The Transylvania Archive
How do truth and myth relate to archives? From 28 January until 25 June 2017 Het Nieuwe Instituut presents the project _The Transylvania Archive _by artist duo Marta Volkova and Slava Shevelenko. The project ingeniously weaves together themes such as the relevance of the archive, how artists relate to power, and fear of strangers.
The central theme in the work of artist duo Marta Volkova and Slava Shevelenko is the space between reality and collective mythology. The background to The Transylvania Archive is a KGB archive that turned up in Romania a few years ago, and which - according to Volkova and Shevelenko - reveals that the Russian secret service spent years investigating the yeti (the Abominable Snowman) in order to wipe him out. The Transylvania Archive is an installation made up of video material, drawings, paintings and three-dimensional objects. The questions raised by Volkova and Shevelenko concerning the archive as a source of myth-making are of interest to Het Nieuwe Instituut, which is charged with the important task of managing the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Design.