Summary

What has happened to Konrad Theodor Preuss's collection? Perhaps his collection is nothing more than an accumulation of dead and distant objects, a collection of traditions and popular rumours. No wonder it is called a crime scene. Any collection of materials alters the meaning of things, from relics to scraps and vice versa.Their accumulation carries with it a certain violence that consists of turning objects into archaeological objects. Thus creating sedimentary layers, linear successions, detachments, and a rupture between the versions of the past and those of the present. Archival film, found and recreated, filled with plastic gestures and encounters. Collecting Materials is a palimpsest of times and documents, a freehand ethnography, an inventory of natural wonders.