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).
In the interests of the originality and diversity that arts-based research can bring to PhD dissertation formatting, I have chosen an unconventional way of presenting my research findings. The reader will have noticed the minimal Table of Contents at the beginning of this text; my intention is to allow the curiosity of readers to be piqued, to foster a sense of discovery, and hopefully an element of surprise as readers make their way through this document (each section features its own table of contents for further information). I have broken the dissertation into three main sections, eschewing a traditional chapter format of a PhD thesis, and have not numbered the sections, because to do so would impose an artificial linearity on the thesis which goes against the idea of a rhizomatic archive which I am attempting to emulate. This first section is a way to introduce the research to the reader. This brief discussion of finding aids has been merely to introduce this written text; the following section, Content – “the ‘what’ in the documentary equation” (Millar 2010, p. 7) – introduces the research, and my reasons and rationale for the decisions made in the course of that research. After that, in Structure – which “relates to the physical and intellectual characteristics that define how a document was created and maintained. Structure provides the ‘how’ of a document” (Millar 2010, p. 8) – I describe the methods and methodology employed, emphasizing the collage-like nature of the archive, this dissertation, and the final artistic presentation. Following that, I have a review of Past Research I have conducted, relevant to this current investigation, and, in the tradition of archival finding aids, I also include a brief biographical sketch.
11 The second section, ‘A’ is for Alphabetical, is an alphabetically-arranged (as a nod to a form of archival information management) compendium of the intellectual, creative, historical, and research concerns that have informed or paralleled my own research; it also provides context for my artistic endeavours, and functions as a literature review for a research project which does not fit into easily describable or searchable categories. In this section I: discuss the concept of anarchives as being opposed to, or merely resembling archives; describe archival theory practices and how they are used or adapted for personal archives, and for my research in particular; interrogate the connections between the self and personal possessions; discuss installations as an artistic practice; explore memory, narratives, and autobiography and how they intersect in my research; and describe and discuss artistic, literary, and scholarly works that most reflect the concepts I have dealt with in this research. Some of the information in this section that did not inform or influence my research, but merely echoed it, provides justification for the use of those concepts in my own work. The entries in this section can be read in any order, as they are not meant as a rigidly ordered text, but as analogous to the structure of an archive, where each item, although part of a whole, exists as a separate entity which can be taken out and dealt with on its own.
The third section deals with the installation Geniza, which I have created as a result of, and as an artistic thesis for the research. I discuss the meaning of geniza – a repository for texts written in Hebrew that are in the process of being disposed of – and compare and contrast them with archives, while emphasising the discarded nature of items which end up there. I include a chapter on the research that I have abandoned, because what I have discarded is as relevant to my research as that which has been retained, and it serves as a biography of the research process itself. I conclude with a discussion of the installation, its relation to the notion of Disposal, and its success or otherwise in representing my research. This section is not an exegesis of the installation, nor a description, as I have described my artistic plans throughout this document in many places, and linked my artistic practice with the conceptual concerns raised; it briefly discusses the success of the research (because the installation itself is the thesis for this research, and viewers can draw their own conclusions about whether the art has met my stated research goals), my contribution to knowledge, and notes some problems encountered, as well as scope for future research. These three sections, along with the installation Geniza, constitute the thesis for this research. Everything that follows is additional material, discarded material, which exists as further evidence of my life, and the process and history of this research.
12 Endpapers is a section for anything left over that doesn’t fit into my neat tripartite arrangement. I include the reference section here, a list of images, and an appendix of rejected writings (Appendix 1 – Rejectamenta), analogous to the rejected research paths of the Geniza section (writing which while relevant to my concerns, and which came about from the research, ended up not fitting into my schema). While reading the work of Georges Perec (discussed in the ‘A’ is for Alphabetical section), I attempted a number of my own Perecian projets – writing or documentation projects – which didn’t need to be included as part of the written part of my thesis, but which still contain interesting information relevant to my research concerns, and which make up Appendix 2. I also include an appendix of inventories of discarded items that were not included in the installation, but which give more information about the material culture of my life (Appendix 3). The process of conducting this research produced possible alternative pathways to the same goals, and I wanted to include this information to highlight the value of recording descriptions and/or lists of discarded materials.
