On 19/09/23 at about 12 (CEST) a cardboard box was found at the front door of our studio. The only information on the box (handwriting all caps) was a small code (A.D. 2020) and the cryptic warning "KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS". As we opened the box a smell of old attic spread like if the content was sealed in there since forever. Inside the box we found 50 dusty folders, each including an MC tape and a piece of paper, handwritten, now archived as [IT#063]. Transcription follows:

“As it ends it begins:
you open the door
and you see your back
so you finally know
that there is no door”

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"The Red Tape" is C50, limited edition of 50, includes QR code for free digital download of "A.D. 2020" full discography, 12 music albums gathered from the first mysterious cardboard box we found in 2019
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Dust Archive was born to catalog a mysterious finding: a series of boxes full of magnetic tape spools, VHSes, poetry and disparate objects, appearing out of nowhere, from a time and place we are not able to trace down. A puzzling discovery, stuffed with nuances and discrepancies. This work is an attempt to shed light on this mystery.



A TIMELINE OF MAJOR EVENTS

17.08.2017 - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2021” is found by Josh Semans in the north-west of England

29.04.18 - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2021” is found by Stephen Spera in New York, USA

02.01.2019 - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2021” is found by Robert Simons in London, UK

23.09.19* - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2020” is found at the front door of our studio in Pordenone, Italy

31.12.2019 - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2021” is found at the front door of our studio in Pordenone, Italy

28.01.2020 - We start releasing the content of box “A.D. 2020”

January 2021 - Josh Semans, Stephen Spera and Robert Simons report to us their discoveries and the obvious correlation with “A.D. 2020”

29.04. 2021 - We start releasing the content of boxes “A.D. 2021”

31.12.2021 - We find a building someone rented in our name containing 4 cardboard boxes labeled “A.D. 2022”

13.09.22 - We start releasing the content of boxes “A.D. 2022”

19.09.23* - Cardboard box labeled “A.D. 2020” is found at the front door of our studio in Pordenone, Italy

*This two dates, related to the discovery at our studio, interestingly looks somehow palindrome



Decryptions

General description of box labeled as “A.D. 2020”

Cardboard box displaying on top the handwritten code “A.D. 2020” and the warning KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS.
Inside the box there were 12 folders, each one including a variable number of magnetic tape spools and disparate items (paper material, prints, photographs, VHS, etc.).
Full description of the items will follow.

General description of (4) boxes labeled as “A.D. 2021”

Cardboard boxes displaying on top handwritten code “A.D. 2021” and the warning KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS.
Inside any box there were a variable number of tape spools, an abstract print, a VHS tape, a piece of poetry and an extra object, peculiar to every box.
In these 4 boxes we clearly notice a correlation between the items included in the box, especially the poetry and the VHS seems to be bidirectional metaphors, even though we started thinking every single piece is a sort of circle of allegories.
Full description of the items will follow.

General description of (4) boxes labeled as “A.D. 2022”

Cardboard boxes displaying on top handwritten code “A.D. 2022” and the warning KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS.
Inside any box the usual audio and video material + a cyanotype portrait:
Tracking down the personal details present in the back of the cyanotypes, we got in touch with the unknown, getting to know there is an actual correspondence between names, locations and subjects of the portrait, even though the dates make no sense. The persons were totally unaware of the existence of these boxes and its content, denying that the portrait was ever taken, and although we are informed the persons are all musicians, they can not confirm they ever performed the music recorded in the spools, although recognizing it as “extremely familiar”, “absurdly typical”, “as own”.
Full description of the items will follow.

General description of box labeled as “A.D. 2020”

Cardboard boxes displaying on top handwritten code “A.D. 2020” and the warning KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETIC FIELDS.
Weirdly this box, exteriorly, is an exact copy of the one we received in 2019.
Inside the box we found 50 dusty folders, each including an MC tape and a piece of paper, handwritten, now archived as [IT#063]. Transcription follows:

“As it ends it begins:
you open the door
and you see your back
so you finally know
that there is no door”

This nonsense message somehow suggests that a chapter has ended.




Classification

Directory / hierarchical tree structure: hierarchy puts at first level of abstraction the code displayed in the box (i.e. “A.D. 2020”), the second level is the content of each folder for the first year and each box for the second year in a progressive numeration, as they are obviously sort of integrated packages.

We format protocol codes for the main integrated packages like such:
D.A. #001 - A.D. 2020
D.A. #002 - A.D. 2020
...
D​.​A. #013 - A​.​D. 2021
and so on.

This means in the physical world of our facility items and spools are re-stored inside the main integrated package (original box) for how we received them and not grouped per genere afterward.

Spools are archived as “SP” followed by a progressive numeration, every single spool being digitized is available for listening at dustarchive.bandcamp.com and other streaming platforms

“Song titles”, as you can read in most of the streaming platforms, derive directly from the labels glued to each spool container, in some case (i.e. D​.​A. #015 - A​.​D. 2021) there’s no label.

All other items are archived as “IT” followed by a progressive numeration.
We started proceeding in chronological order, folder after folder, initially not understanding the seriality of certain clusters of objects such as the VHSes and the abstract prints.




Items

[IT#001] [IT#004] [IT#006] [IT#008]
[IT#010] [IT#012] [IT#014] [IT#017]
[IT#019] [IT#021] [IT#024] [IT#027] (A.D. 2020)
[IT#030] [IT#034] [IT#038] [IT#042] (A.D. 2021)
[IT#047] [IT#051] [IT#055] [IT#059] (A.D. 2022)
Abstract prints
Prints were chosen to be the covers on Bandcamp and other streaming platforms, superimposing subsequently the protocol code of the main integrated package.

[IT#002] (A.D. 2020)
[IT#031] [IT#035] [IT#039] [IT#043] (A.D. 2021)
[IT#048] [IT#052] [IT#056] [IT#060] (A.D. 2022)
VHSes - Excerpts at www.instagram.com/dustarchive/

[IT#003] [IT#005] [IT#007] [IT#009]
[IT#011] [IT#013] [IT#015] [IT#016]
[IT#018] [IT#020] [IT#023] [IT#025]
[IT#026] [IT#028] (A.D. 2020)
[IT#032] [IT#033] [IT#036] [IT#037]
[IT#040] [IT#041] [IT#045] [IT#046] (A.D. 2021)
[IT#049] [IT#053] [IT#057] [IT#061]
[IT#050] [IT#054] [IT#058] [IT#062] (A.D. 2022)
[IT#063] (A.D. 2020)
Notes and paper material
Full transcriptions are available on Bandcamp at dustarchive.bandcamp.com

[IT#029] Fractal mirror (A.D. 2020)
[IT#044] Key (A.D. 2021)

[IT#064] > [IT#114] Tape cassettes (A.D. 2020)