theory is to think about the various ways that these connections are constructed,
and how the relations between film and bits are coded.
In the age of the digitization of analog materials, there is a demand that ar-
chives make their holdings“accessible”online, or at least on the computers at
the archive itself. The access imperative is a prerequisite for public funding, and
implies an economy of the“content”. The question how the“content”of an
archive, a museum or a collection can be made“accessible”varies according to
the media of their holdings. Nobody supposes that the digital representations of
the ancient objects of a historical museum is access to the actual“content”of the
museum, but this confusion is quite often the case involving film and photo-
graphic archives. This relationship between the analog and the digital makes
the Archives of the Planet a very important case in the discussion of montage in
an age of online access. This entails the reconsideration of many key concepts of
film theory, from the notion of“the work”to the idea of montage itself. My
argument has, perhaps paradoxically, exalted the montage dimension of the Ar-
chives of the Planet because its films are not edited together. This leaves space
for temporary intersections and provisional montage, for future juxtapositions
and virtual connections. According to the general idea of what was once called
“new media”, the interactivity and navigation supplied by computer interfaces
in an age of online access seem to promise exactly these properties of the ar-
chive. In a database structure, momentary connections between images and
“soft montage”seem to be the governing principles. There are, however, at least
two reasons why this is not the case.
On a general level, any database is designed, programmed and indexed ac-
cording to certain structures. The algorithms of the database may hide them-
selves, but they are the regulating force of the use of the material. The montage
made by the user of the database may often be the most conventional known, as
it tends to retrace the habitual paths of navigation of our culture. In the FAKIR
database, which became accessible in the spring ofonline at <www.albert-
kahn.fr>, the unedited shots of the films are suddenly linked in various but spe-
cific ways. If they are not edited together, they are linked by new cues; geogra-
phical, topical, thematic and material. The database architecture is designed for
navigation according to a world map, where one narrows in by choosing con-
tinents, countries and sometimes cities. The links of the database already pro-
grams the paths of navigation and there is nothing that implies that the unex-
pected, sudden connection is facilitated by the new interface. The pathways of
navigation in the database are, at present at least, as established and disciplin-
ing as those in the adjoining gardens from different parts of the world outside
the Albert Kahn museum in Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris.
The only access to the Archives of the Planet for the ordinary user is in the
edited mode. The films in the FAKIR database are edited together to represent a
220 Trond Lundemo