As the second volume of this document, I present all 600 documentation forms that I have created during the course of this research, as a form of archive available for secondary use by researchers – for sociological, artistic, or any other creative or research use – but also as an essential part of the research, as they contain the narratives and histories of the discarded items used in the installation. The details included in these forms are a further history of not just the items discarded from my life, but the varying twists and turns of my research, as the narratives were informed by the various subjects I was researching or exploring when I wove the individual pieces of the installation. Each document includes a photograph of the completed weaving, and, in most cases, an image of the original item (I didn’t decide on the format in the beginning of the research, so some items were not photographed before shredding), a weaving pattern, details of the final weaving (yarns, dimensions), and a narrative and/or history of the original item, as well as later comments or emendations. Each of the 600 weavings that make up the installation Geniza can be explored here in a way that they cannot be in the installation, and they also exist as a permanent archive after the transient installation is disbanded, and the artworks dispersed or destroyed.
13 Content
No doubt it was the same for other writers, but for Suguro the process of creating any given work of fiction was comparable to entering an alien land devoid of a map. Being a cautious type of person, he never considered setting out on that journey until all his travel preparations were complete, from the careful selection of his themes to determining the time he would need to gather his material. Still there were many times when he had no idea where he was being led, and all he could discern through the faint light were the blurred outlines of his point of departure. The road ahead was veiled in dense darkness. For the space of fifteen years he had undertaken many of these stressful journeys, making his way forward with groping hands, and all within the confines of this tiny room.
Shusaku Endo, Scandal (1989, p. 24)
Was it hard to let that work go? “No, it was great!” he says. “It’s fantastic! I love throwing things away: the product of any creative enterprise can’t ever reflect the glory of the process. The process is where all the fun is.
John Darnielle in Andrew Street, Singer Chasing a New Tale (2015, p. 11)
My research began with a plan to create shroud-like woven forms from human hair, and investigate uses of shrouds as identity markers in different societies. As is the way with artistic practice and research, this soon evolved into a quite different project, but still one based on weaving as my artistic method, and still related to issues of identity, social relations and memory. As an extension of my previous research projects using woven human hair and socks, this research developed into the idea of an installation composed of individual weavings created from cut up and shredded material artefacts from my life – books, videocassettes, clothing, personal papers, artworks, and so on. I discovered that etymologically ‘shred’ was in fact related to ‘shroud’ (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1990), so there seemed an at least tenuous link between my research concerns to date. I made a few experimental weavings, and then started making the textile forms that are included in the final installation for this project, Geniza.
As I focused on the art making, various theoretical and conceptual concerns started to appear. Despite expectations to come up with a research question, I found that my research method closely aligned itself with my artistic methods; that is, an interest in form and process led to experimentation, and completed artworks lent themselves to various conceptual readings. After a series of tangential research explorations, I settled on the idea of creating, via the installation of woven textiles made from artefacts from my life, an archive. Of course, it’s not unusual for PhD research topics to evolve and develop, and a common refrain at university is, “It will change”; what there doesn’t appear to be, however, is an understanding of how an arts-based research project may
14 need the space of indeterminacy in order to take on its final form, that the “vision might not be fully fashioned at the start of the enterprise, only revealing itself fully as the work is completed” (Guthrie 2007, p. 2).
Having decided to create an installation of weavings that constitute an archive, I then looked for a justification for the archive. It was an artwork that was an archive that…what? Was a representation of the subject of the archive? An artistic portrait? An autobiography? An examination of subjectivity? An interrogation of identity formation? It was each of these ideas in turn as I grappled to focus the research. Reading about research methodology and methods, though, allowed me to see that my project was an arts-based, or practice-based investigation of the archive (see Leavy 2009); it didn’t need to add an extra layer of investigation. As Hans Hedberg and Mika Hannula state, “Artistic research means that the artist produces an art work and researches the creative process, thus adding to the accumulation of knowledge” (cited in Kjørup 2011, p. 26); my addition to the knowledge in the field comes through my artistic interrogation of the archival process, not its analysis on another level of meaning. An important element was also the understanding that archivists work to collect, arrange, preserve and make available archival documents for future use, and usually “these will not be the purposes which were contemplated by the people by whom the Archives were drawn up and preserved” (Jenkinson 1937, p. 12). These future uses may be for research, for evidentiary value, or for some as yet unknown use, something “necessarily indeterminate” (Osborne 1999, p. 55). My research became, then, an investigation, through a combination of artistic and archival methods, for preserving memories of a life through an archive. As I was using documents and artefacts edited from my own life, the particular focus became on the ways that memories and narratives of otherwise discarded, dispossessed or dispersed materials can be recorded and preserved within the archive.
