Si prega di ricollocare i cassetti del catalogo nel giusto ordine

“Please return the drawers of the catalogue cabinet in the proper order”. These drawers are card-index boxes belonging to the archival furniture of the Venetian Public Library.

Aëgerter’s work consists of 60 photographs printed on cards showing the front of these drawers, which were combined in a single card-index box. Both the arbitrariness and the poetry of the archive are reflected in the photographs, which record the entries on the first and the last fiches of each box. The only thing they have in common is that they are alphabetically related: from ‘Rianimazione’ to ‘Rimbaud’.

The attitude expressed in this work is also typical for Aëgerter. By playing with the notion of hierarchy she is at the same time playing with the functioning of a catalogue.