An exhibition curated by the Kunsthalle Bern team: Nino Baumgartner, Florian Nya Buerki, Lea Fuhrer, Iris Frauchiger, Annina Herzer, Julia Jost, Julia Künzi, Ursina Leutenegger, Kabelo Malatsie, Teo Petruzzi, Christoph Studer.

Boxes in shades of green, chronologically lined up, sorted by exhibition, a new tone for each director. On the table in front of it; order, system, rules, white gloves. Everything that passes that table is recorded and incorporated into this moss-green order. The archive of the Kunsthalle Bern stores many things: correspondence, photographs, videos, documents related to the institution and the exhibitions, publications, press articles, contracts, installation plans, notes. For a long time, the archive was not to be found in this order, it was not to be found at all, as it was not accessible or processed. It consisted of boxes in corners of offices, piles of sheets, folders, dusty shelves with forgotten notes, but above all stories and rumors from Bern told all over the world.
Some things have been documented so far and, above all, some things have not. While researching, it is often precisely the gaps that stand out. What has not been written down becomes apparent and attention shifts to the unknown and the snippets that never made it to the filing cabinet. Likewise, it becomes palpable, that which was perceived as incidental and was never even written down. What is between found traces can only be guessed at. And on the organized table, the uncategorizable is lined out—where to put these shoes, these two stamps—that doesn’t fit the scheme.

In the exhibition Archival Ramblings, the Kunsthalle Bern team draws out these loopholes, these ricochets and these gaps themselves. Instead of framing found puzzles, there are moments of silence without quickly filling them up with stories. Thus, this exhibition starts from open questions, from discontinuities and question marks that can also be read as starting points.
The selection started from personal interests and daily occupation as administrators, press officers, mediators, technicians, assistants, people working in, with, and around the Kunsthalle. Thus, the way in which the exhibition came about is marked as much by subjective decisions as the archiving activity itself and now shows a collection of fragments. The randomness of the compilations of these different snippets in turn becomes something representative that refers beyond itself to much else. The archive is thus expanded to include thoughts that we, as caretakers and contributors, have about the archive’s work. The selection highlights silences and erasures within exhibition-making and also adds to the archive the voices of the team as contributors in its dissemination. The diverse interests found in the exhibition should be taken as an invitation to the public to engage more closely with the archive of Kunsthalle Bern by sharing their own stories.