Digitising Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas

Abstract

Archives are being digitised on an enormous scale worldwide, and the connections between Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas and the contemporary digital accumulation of data have not been lost on contemporary scholars. By problematising what I suggest is a simplified relation between repetition and replication in the transmission of Warburg’s body of work into a digital era, I believe that an engagement with contemporary digital discourse provides the possibility of seeing his work in a new light while allowing for insights into how Warburg might be instrumental in rendering visible possible discrepancies between individual entities and larger collective patterns, whether within his Mnemosyne Atlas or among datasets more broadly speaking.