My central premise, if not a research question per se, is that that which has been discarded is as telling as that which has been retained; if we are to rely on only that which remains in an archive, then much useful information about an individual, an organisation, or a building, for example, will be lost forever, and we run the risk of creating stories, or histories that are incorrect or incomplete. An archaeological research project started in 1973 in Arizona, The Garbage Project, examined rubbish created by communities as a tool to analyse contemporary society; one of the main ideas was “that what people have owned – and thrown away – can speak more eloquently, informatively, and truthfully about the lives they lead than they themselves ever may” (Rathje & Murphy 1993, p. 54). For my research, I am documenting the
15 discarded materials from my life, and combining that with personal information about them, to hopefully produce eloquent, informative, and truthful data.
The nature of the archive, though, is to retain information, and I was looking at discarding artefacts from my life. It became obvious that I needed to differentiate the archive of memories and narratives, which I have recorded in a collection of documentation forms, from the anarchive (that which is opposed to, or merely resembles the archive; see page 40) which is the final installation, and artistic thesis for this research (throughout this dissertation I employ the construction ‘an/archives’ to encompass this dual research outcome). The ‘Archival Turn’ in contemporary art (see Ji 2018, Simon 2002) had ushered in the use of archives and archival strategies in art, and my research constantly existed in the space between the archive and the anarchive, between that which is preserved, and that which is discarded. This dissertation bridges that divide by uniting the archival documentation forms recorded in Volume 2 of this document, and the anarchival installation Geniza, which will eventually disappear and only exist as part of this dissertation.
A PhD dissertation is, like an archive, a created document, shaped by personal and political considerations; it is an historical document that unfolds over time, and exists in relations to conventions of the genre. The archive or the thesis may be seen as “a montage of fragments” which “[create] an illusion of totality and control” (Mbembe 2002, p. 21). An aspect of this research is to show the creation of the an/archive, to explore the process involved, and to record the discarded elements in order to expose this illusion of completeness. Just as my an/archive presents and stores data about the discards of my life, that which is surplus to the requirements of my lived experience, so “[bringing] almost any work of scholarship to completion is a matter of suppression, a sidelining of material that can’t be assimilated” (Stewart 2011, p. XIV), and my inclusion of discarded research, or experiments with autoethnographic writings and projects is an attempt to also shine a light on this suppression; a caveat for the dissertation is that, “[like] all autoethnographies, this text is partial and fragmentary” (Muncey 2010, p. 147), a point that resurfaces again and again over the course of this research, this writing, and also in relation to autobiography, and archives.
The format of this dissertation is another element that I have struggled with, attempting to create something that is similar in nature to the archive, or the installation, creative like an artwork, and which can justify its own existence against the more conventionally minded who see difference as incorrectness. Theorists of autobiography and
16 autoethnography have explored the ways of presenting research findings, and provide me with justifications for my own individual choices; Philippe Lejeune writes:
When we hear an autobiographer complain about the limits and inadequacies of the genre, which do not allow him [sic] to express the complexity of his story or the depth of his feelings, we have to read these passages as a confession of his conformity. Who forces him to have to use the ready-made mold of the linear narrative? Why doesn’t he just invent the form that suits his experience? (1989, p. 72; italics added)
Amanda Coffey looks at “how [ethnographic] research is translated into representations and forms of knowledge production” (1999, p. 145), and argues:
[All] representational conventions are precisely that – conventional – and, to some extent at least, arbitrary. This recognition makes it possible to transgress literary boundaries and willingly seek alternative forms of representation. Textual variety is welcomed, and even necessary, from such a perspective (1999, p. 145).
