… there is only experience and its decay…  —Geoffrey Sonnabend

Foremost among our efforts at REASArch has been the meticulous dissection and reconfiguration of the select, principally visual elements of the Valaco Archive, both known and inferred: the motion picture Kolberg on the one hand; the images either expressly mentioned or insinuated in the Schriftatlas on the other, including certain maps and diagrams, various small-gauge movies, and especially the snapshots and postcards Valaco reputedly scavenged in his peregrinations through post-war Europe and South America, the type and variety of which we have endeavored to generate or simulate here. A number of these materials have already been submitted to forensic analysis, while others are slated for future evaluation. Indeed, to evince the identity of Constantín R. Valaco (while forbearing from the vagaries of its provenance) represents the principal objective of our forensic operations. As is perhaps to be expected, such unyielding commitment to our aims in this domain has succeeded at complicating our subject to the same degree that it has illuminated the solemn if essential indeterminacy of the archival material at hand.

For those with a particular interest in Veit Harlan’s 1945 motion picture, which welcomed Valaco as an extra and now constitutes one of the pillars of our forensic research, the film is available for viewing online at the Internet Archive.