1 GENIZA: AN ANNOTATED AN/ARCHIVE OF A DISCARDED LIFE VOLUME 1 RODNEY LOVE A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW ART & DESIGN 2021 2 Geniza: An Annotated An/Archive of a Discarded Life Thesis Abstract: Geniza: An Annotated An/Archive of a Discarded Life is a research project which combines autoethnographic and narrative methods within a practice-based and archival methodological framework to investigate means of materialising and preserving memories of a life for future use when the traces of that life are discarded or dispersed. A geniza is a space in a synagogue used to temporarily store materials written in Hebrew (which, as a sacred language, cannot just be thrown out) until they can be buried or otherwise ritually discarded. It is a fundamentally anarchival space; that is, it is not an archive, does not use archival practices for storage, and is not intended to be retained for future uses. This research, through the creation of an anarchival art installation, and a personal archive, explores the tension between the desire to discard, and the desire to preserve. By materialising memories, narratives, and histories of objects intended for disposal, and collecting discarded materials not just in the installation, but also in the dissertation, this research has resulted in an autobiographical representation of the artist/researcher, as well as a biography of the archive and installation produced, and a biography of the research process itself. The methods explored through this research can be used to enhance the information retained in an archive, preserve memories that would otherwise be lost, transmit narratives of a life to future, unknown others, and prompt viewers of the installation to think about the material culture of their own lives, and how they will deal with the memories, and stories behind the items that they themselves will discard at some point. Inclusion of Publications Statement UNSW is supportive of candidates publishing their research results during their candidature as detailed in the UNSWThesis Examination Procedure. Publications can be used in the candidate's thesis in lieu of a Chapter provided: • The candidate contributed greater than 50% of the content in t,he publication and aire the "primary author", i.e. they were responsible primarily for the planning, execution and preparation of the work for publication. • The candidate has obtained approval to include the publication in their thesis in lieu of a Chapter from their Supervisor and Postgraduate Coordinator. • The publication is not subject to any obligations or contractual agreements with a third party that would constrain its inclusion in the thesis. 3 Contents FINDING AID 6 ‘A’ IS FOR ALPHABETICAL 37 GENIZA 120 ENDPAPERS 151 4 5 FINDING AID 6 Finding Aids 9 Content 14 Structure 19 Past Research 29 Biographical Note 35 7 8 Finding Aids Melquíades had not put events in the order of a man’s conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1972, p. 446) It is said that these pupils have to memorise a great number of verses – so many, that some of them spend twenty years at their studies. The Druids believe that their religion forbids them to commit their teachings to writing, although for most other purposes, such as public and private accounts, the Gauls use the Greek alphabet. But I imagine that this rule was originally established for other reasons – because they did not want their doctrine to become public property, and in order to prevent their pupils from relying on the written word and neglecting to train their memories; for it is usually found that when people have the help of texts, they are less diligent in learning by heart, and let their memories rust. Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul (1982, p. 141) We are not about to deny scientific rationalism. Nor do we aspire to some clumsy popularization. What we do hope to achieve is a more direct and practical means of communication, and to reconcile pleasure with knowledge. Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck (1975, p. 25) Before starting this research, archival theory was a new discipline for me, despite having worked in a library, and studied an Information Management degree. I soon found numerous analogies between different aspects of my research, and noted the similarities between archives and such areas as installation, narrative, auto/biography, and even PhD research and its presentation in written or artistic form. I discovered the concept of the finding aid, which is a means of conveying information about an archive’s contents and context to researchers; it seemed to serve the same purpose as the introduction of a thesis, so I thought it appropriate to begin this dissertation with information about finding aids as a means of introducing my research, and as a way for readers to get acquainted with the architecture of this document. In the seminal archival theory text of the nineteenth century known as the Dutch Manual, the authors suggest that the “uninitiated” need a “guide” to find their way around an archival collection (Muller, Feith & Fruin 1968 (1898), p. 100); archivists must therefore “create a representation of the archives – an explanation of the content, structure and context” of the collection (Millar 2010, p. 157; I have made use of two of these three terms as the titles of chapters in this section of the dissertation in order to further the connection to archives). Laura Millar explains further: The process of archival description involves three steps. The first is to research and write an account of the nature and scope of the archives and the life and 9 work of the person, family, organization or business responsible for their creation. The second step is to present that information in various descriptive tools – finding aids – that allow users to understand the content and nature of the archives. The third step is to create access points or intellectual points of entry into the archives, such as names, subjects, dates or events, to help researchers determine which archives are relevant to their research (2010, p. 157). A finding aid can encompass many forms of “descriptive media (such as registers, guides, inventories and indexes)” (Oakes & McCausland 1987, p. 159), as well as “[a]bstracts, calendars…, repository guides, accession records, biographical sketches, [and] authority records…” (Duff & Harris 2002, p. 266). The information provided in these different texts is often disparate and unconnected, and it is the role of the archivist – to highlight another analogy, between my artistic method and research – “to weave those fragments together to create an integrated, coherent narrative. In so doing [however] we may be creating a misleading impression of completeness” (MacNeil 2005, p. 273). Any text, whether a finding aid, or PhD thesis, reflects the biases of the creator of that text, and the finding aid should provide information about its construction, as it is “a representation not just of the records by the archivist but also of the archivist and the archives profession” (Cox 2008, p. 26). A finding aid is not an apolitical document; it has been compiled by an individual with not just possible personal biases, but also institutional constraints and guidelines. The context of an archival collection includes not just the creation and accumulation of the records, but the selection and discarding of some of those records by the archivist; “[for] archivists it means surrendering our role as invisible and omniscient narrators and accepting that we are among the characters in the story told through our descriptions” (MacNeil 2005, p. 272). Transparency, then, is key, and one suggestion for this contextual information in a finding aid is through the use of colophons: “Stated succinctly, colophons are statements regarding the creation of a work, written or printed after the main text has concluded” (Light & Hyry 2002, p. 223). Such statements “identify the archivist’s role in representation and interpretation of a collection” (Yakel 2003, p. 20). This can include “appraisal, arrangement, description, preservation, and other decisions they made while working on a collection” (Light & Hyry 2002, p. 224). This dissertation serves as a guide to my research, a justification and explanation of the choices I have made in the course of that research, and a history of the process of creating the artwork that constitutes the thesis for the research. 10 The research itself focuses on the creation of an installation of weavings of items which I have discarded, while creating an archive of the narratives and histories of those objects and documents. I have therefore tried to emulate that process by also including in this dissertation discarded items from my research, and giving the reader an understanding of the tangents and tributaries along which my research might have proceeded. This may be an unconventional approach to a PhD thesis, but as archive theorists have noted about the finding aid, standardisation of texts and methods is not necessarily in the best interests of archives or researchers: “The wider the span, the greater the distance, the more heterogeneous the modes [of a standard], then the greater the violence done to the local, the individual, the eccentric, the small, the weak, the unusual, the other, the case which does not fit the conceptual boxes that are unavoidable in any form of standardization” (Duff & Harris 2002, p. 281). In archival finding aids – or in PhD theses – “no one method is adequate and therefore no one finding aid is the optimum, diversity not standardization, variety not consensus, is the ideal” (Condren 1995, p. 175; italics in original).