This is an approach I have embraced in the creation of my dissertation, drawing on literary traditions, archival approaches, ethnographic representations, and inventories, creating a “mixed material” hybrid, a “whatchamacallit” (Zboray & Zboray 2009, p. 101), which I have also tried to emulate for the anarchival installation Geniza, and the archive of documentation forms in Volume 2.
Given that this dissertation, research process, and artistic product have all unfolded and coalesced over an eight-year period, the issue of relevant and timely references may be an issue for some readers. As I explain in the Installation section of the second part of this dissertation (see page 69), I draw on the Foucauldian notion of heterotopia – the accumulation of different geographic areas within a new space (Foucault 1986) – to connect the archive, and the artwork produced by this research. The archive and installation, as well as this dissertation, also embody the idea of heterochronia, where different time periods combine in a (metaphoric) heterotopic space (Foucault 1986). The scope of my research interests and connections range from tenth-century, Heian- era Japan, nineteenth-century archival theory from the Netherlands, early-twentieth- century writing from Walter Benjamin in Paris, World War II-era British narratives from ordinary citizens, a day in the life of a post-War American child, 1980s’ consumer research theory, and international, late-twentieth-century art and literature. All of these time periods combine in the heterochronic space of this research, and the writers and researchers that I draw on to elucidate these works have written over many decades; even if someone were to have written a radical new interpretation of, say, the work of Christian Boltanski in 2020, what I have written, how I have connected his work to my own, or the opinions of theorists past will not have been negated by this new research.
17 Unlike a medical trial for a new drug, the most recent research is not as relevant to my concerns as the most appropriate research, or even the most interesting – regardless of the time of its writing – given the idiosyncratic and personal research process in which I have been engaged.
18 Structure
In his 1903 preface Huysmans claimed to have sought to break the limits of the novel in order to allow in ‘more serious work’. Against Nature is a hybrid, composed of different modes of writing: catalogue, inventory, case study, encyclopedia and scholarly treatise, while the chapters are arranged as compartments or glass cases.
Patrick McGuinness, Introduction to Against Nature (2003, p. xxxiii) Practice-Based Research
Practice-based PhDs (arts-based, or creative PhDs), although new compared with more established science, social-science, or humanities PhDs, have been around for more than thirty years (Blackmore 2014; Paltridge et al. 2012), but there still seems to be little consensus about what constitutes “a proper thesis” (Martin & Booth 2006), and there is a “dearth of material which provides substantial evidence of the “form” and structure of doctorates [in fine art]” (MacLeod & Holdridge, cited in Paltridge et al. 2011, p. 243). For many artists the creative process may start with an “uncertain quest” (Borgdorff 2011, p. 56) that resists the traditional demands for a research question as the beginning steps of a study. As Borgdorff states: “The requirement that a research study should set out with well-defined research questions, topics or problems is often at odds with the actual course of events in artistic research” (2011, p. 56), which is often not “hypothesis-led but discovery-led” (Rubidge, cited in Borgdorff 2011, p. 56). One might ask, “How do you know what you are studying if you don’t have a research question?” but an artist may begin with materials, or a method, or a vague idea that can be explored through the artistic process. One outcome that practice-based research can highlight is this creative process, by showing how ideas evolve, and make visible the contingency that is at the heart of much research across disciplinary fields.
The hybrid installation/archive that I envisioned once this research had advanced sufficiently was created using a variety of techniques from different fields, and embraced various methodological traditions, but the dominant and overarching methodology is that of practice-based research. This “‘artistic’ research procedure” (Gray & Pirie 1995, p. 1), or “hybrid ‘creative research’ model” (Biggs 2009, p. 31) is marked by a non-linear, subjective, and pluralistic use of methods that claim artistic uses of materials and investigation of artistic methods as research tools, which should “be an invitation for original and innovative perspectives which may lead to new ways of thinking” (Wood, quoted in Biggs 2009, p. 101). Of particular interest is a collage- based method, an embracing of the “collage aesthetic” (Lippard 1971, p. 8), which allows for disparate elements to be assembled together creating new and differently
19 meaningful representations. Collage as a method, or at least a metaphor (I’m not actually gluing items together; montage, or bricolage would be similarly appropriate metaphors, or, to use a textile metaphor from Denzin and Lincoln (2008, p. 5), quilt making), is useful as it is analogous with installation practices as well as archival practices – all of them juxtapose diverse materials in the space of a unified whole.
