25.09.–07.11.1999

The exhibition is a collaboration of the artist Heimo Zobernig, teaching at the Städelschule Frankfurt since winter semester 1999, with the philosopher Ernst Strouhal from the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. It presents the former nominal catalogue of the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

The catalogues of this Viennese library were completely digitised by 1998; since then, its stock of books can only be accessed via the computer. The library's classical sensory archives developed over generations were replaced in a very short time by immaterial digital systems.

Freed from their original function, the catalogue cabinets can now be experienced as a spatial sculpture.

The nominal catalogue presented at Portikus, i.e. the library's alphabetical directory listing authors and titles, comprises 84 catalogue boxes made of wood, steel, and plastic with a total of 3024 drawers and 2.6 million index-cards.

"The viewer can traverse this room aesthetically and historically. Aesthetically, it can be experienced as a sterile and neutral topography of cabinets, drawers and index-cards. It can simultaneously be read historically: its volume, pretence, and complexity make it a sublime, as well as grotesque backdrop of the modern age. It encompasses an historical period from the French Revolution until today: the index-cards and cabinets tell of a methodical attempt developed over the centuries at creating order and disciplining memory. They form a semiotic system pointing to the past of a system of order and recording based on paper."