The Big Archive is the title of the workshop that the artistic duo Perino & Vele (Emiliano Perino and Luca Vele) conceived for the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids fifth edition. Participants were about eighty children, who were Elica’s employees’ children and students form the bilingual kindergarten Iris Garden in Fabriano (the latter have exceptionally invited to participate).

This educational day through contemporary art focused on the memory, the way it works, the way in which it is structured to build our identity.  The project had a preliminary collaboration step between parents and children, who were invited to collect any kind of paper material that could be useful to compose an archive: from newspapers to magazines, from medical prescriptions to ice-cream paper, from train tickets to shop tickets, to comics and old exercise books. That paper has been cut into pieces and kids composed colorful papier maché, which has been used to decorate wooden boxes – those used to store fruit and vegetables, as well as archeological evidence. Once piled, those boxes revealed a playful image, a stylized representation of the animals that the artist had previously realized, in perfect harmony with the childhood environment.

The idea was melting different materials that tell both our daily life, which is made of habits, and large scale events that often intertwine with daily events, in a wide choral historical tale. The day ended with the installation and opening of the great artwork The Big Archive that was presented to adults, institutions, parents and contemporary art fans.