For my research, I have adopted as a framework the collage methodology of artist and researcher Kathleen Vaughan (2005). Vaughan was unknown to me before I began this research, and I have adopted her methodology not because it was well known, or highly influential, but because I recognised the approach I had been using to date. Despite the demands for originality in PhD research, there is also the need for connections to established theories, or past research, and in Vaughan’s work, I had found the justification for my own methods. Vaughan identifies eight attributes of practice-based research; I discuss each one, and show how my own research relates to that attribute:
Creative practice
Vaughan suggests that such practice exhibits an “experimental orientation” (2005, p. 40). My own artistic methods have always started with a vague idea or an exploration of a material and have led to experimental outcomes as form or process. My current research combines not only an exploration of how the material aspects of my life come to be remediated and recontextualised within the space of an an/archive, but also how different weaving patterns work with combinations of warp yarns and unorthodox weft materials, to create unique records of my artistic and archival processes. I also propose that the written and artistic products of this research constitute the an/archive that I have created, and should not only be examined as separate entities, but also considered as one an/archival space. This interest in experimental processes and form, then, also applies to the written products which becomes meaningful as an explanatory and hermeneutic text, as a record of materialised memories being preserved for future use, and as an example of collaged, experimental writing techniques and forms (see Martin & Booth 2006).
Juxtaposition
This quality situates diverse elements alongside each other to provide comparison and contrast, as well as to suggest unique combinations that “create resonances and connections” (Vaughan 2005, p. 40) that can lead to different ways of thinking about issues and relationships. My research relies on multiple examples of juxtaposition, from
20 the elements making up the different weavings, combined in the installation, to the juxtaposition of the artwork and the archive, which exist separately and simultaneously (that is, the artwork is an anarchive, but the archive is also an artwork; they can be analysed from within the art historical/theoretical field, or the archival field as independent examples of art and archive, but they also combine to create a hybrid form), in order to explore different approaches to both (the archival aspects can be used to enhance artists’ documentation of art processes to make them available for future use by biographers or art historians, e.g., Breakall & Worsley 2007, and the artistic aspect can be used by archivists to enhance the value of archival holdings by approaching appraisal, or arrangement in more creative ways; see Manninen 2011, and DeSilvey 2007). The installation and the written component are also juxtaposed, both serving as tools for investigating creative archival means of preserving the immaterial.
Interdisciplinarity
Vaughan suggests this involves “juxtaposing multiple fields of endeavor and situating the practitioner and his or her work within and between them” (2005, p. 40). As suggested above, my research does combine elements from various fields including the creative arts generally (see Tyrrell 2015), textile arts and weaving in particular (compare Bartlett 2009), archives in contemporary art (Beinart 2014; Yerushalmy 2009; Van Alphen 2007), archival theory (Hill 1993), narrative theory and enquiry (Flood 2002; Clandinin & Connelly 2000; Josselson & Lieblich 1993), material culture studies from archaeology and anthropology (Miller 2009; Becker 1998; Gell 1998), and the exploration of creative writing practices from various social science, and qualitative methodology traditions (Finley & Knowles 2015; Paltridge et al. 2011).
Link to daily life
Just as early fine arts users of collage combined the detritus of modern life into artistic creations (for example, Picasso’s Still life with Chair Caning, discussed in Hughes 1980, p. 32), so Vaughan links a collage methodology to everyday life, and suggests it is grounded in “specific circumstances, particular experiences, and (given its arts grounding) individual creations” (2005, p. 41). However, any individual piece of mundane, banal ‘everydayness’ does not provide significant detail, and it is only in combination with other accumulated items, within the space of the installation or of the archive, that sufficiently useful information is obtained. Vaughan suggests that these representations of the quotidian must be contextualised within broader social networks. This is also a key component of archive theory, and, as Featherstone asks:
21 [Should] we not seek to extend the walls of the archive to place it around the everyday, the world? If everything can potentially be of significance shouldn’t part of the archive fever be to record and document everything, as it could one day be useful? (2000, p. 161)
Although my own life is not the subject of this research, the use of documents and artefacts that belong to me and have shaped and been shaped by my own history are among the objects of my research. Unlike the archival profession, where the curator- archivist provides the contextualisation of records within the quotidian, my research proposes a recursive contextualisation by the creator-archivist that enables multiple descriptions and narrativisation of the same material over time to provide richer readings for users of the archive. This includes everyday details, descriptions and uses of the documents that enhance the data gained through knowledge of their material properties.
