The musician Arnold Dreyblatt used an encyclopedia he found in a used book
shop in Istanbul, "Who is Who in Eastern Europe 1933" as a "quarry" for
hypertext operas, performances, installations and book projects[18]:
This archive of collective memory - the collected biographies of artists,
scientists, politicians of eastern European (mostly Jewish) origin, spotlighted
at a historical moment (Vienna 1933), shortly before their mass extermination
under Fascism: thus excerpts from different biographies may be found under key
words such as "music", "opera", "art", "forgotten provinces", "underground
work", "individual philosophies", etc. Reading and writing takes place, in this
continuously updated space of recollection, as a journey ("navigating") from
one biography to another. Here antiquity's teaching on the locations of memory
is given a sensual and narrative aesthetic form: the stories of collective
memories may no longer be told in a linear way. It is the ensembles and
plateaus of captured moments that count, or recount. In-between spaces,
markings, intersections where something happens, where branches occur.
To whom do the traces and remainders of social movements belong? How may
revolts, revolutions and sub-cultural inroads be recorded, documented and
transmitted?
[18]Arnold Dreyblatt: Who's Who in Central and
East Europe 1933. Eine Reise in den Text, Berlin 1995:
Memory Arena