If the file is a form of retention of certain documents because they are considered to be historically valuable[1], what is then the historical value of clippings from books and magazines? The process of clipping is the technique of interpretation; it always refers to the person who is doing it, or possibly to a purpose of clipping. If we do not know a reason of creation and we face the archive itself only with vague knowledge about the origin and its context, when it is not obvious even from the very object of single items of such archive, what it is related to and we have no other reference or evidence about how and why the archive was structured, there is no other choice but to create our own sorting and interpretation method, which takes into account the context and the knowledge of creator‘s archive and tries to reconstruct the object. In this case, we must reckon with the fact that we add only another layer of reading and we must accept that it is a “reconstruction” with the remark. Processing of a compendium of certain archival items takes many forms. From using the known and approved classification methods based on juxtaposition, to developing new ones based on specific contents or intellectual trajectories.

Model situation combining several approaches across hierarchies may be a library sorting, which was expanded in detail by Georges Perec in one of his famous texts [2]. He suggested a way to arrange books:

– in alphabetical order
– by continents or countries
– by colour
– by date of purchase
– by date of issue
– by format
– by genre
– by literary era
– by language
– by taste to read
– by binding
– by series

It is obvious that it is a formal classification and does not allow us to gain greater insight to the content of books and their mutual ties, to what makes a good library. Such classification is always temporary, it is necessary to try it again or to wait for the great moment and categorize all “definitely”. This is certainly a beautiful dreamlike fantasy. But let’s return to the clipping. Analogically, they can be organized in the similar way. We can see here greater potential in the visual base of such material. It is necessary to put the books in the shelves and it is possible to see only the backs, rather than the whole covers. Pictures, in contrast, or short texts located on small areas can be easily placed side by side, we can create new compositions. This will provide a new, big picture made up of smaller fragments. The visible relationships are apparent. Lines, distances, and the newly formed groups create cartographic meanings and we no longer depend on reading of single fragments, but almost plastic landscape of mental relations arises in front of us.

This brings us from the purely archival area into the areas of diagrams, namely the way of viewing relationships between different forces, creating maps, posting and viewing of density, intensity and line, which at each moment go through all points or they are in each relationship from one point to other, as Deleuze summarized.[3] Drawing of diagrams, maps and graphs is a constructive tool for the development of new knowledge, creating certain power that can incite a change of order (political, epistemological, social and other representational systems). In addition, it is a general principle of control, and it is possible to consider such practice particularly as a part of the world of artistic perception. This kind of mapping is very common as an artistic creative thinking practice: the use of fragments of existing maps and re-arranging them in the new units that create a new meaning, changes in orientation, abstraction and recoding of known forms, manipulating the projections and scales, overlapping, sealing and many more.[4]

Contemporary Mexican artist Erick Beltrán introduced in his work called Ergo Sum[5] an archive of clippings, notes, writings, maps and graphs to investigate how such material changes gradually over time – the entire set of the analyzed material is changing and acquiring variety of unexpected forms. The archive is presented in a newspaper format and contains several dozen pages. (Spanish original mentions several hundred pages.) All the items of the archive are very precisely visually structured and form a huge map that appears only when we analyze the entire newspaper and spread it according to a certain key on the ground or wall. The result is a diagram revealing a discourse nature of itself and the processes of its creation.

The quality and the ability of pictures to combine meanings and cultural layers were figured out by art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg a hundred years ago. In Warburg’s point of view a picture creates a total anthropological phenomenon, particularly characteristic crystallization and condensation of what “culture” means in a particular moment of its history.[6] Simply, it is not possible to separate a picture from the global acting of members of a society, nor even from the knowledge of a specific era.[7]

Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi designed a building of the art museum in Sao Paulo (Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo) in 1968, and also managed the design of the main exposition. Her idea was that paintings and sculptures placed in kind of glass plates set in a piece of concrete become part of a large diagram. A huge hall with eight meters ceiling allows overlooking the whole from one spot and see the whole heterogeneous collection. This model of exposure of art objects goes against the linearity of reading. It offers the possibility to perceive also other relationships than those given in advance by curator scenario. It is not completely deleted, the spectator can follow it if wanted, but there is also the opportunity to choose another course of excursion and create own “new” form of the collection.[8]

Each shape and form working with multiplicity offers certain models of thinking. Diagrams, maps and graphs are able to convey unexpected contexts which do not have to necessarily explain the contents of examined, it is often appropriate to create a distance and add another layers and hierarchy. The rate of abstraction of quantitative units can be inspiring and unexpected when using generally known methods. Literary historian Franco Moretti in his book about abstract models for literary history does not deal with individual books and their contents, but uses tools from other scientific disciplines (evolutionary trees, cartographic maps and quantitative graphs) for the reorganization.[9]

Assemblage is another metaphor that offers a thoughtful way to deal with heterogeneous material. The assemblage theory was developed by a philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the eighties. The theory was meant as a description of a wide range of units constructed from heterogeneous parts. Entities set out the route from atoms through molecules to biological organisms, biological species and ecosystems. This creates the assemblages which, as the entities, produce historical processes.[10] It is clear that there are different ways of creating hierarchies that put points, sets and larger units together. Assemblages can be part of other assemblages. They become a coherent system that creates a complex non-linear causality that does not allow grasping the reality explicitly.

This text is devised, written and contains images as a case study of dealing with entities of knowledge and is rather a clumsy example attempting to describe and demonstrate the structure of thinking based on the metaphor of clipping. Methods of removing or extracting are very old, new creating of new semantic units is inherent to the human mind and there is a long tradition of their improvement.[11] The sketched images and this text form a kind of diagram, which links the analytical knowledge and artistic practice and essentially does not say much new. The text only sets the trajectory of relations, constructs a new assemblage, that create an artistic identity of its author, on the other hand, create an additional mental map, which partly overlaps several previous maps and makes layers like a cultural sediment among the other fine layers of geological massif known as a human culture, placed in a specific place and era.