DANIEL SPOERRI — Profession Obsession: The Daniel Spoerri Archives, Swiss National Library, 1998

Daniel Spoerri, Profession Obsession: The Daniel Spoerri Archives. Swiss National Library, Bern, 1998. English-language supplement to the 1997 Profession Obsession: Archiv / Archives Daniel Spoerri catalogue (Swiss National Library / Lars Müller). Staple-bound softcover; 30 pages, 16 × 22 cm; black-and-white offset printing.

A small English-language publication devoted not simply to Daniel Spoerri’s work, but to the accumulation surrounding it. Following Spoerri’s 1996 donation of his entire archive to the Swiss National Library’s Prints and Drawings Department, the main catalogue was published in 1997; this English supplement followed in 1998.

The archive is unusually expansive: works and editions sit alongside correspondence, exhibition material, photographs, books, personal documents and collected objects. The publication itself describes boxes containing everything from prints and original documents to personal notes and dried butterflies. The Swiss National Library identifies the archive as an important record not only of Spoerri, but of Eat Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and the wider international network around him.

There is a particularly good reversal here. Spoerri spent his career fixing the accidental remains of everyday life into new arrangements; eventually the remains of that career were themselves gathered, classified and fixed inside an institution. The archive begins to resemble another Spoerri work. Notes, correspondence, photographs, books and incidental objects acquire significance through retention and placement. What had accumulated around the work becomes part of the work’s history.

The artist collects the world. The institution collects the artist. The residue becomes the archive. The modest booklet completes the sequence: an archive reduced once again into a portable object and returned to circulation.

Condition: Good. Light handling and surface wear to white wrappers, with scattered small marks and spotting, minor edge and corner wear and light age toning. Internally clean from inspection.

Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.