An Archive Webster’s defines an “archive” as no more than “a repository or collection.” But living in an age when we have accumulated more information than any single person could comprehend, we suspect that archives can be (should be?) more than that. From Alexandria to archive.org, humans have tried to collect. And lost. What’s on scrolls in a jar not to be found, or lost in fire and ice, or on a cassette or floppy disk in an attic with no machine to read it? Artists like Kabakov, Warhol, and Phillips and writers like Borges, Sebald, and O’Brien have created, explored, and referenced various archives. Since there can be no single archive of all information, how do we parse what we have, knowing that it will always be incomplete? What are the systems that writers and artists have devised in their own work? We asked artists and writers to show us or tell us how they use “an archive” in their work. We received a wide variety of work from around the world devising, employing, and interpreting an “archive.” Some use data to create new and amazing visualizations of the data. Others have delved into the more personal archival information that we all amass over a lifetime: photographs, writing, notes, books, mantras, ideas, and memories that we pass down to our children or to others. All of those things that tell a story about us. Some have looked into their own memories as a kind of mental archive. All of these interpretations yielded a wide variety of exciting submissions. We wish to express our thanks to all who let us consider their work, and especially to those whose work we have included in these pages. We hope you enjoy this issue of Superpresent. -The Editors