Fountain Archive

The Fountain Archive (also called The Fountain Archives or Fountain Archive Project) is a processual art project of the french conceptual artist Saâdane Afif which started in 2008/ 2009. The project includes an ongoing series of framed pages which contain one or several reproductions of the work Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. Here Afif uses the concept of the Objet trouvés (found object) and tears off the pages from different publications. For each publication and pages Afif normally makes only one piece for the Fountain Archives. The Fountain Archive also includes a bookshelf which stored all used publications of the project.

In 2008 Saâdane Afif started to collect publications which contain reproductions of the work Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. After he was distinguished with the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2009 Afif began the project of the “Fountain Archive". At present the Fountain Archive contains over 600 images of Duchamp’s porcelain urinal. In this work, Afif collects and archives every single publication in which he finds a reproduction of Duchamp's urinal. As a “found object” every page, containing the picture of the Fountain, is torn out and then carefully framed. The frame (sometimes with a colored background), used for its preservation and highlight ornament purposes, is also part of the making process. Every step of the archiving follows meticulous rules which participate entirely in the making process of these works of art. For each publication and pages Afif normally makes only one piece for the Fountain Archive.

If a publication contains images of Duchamp’s Fountain on several pages, all of them are torn off and form together a polyptych. When found, the publications are registered with an archive number ranging from FA 0001 potentially to infinite. Afif intended to continue the Series of Archives until its 1001st. The publications (sans Fountain) are then stored in a bookshelf in the studio of the artist. The bookshelf creates an archive around Duchamp’s Fountain, from which the common initiator has been removed: “an archive without its object“. The Fountain Archives has been presented in various exhibitions throughout the world.

Since 2013, some publication presenting this project by Afif happened to reproduce the work “Fountain” of Duchamp. Those specific documents are also incorporated in the Fountain Archives project. But they are treated as special objects as they are doubled in order to testify of a historical echo, mark a mise en abyme. In case of the mise en abyme – a publication includes an image of Afif's Fountain Archive project – there is also one exception to the strict rule that each publication produced only a unique, singular work of the Fountain Archive. These pages underline an evolution in the development and perception of the Fountain Archives as an artwork. They are stored under a specific section titled “Augmented” and they are building step by step an archive within the archive. Therefore, two copies of the publications (sans Fountain) enter the archive bookshelf and two editions of the work are made.

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