An Imperfect Archive

In « An Imperfect Archive », Montreal’s endangered or forgotten architectural heritage is portrayed by juxtaposing photography and photogrammetry, a 3D modeling technique used here as an extension of the photographic medium. Showing historical buildings, or what remains,  these “archives-artworks” document the selected sites while simultaneously evoking their disappearance or decay through the grainy appearance of images generated with photogrammetry. The title of the series refers to this contrast: the 3D scans of these buildings are very detailed but still, the aesthetic of their digital materiality retains something ghostly. After the lengthy process of generating the models, the work of cutting, framing, and highlighting patterns and the textures of these point clouds were many ways to have a fresh look at them – also possibly creating an usable archive for the future.

As with previous projects, archival research and fieldwork have informed the selection of the documented sites. To complete the project, the city’s records have been researched, 1960’s maps and historical photos have been digitized to bring meaningful documents and artifacts in the exhibition. Mirroring collective oblivion, these images are also not all too explicit about the choices of why each site is shown. Indeed because some of them have changed : an archeological site was bulldozed, the house of the first French Canadian prime minister is now an emptied pastiche, an art deco cinema razed, etc. It is this context of urgency that was carried out the project – an era that sees the destruction of the built heritage at an alarming rate.

This new documentation also reveals a network adjacent to these buildings, in the many spaces found between buildings: wastelands, vacant lots, alleyways,  elements of infrastructures. In this ”ecosystem”, the heritage building can be seen as a beacon, remaining in defense against the destruction of its surroundings: open and unofficial public spaces and the possibilities they represent, all of which tend to disappear when the urban fabric is developed to the point of saturation.