feature of theAufschreibesystemeof, as analyzed by Friedrich Kittler in
Grammophon, Film, Typewriter.It is an archive of gaps, cracks and contradic-
tions, where knowledge is produced by putting fragments together. In a very
valuable discussion of Kahn’s project from the perspective of the history of ar-
chive theory, Paula Amad asserts that the Kahn archive used film and photogra-
phy in a synthesizing approach, and she refers to Ricciotto Canudo’s view of
cinema as a synthesis of the other arts (“the Sixth Art”()) as a theoretical
program for the collection.However, the role of film in Kahn’s project is a
different one. Various media were used because they have different qualities,
and consequently also different shortcomings. Film is not the synthesis of the
other arts in this collection of media, since the moving image would have suf-
ficed by itself.
It would be logical if film and photography were used for different purposes
in the archive, for different kinds of events. However, this doesn’t seem to be the
case. At least, what one would expect a division by media–for instance, that
photography would be for portraits, individuals, landscapes and things with
less movement, while film would be used for fast or steadily moving objects–
but this expectation was soon proven to be wrong. The Archives of the Planet
often used film to make portraits of people and it used autochromes to show
parades and moving objects, with the result being blurred images due to slow
exposure speeds in the color process. It is striking how often the two media
show the same things from a similar viewpoint. A city scene or a person in a
given setting are often“recorded”twice; once in color and once in movement.
The fact that the same events are photographed twice results in a division be-
tween film and photography, demonstrating that Kahn, Jean Brunhes and their
cameramen didn’t suffer from the illusion that cinema was the complete or“to-
tal medium”.
Crowds
Kahn wanted to make an“inventory of the surface of the globe inhabited and
developed by man...”This surface of the globe had only become visible with
the emergence of photography, with a new kind of description in the literature
of Flaubert and Balzac, and only came fully into view with the moving image.
The movement of the crowd into light is accompanied by cinema, since it cap-
tures”the rhythm of life”, as Brunhes claimed. The introduction of the moving
image is closely linked to the entrance of the anonymous population into the
visible, as it became possible to include visual events in the archive. Of course,
Michel Foucault’s account of the penal and medical discourses describes this
“The Archives of the Planet”and Montage 211