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self portait / explicating and regulating / certificate
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# 18.08

Certificate

The ‘certificate of authentic archiving’, together with the two statements I give to anyone who requires a statement of the work’s authenticity, has become the tool to communicate my poetics and a means of involving the person owning the work in my system, thus adhering to a shared way of perceiving things.

The committee and I have decided to release the ‘certificate of authentic archiving’ rather than the ‘certificate of authenticity’ because for me it is more important to place the archive, rather than the work, at the centre of things.
 
Those requesting the certificate (which is not obligatory but is given only to those who decide to interface with my system-archive) are also given two statements. One is ‘The Owner as Witness’ which talks of the relationship I have with the work and the relationship the new owner could establish with it in total freedom; the other is ‘The Owner as Archiver’, which asks the owner to take responsibility for the archive, in the hope of a symbolic participation both in the story and in the interpretation of the work, adhering to the expression of this system.
 
What follows is the text included in the certificate of archiving, which helps to explain what my relationship with the work-archive is and how I aim to make others participate in this project:
 
This ‘Certificate of Authentic Archiving’ attests the maternity of the work. To follow and participate in its life, you can insert the archive number in the appropriate research field in ‘An archive of time’ www.mariamorganti.it.
The work is both independent and complete as it is, as well as being part of the artist’s archive-work. Owning this work means being in possession of merely a fragment of a complex organism. The archive is the only place where the body is visible and documented; the place where everything is reunited.

(Written in 2024)
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