Jeremy August Haik’s publication Arkheion opens with a quote from Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever: “it is in this domiciliation / this house arrest / that archives take place.” In the same section of Archive Fever we find a discussion of “arkheion,” the Greek root word from which we get “archive.” The arkheion, according to Derrida, was the house of a ruler in which important documents were kept. It’s impossible, then, to separate the idea of the archive from the power structure in which the archive exists.
Haik’s Arkheion is a study in texture—it’s images, at points, appear to be woven fabrics, but reveal themselves as distorted digital images, like corrupted files or interrupted broadcasts. When taken in the context of the archive and “domiciliation,” these images serve to confuse the neat, instrumentalized structure of the archive.