in the hands, before the eyes, touching the ears and body, integrally entangled with skin, cells, neural pathways, languages, concepts, desires.

Need we still wear the white gloves? You see that we have gotten ourselves tied up in a complex matter. The dissolution of fixity puts permanence and preservation at risk. We might compose a poetics of the intimate dance between skin and paper, but when a document gets ruined because of oils, tears, or other typical archival damages, it is ruined, inaccessible. (Or … is … it …?) The matter has become that of access and experience, and it implicates both the organisation of institutions (bureaucracy, structure, policy) and the environment and affect of the archive. How might an archival institution create affect such that matter is preserved and the archive observer (feeler, listener) is encouraged to dance, to move, to make become and be becoming with the matter they are observing?

After Pedretti passed on in 2018, her parents bequeathed the house to the Stiftung Edith Maryon foundation, which, as part of their mission to remove buildings from for-profit speculation and development, placed it in the care of the architecture and design group Assemble. It is now formally recognised as the House of Annetta CIC and managed and cared for by a team of artists, artisans, gardeners, printmakers, spatial justice advocates, and community activists, including House Stewards Aska and Fran. The House of Annetta organisation emphasises and resonates the historical origins and connections of the House in London’s immigrant community. It was built by Huguenot merchants who, along with their neighbours on and around Brick Lane, sought refuge in London. Later, the neighbourhood became a home for peoples from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and Bangladesh. The area of the House has experienced constant change, both from the movement of communities and the demolition of historic sites toward urban redevelopment. Pedretti was a lifelong campaigner for spatial justice. Her purchase of and work on the House was part of an ongoing engagement in community and environmental protection, experimental architecture, and cybernetic practice. The current House organisation continues this work through its actions as a centre for language classes, workshops, the growing and sharing of food, performance, exhibitions, and the production of print media. People are moving through the house, all throughout the day. When I’ve been there, I’ve always met someone new, joyful in that space and working with energy and intention.

Where and what is the archive here? Pedretti’s things are present in this space—her drawings, printed flyers, writing on scraps of paper, clothes, jars of honey, and tools. But to observe the archive, we have to step back, starting outside the house and across the street. We need a wider perspective. Pedretti finished a doctoral degree, for which she articulated her ideas in a formal dissertation (The Cybernetics of Language, 1981). Yet the principal work of much of her later life was in restoring the House and supporting the community around it. In observing her archive, we have to look, feel, listen, smell, and taste elsewhere — in the brickwork she repaired, the windows she lovingly replaced, the stairs she built to doubly serve as drawers, the tea with mint from the garden served to House visitors, the resonant sounds of conversation in Arabic, Yiddish, Bengali, English. Is this any less information than we expect to receive from an archive? I think not. Rather, it is a way of coming to know Pedretti’s ideas and work through the experiential, embodied, and collaborative terms by which she both constructed and exercised — quite literally — her cybernetic theories. In this model, understanding comes over time and through repeated interactions that necessarily require a generosity of spirit.

The theory of a cybernetic archive is for all of us to determine. We cannot do otherwise (it would be antithetical to the concept), for we are becoming with this matter and its meaning. Pedretti’s archive is activated by the activities and energy in and with the House. The people moving through, repairing windows, walls, and floors, harvesting herbs from the garden, preparing food and tea for visitors, printing newsletters, singing, embracing, welcoming new visitors, and listening. It is a different kind of preservation than that which we have become accustomed to considering in historical archives. Let me offer a possible point in our collective thinking about the cybernetic archive: at its centre is change. Of course, this is not a new idea at all. Despite the predominance of written and visual documentation forged by the modern academy, the long history of historiography and categorisation in oral traditions engages experience, change, and transformation while maintaining the utmost precision and rigour, even and especially in cases of extreme complexity. Our modern societies often imply or outright champion the idea that change lacks integrity and security. A cursory glance at second-order and contemporary cybernetic theory will suggest that change is exactly what we need for any healthy, stable system. Transformation is that by which we continue living.