Situated artist/researcher
This is another example of the contextualisation necessary for the understanding of the results of the artistic process to be useful as a research product. This situates the artist/researcher within a broader cultural context and can “simultaneously emphasize personal meanings, history, culture, and tradition in such a way as to bring disparate voices of the internal-personal and external-contextual to a common place” (Finlay quoted in Vaughan 2005, p. 41). These are also concerns of the archivist in arranging, describing and otherwise contextualising an archival group of records (McKemmish 2005, p. 13). A possible complication in archival theory, as mentioned above, is that the curator-archivist inevitably shapes the archive to reflect, in some ways, his or her own context, including personal biases, or the archiving framework of the institution where the archive is to be housed (Livelton 1996, p. 69). By examining and documenting the creation of my own an/archive, I am exploring the ways such biases affect the content of the archive, and the collection of personal narratives and memories is a way of creating more meaningful, and richer archival records.
Culture critique and transformation
Vaughan suggests this involves both “aesthetic transformation” and “political transformation” (2005, p. 41), both of which seem to fit with ideas of making art as “an act of self-realisation” (Carter 2004, p. xiii), and a recognition of art’s role in fostering “becoming (collectively and individually) oneself in a particular place” (Carter 2004, p. xi; italics in original). My research seeks to explore (personal) archival practices through the lens of artistic creation, but also questions artistic uses of the archive in
22 contemporary art practices (see Foster 2004; Simon 2002). Through an examination of the products of my own life, I also look at social practices that shape memorialisation of individual and cultural experiences and identities, because, as Sue McKemmish notes, archiving, particularly personal archiving, has a “role in witnessing to individual lives, and constituting part of society’s collective memory and cultural identity” (1996, p. 28).
Open-endedness
Each creative act or artefact is merely a reflection of practice or life at that particular moment: “Its form and content reflect the juxtaposition of individual ideas, realms of thought, texts, images, and other creative works, and the conversation that develops between them” (Vaughan 2005, p. 41). The form of the installation for the presentation of this research involves the display of rolled up woven forms on shelves, emulating the look of an archive, but without a definite structure or place for each item. The display of these scrolls is based on aesthetic principles independent of their position in any archival taxonomic system. The addition of new weavings allows for potential changes to be made in the form of the installation as new shelves are added, or new combinations explored. Similarly, an archive is never complete until, in the case of a personal archive, the death of the creator, as the archive is being “continuously and contingently assembled” (Merriman in Dwyer & Davies 2010, p. 89). The an/archive I’ve created is potentially open-ended, and could have continued as part of my daily artistic practice indefinitely, but PhD research necessitates an end point, where the product of the research can be examined, and the written component needs to reflect a closed, completed product or process. Therefore, I capped the number of weavings in the installation at 600, as two 300-page volumes seemed weighty enough.
Multiple, provisional, and interdependent products
Vaughan stresses the influence that the various parts of the collage research project have on every other part. She argues that “the interdependent components of a collagist inquiry aim above all to reveal the practice,” and that “interdisciplinary work is embodied, not simply described, in each component” (2005, p. 41). Thus, the installation that is the outcome of my research is both an artwork and an anarchive, and along with this dissertation aims to contextualise and describe the research process and outcome. This written document can also be seen as a piece of creatively realised writing, and the documentation forms assembled in Volume 2 function as an archive. Each item of my research process will be able to stand as an independently perceived, coherent cultural object, but the combination of elements within the space of
23 the an/archive allows for a fuller understanding of the processes interrogated through the research.
