Arche-Scriptures: The Material Memory of a Border by Alberto Harres was developed as part of site-specific research at Carinarnica, a former customs house on the border passage between Gorizia and Nova Gorica.
Amidst the tightening of border controls across Europe and the increasing automation of their enforcement, the project explores borders as data structures encoded in technological media and enacted through their protocols.
The installation establishes a fictional excavation site of speculative historiography. At this dig site, an automated machine continually interprets a ceramic tablet engraved with intricate markings, producing a real-time plotting of a virtual border delineating the satellite-imaged terrain. Grid-like clusters of glyphs, resembling both ancient cuneiform and QR code, inscribe the border segments between Slovenia and Italy as described in the Treaty of Osimo in 1975. Engraved in tablets made of local clay, evoking the rich history of brick-making in the area, the markings are based on the “dead characters” of the Metelko and Dajnko alphabets, which remained unrealised attempts at linguistic optimisation, occasionally still resurfacing as archival ghosts.
Yet, between the permanence of ceramics and the volatility of digital memory, the ceramic tablet is not only an unusual digital storage medium. Uneven surfaces, irregularities, scratches and cracks in the non-compliant ceramic medium introduce noise into the deciphering process, resulting in the continuous glitching and failure of the machine’s decoding attempts. Each time, this unruly analogue-digital entanglement retrieves a border in constant flux, forming and dissolving, producing gaps, fuzzy areas and virtual passageways, as territorial delineation collapses under the material resistance.
Alberto Harres is a Brazilian artist and technologist based in Bremen, Germany, working at the various intersections of art and technology, with language as a central focus. Recent projects explore archives as an artistic practice, considering their poetic and political dimensions.
With a background in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master’s in Digital Media from the University of the Arts Bremen, his works have been shown at Ars Electronica (Linz), the British Academy Summer Showcase (London) and the Museum of Modern Art (Salvador), among others. For his work, he has received the CyberArts Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica (2019), the Hochschulpreis Digitale Medien 1st Prize (2022), and the Media Futures grant (2022).
https://www.albertoharres.com/
Free entry.
17. 5.–27. 6. 2025
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Author: Alberto Harres
Curatorial support and text: Maja Burja
The artwork was developed for the 25th edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Art
Practices Pixxelpoint (2024) with the support of Hochschüle für Künste Bremen, Aksioma –
Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana and Carinarnica (DHG).
Exhibition production: Kino Šiška and Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
The exhibition is part of the Adela – International Festival of Generative Arts. The artwork was selected through a public open call in the frame of the Parameter – Generative Arts Fair (2025).
Expert committee: Davide Bevilacqua, Maja Burja, Luka Frelih, Katja Pahor, Veerle Pennock
Technical support: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Projekt Atol Institute, Swamp_Matter (Eva Garibaldi, Ana Laura Richter)
Thanks: Carinarnica (DHG), University of the Arts Bremen, Goriške Opekarne d.o.o.
