- Stuart Hall – Constituting an archive
Hall, S. (2001) ‘Constituting an archive’, Third text, 15(54), pp. 89-92. doi: 10.1080/09528820108576903.
Archives aren’t true representations of history, they are the representations of those that have been involved or have contributed to it.
According to Hall, archives are not impartial or neutral collections of records; rather, they are shaped by a selection of process that is influenced by the values, interests, and prejudices of the individuals responsible for their creation and maintenence.
Hall also mentions about a concept of ‘living archive’, which the archive never ends and keep growing, adding.
The text helped me to think about
-> What could be a living archive? , what is endless to archive?, if it is endless, why would we archive?, Is it also related to value?, Anti archive? ; – something that people would never archive? Is this concept related to what I am doing? Collecting traces/imprints? Archiving somewhat insignificant? How can I make it endless? By what, Contribution and crowd sourcing?
From the text…
We need to pay particular tribute to all those who have been involved over the years, often in very informal, personally taxing and under-funded ways, to secure in one place slides of the works, catalogues, exhibition notices, reviews and other texts…
Above all, we must acknowledge the role which Eddie Chambers has played in that long history, since without his patience and fierce commitment, …
The moment of the archive represents the end of a certain kind of creative innocence, and the beginning of a new stage of self-consciousness, of self-reflexivity in an artistic movement.
It was an especially bold move to bring together at that point a number of key figures, who had both contributed to the body of work and were willing to help secure, nourish, extend and contest the terms of its ‘archiving’; for this helped to underline the intention that this should be, not an inert museum of dead works, but a ‘living archive’, whose construction must be seen as an on-going, never-completed project.
There is always the inevitable slippage in the open semiosis of culture, as that which seems fixed continues to be dialogically re-appropriated.
- Mudlarking
‘Mudlark’ (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudlark (Accessed: 20 Jan 2023).
Picking up some fragments of pottery, or pendants… etc. Usually happens on the River Thames. Similar to detectorists. Finding little elements, little traces, tangible traces.
Finding and picking what is used to be a part of an actual object, or the whole object itself. It is interesting that in terms of values, these pieces might be neglected, regarded as rubbish (extremely), or not interesting or seems insignificant generally, but picking them up and looking closely or analysing might be give them values or they can turn out to be a really important relics, or heritage from the past. I think picking them up can be a method of placing a value. This shares the base concept with my iterations, collecting little imprints in the city.