This research unfolds the enactment of places and narrations of death in the printed media during the period of 1985 – 1997, through crime incidents we encountered in a particular newspapers archive (1985_2003), which was collected by a fortuitous individual, Mr. K. The characterization of ‘‘fortuitous’’ relies on the fact that this is not a collection of an authority, rather than a collection based on personal criteria around the subject: urban guerrilla and political crime.
We hereby attempt the disassemblage, as well as the reuniting of it, which is based on printed publications (documents). The research is part of a chain processed transcripts, of events related to death that were registered in the newspapers as well as of an afresh archiving. It reintroduces chronicle prints and it establishes a new kind of narration. By this way, new public and private space readings are born, through the study of both political and private crime accordingly.
The elements that construct this particular archive are repetition, redefinition and reconstruction of the events, all of which conclude in the creation of the official version of history and collective memory. This paper processes the limit between ‘‘objective’’ history and ‘‘subjective’’ collective memory of specific cases. Therefore, we connect the political story of the country with its individuals (personal stories). As a result, by mixing up history and collective memory, we reach the point of having another version of urban history, which, until now was set forth by the buildings as opposed to our case, in which biographies prevail.
The current emprise is based on the managing of specific archive documentation and the laying out of a classificatory system: description, narration and processing. In order to have all of the above in existence, we create a new sub-archive which covers the time period of 1985-1997. The political criteria, it being the most basic axe of collection and classification for Mr. K, remains as it is. Parallel to that, we introduce the individual and personal, which we encounter in specific cases on the same newspapers, since we wish the parity of treatment for both these views. The processing of the material includes the refitting of the archive from being a time selected event into a space selected one, through the creation of a collage for the given newspapers and the decomposition of the story – news. This is done in four phases, according to our time lasting agreed theoretical determinations.
A basic feature of this archive is the multiplicity of its residence places. Its existence and conservation is always done through a specific space, a facility. In the current research we come along with a dual dimension of space, both in its real and its printed form. On one hand, we encounter the actual location where the events take place (street, town, region, building) and on the other hand the space of the archive itself, which in our case coincides in the printed sets of newspapers. These create the ‘‘architectural construction’’ of the archive residency, security, protection, safeguard and, at the same time, the dissimulation of the recorded memory which creates civil history.
Our attempt takes into consideration the fact that archive today is most uncertain and unclear. In times of over – information, where everything is being recorded, classified and stored in such a way that immediate access to it is ensured, the concept of archive reports, more present than ever, since we end up managing huge information tanks.