On This Day

Beijing Silvermine is an archive of 850,000 photographic negatives salvaged over the last ten years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing (1).

With over 215,000 entries On This Day is the world’s largest, most accurate and popular site for on this day in history (2).
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(1) Beijing Silvermine (2021). https://www.beijingsilvermine.com/ [2021-02-17]
(2) On This Day (2021). https://www.onthisday.com/about.php [2021-02-17]

“Every image suggests a story. But Sauvin never wanted to be the sole author of the archive, and constantly seeks new perspectives on it in collaboration with others. Swedish artists Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt are logical collaborators, given their publications have also sought to excavate complex layers of history and explore the gaps between what is visible and knowable. (...) By using the date stamped photographs to drive their investigation, one readymade archive driving the other, they force together two incommensurable sources of incomplete information about the world.













'Two inadequate descriptive systems’, as Martha Rosler might say, the gap between them complicating the self-evidentiary claims of each other, revealing their obvious omission and biases.”
Excerpt from essay by Daniel Palmer.

PDF has complete info

On This Day
A project by Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt and Thomas Sauvin
Photographs: Beijing Silvermine
Selected by Thomas Sauvin [2021]
Text: On This Day
http://www.onthisday.com/ [2021-02-11— 2021-02-17]
Essays by Daniel Palmer and Johannes Wahlström
Design by Axel von Friesen and Michael Evidon
100 pages with 100 color plates
Full color offset
Bound with brass fasteners
Soft cover with silk screen printing
First edition: 500