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Dr. Mirjam Brusius (Oxford University) and Monika Pessler (Sigmund Freud Museum Wien) will talk about The Archive and the Unconscious.[caption id="attachment_915" align="alignleft" width="214"] doors (Photo: paddy patterson under CC BY 2.0)[/caption]Like archives, museum collections are simultaneously the outcome of historical processes and the very condition for the production of historical knowledge, says Mirjam Brusius. Our understanding of museums and the intellectual histories they encode, however, is usually based on objects that museums make visible. The usually much larger range of objects that is invisible in the backstage areas of the museum, e.g. in study rooms, archives and storage areas, remains separated from the museum histories we tell. What makes certain objects not appropriate for display? Which new stories can be told when looking at this 'unconscious' part of the museum?From Monika Pessler's point of view an Archive can be understood as a tool to confer meaning to our presence and at the same time to enhance an idea of our social and cultural development: Especially in the fields of art and science it is a frequent practice to provide deeper insights into our current state as well as into our possible future by frequently repeated up-dates with the past. Experts on the Freudian school of psychoanalysis largely agree that the past can never be (re)constructed like it actually took place. One can assume that an interpretation of the past in general is only possible if it extends to the present day. With regard to archived "fragments of memories" the question arises how to handle an archive like the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna that is characterised by its gaps and emptiness – except for some artefacts and everyday items. So is it just a space stuffed with memories?