Files

"In Ilya Kabakov's installation 'Sixteen Ropes' (1984) numerous pieces of garbage dangle at regular intervals, roughly at eye level, from sixteen parallel ropes [...] Although it may not be immediately apparent, 'Sixteen Ropes' presents an archive. In fact, such 'stringing up' of objects was one of the most ancient forms of filing, and the English word 'file' which is derived from the French 'fil' (string), originally meant 'to line something up on a piece of string.'"

Spieker, Sven (2008), The Big Archive: art from bureaucracy, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, p.ix