A History of White People, 1934-2020 Excerpted from the Digest Archive, 1934-2020

Candice Breitz
A History of White People, 1934-2020 Excerpted from the Digest Archive, 1934-2020, 1934-2020
5-channel video installation: Wooden shelf, 5 videotapes in polypropylene sleeves, paper and acrylic paint
Shelf : 24.4 x 100 x 7.5 cm

Photo: Saverio Cantoni  Digest is a multi-channel video installation consisting of 1,001 videotapes that are permanently sealed in polypropylene video sleeves. The analogue contents carried on each buried videotape remain unrevealed. The series of painted tapes is arranged on shallow wooden racks that evoke the display aesthetics of video rental stores, commemorating a mode of image consumption that has since slipped into obsolescence. Each painted tape in the Digest Archive features a single verb drawn from the title of a film that was in circulation during the era of home video. Collectively, the verbs describe an embodied subjectivity that has come under increasing threat in the digital era. First debuted on the Sharjah Biennial 14 (in early 2019), the Digest Archive was completed in late 2020 and shown in full scale for the first time at the Akademie Der Künste in Berlin during 2021. Parallel to the production of the Digest Archive, a limited number of smaller unique works was conceived. Each of the smaller works draws on verbs catalogued in the archive, to propose an open-ended narrative via the selection and juxtaposition of particular verbs: In this instance, the five chosen verbs evoke the violence that has been visited upon those who have been subject to colonialism, invasion, occupation, political domination and various forms of expropriation across history: To capture, to divide, to conquer, to control, to possess... For Breitz, the verbs are collectively descriptive of “the things that white people have done and continue to do.”