BamiyanBuddhasBretonBlast. World Heritage under Attack

On March 10 2000 the Taliban government of Afghanistan, together with Mujahedin troops, against massive protests from all over the world, destroyed two statues of The Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley, near Kabul. These monumental statues, standing 110 and 170 feet high (38 and 53 m respectively), were carved directly into the living rock about 1800 years ago. Groups of specialists, who are mainly drawn from western industrialised nations, have now joined forces in order to attempt a reconstruction of the statues.

Between April 1st and 18 2003 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris Andre Breton’s the entire collections, including his own manuscripts, correspondence and other papers, were put on sale. The collections had, until only recently, remained in Breton’s apartment at 42, rue Fontaine, the address, which was to give the sale its title. The auction comprised a total of 6249 lots in all. This brings to mind the proverb »the whole is greater than the sum of its parts«. In these circumstances one feels obliged to add »much much greater«.

An auction can be considered as an explosion in slow motion. This auction has torn apart the singular achievement of Andre Breton, and in fact destroyed the work of a lifetime. Left in myriad pieces, separated from each other and scattered all over the world. Destroyed: All the results form Breton’s idiosyncratic habits of archiving, collecting and installing. Devastated: a unique system of dynamic cross–referenciality. Deleted: Andre Breton's non-Euclidean-phase-space, with its own multi-dimensional and multifaceted geometry.
To date there seem no effort concerning a reconstruction.

However typosophes sans frontieres have begun to work on a constellation imaginaire,of the collections and auctioned material. Like any star map this has to be read as a snap-shot, a fleeting glimpse of our universe.

The recently completed detail of the BBBB project requires approximately 57 hours in which to run through all the 25,886 image files documenting the 6249 lots the paris auction.

After having be presented within the framework of Karlsruhe Museum's Night in August 2003 the project will be on display for six weeks at the ZKM | Mediamuseum.