My use of Vaughan’s collage methodology allows for multiple methods to work together in the creation of my artwork/archive. My working method involves shredding by machine or cutting (as appropriate) materials that I have decided to discard from the context of my everyday life, or from what might be considered the proto-archive of a life’s materials (that is, those items which potentially could be transferred to an archive, but are still being used as part of the lived life, and which can be considered as evidencing transactions of that life). These shredded items are combined with various textile yarns, in diverse sizes and textures, to create the woven forms. My overarching concern for the aesthetics of the installation is for eclecticism, reflecting the collage methodology (in fact, the use of a pluralistic methodology reflects my own personal dread of sameness and conventionality, of lockstep adherence to one particular view or attitude; my artistic concerns echo this personality trait, and therefore mesh with the collage aesthetic), so I employ as wide a selection of colours, yarn types, and patterns as possible.
Archival Theory
The other major methodological approach to my research – although, in the research process, inextricably linked to the practice-based approach described above – is that of archival theory; archiving as a methodological approach allows access to archival theory as an established field and series of discursive practices in order to create my own an/archive. Using tools from this field allows me to create an artwork that is anarchival – that emulates or critiques the display and storage practices of archival institutions – while assembling an archive of the data that resulted as a process of that creation. An archival theory approach enables the consideration of the provenance of documents, or their fonds, or collection group (Millar 2010); that is, it allows the archive to be considered as a whole, as a constructed artefact that has emerged from specific transactions, and acts as a record, with evidentiary value of a life (Millar 2010, p. xviii; McKemmish 2005; McKemmish & Upward 1993) (or the life of an organisation, but my research will be focusing on the creation of a personal archive only – see Jones 2015; Cox 2008; Hobbs 2001). Archival strategies include the appraisal of items for their suitability to be added to the archive, their arrangement, and their description.
In the case of the an/archive I am creating, I am appraising artefacts from my life that I am no longer interested in retaining for their suitability for long-term retention. The appraisal process (see Craig 2004; Duranti 1994) involves a consideration of the use
24 value of the items, and draws on issues such as narrative (what role this artefact has played in my life, what it’s history is, how it helps define my identity), utility (many of the descriptions I have written involve a variation of “I thought it would be useful for something one day”; this also involves an assessment of whether or not something that has been used in the past will be used again in the future), and form (items that are old and grubby, clothes that have developed holes, technologies such as videocassettes or cassette tapes that are no longer supported) to determine whether or not they should be retained as items in my daily life, or whether they will be disposed of, and, in this case, remediated and recontextualised within the space of the an/archive.
The arrangement of archival records generally respects the original order of the creator of the records (Millar 2010, p. 149); that is, whatever the taxonomic parameters that the creator used, or whatever filing system, no matter how idiosyncratic, that the records have been organised into, is respected and retained by the curator-archivist (Hill 1993). At the beginning of this research, I made the woven forms, and tagged them with a description of the material it was made from, or a story about that item. When the idea of creating an an/archive became fixed, I devised a numbering system to identify each item. This is a register-based system, which assigns a number to each item as the weaving commences, and which reflects a chronological order of the archival creation (see Schellenberg 1956, p. 67). In the early stages of the research, I used four looms simultaneously (sometimes five), and the ordering reflects when the weavings were started, not when they were completed.
When I accepted that in addition to the anarchival installation I needed an archive of the data produced, I instituted a more complete documentary record to accompany each item, drawing on archival description for contextualisation (see MacNeil 2005; Brunton & Robinson 1987). These descriptions have evolved over the course of the research, and I felt that aesthetically and archivally it might be better to go back and amend previous forms to reflect my latest format and description terms; as records of the research process I have included evidence of different stages where appropriate, with different types of information to show how my archival research practice evolved, and to investigate the efficacy of various memory materialisation, and narrativisation techniques. I did retroactively give numbers to textiles completed before the implementation of the inventory system, and added numbers to the tags attached to weavings. As various iterations of my research concerns came and went (see the Discarded Research section), the information recorded on the forms changed as well. As I have now considered that recursive narrativisation and contextualisation are important concerns of the research, additional comments need to be added to earlier
25 forms, rather than updating information to fit new models. This shows how the ideas have evolved, and how the items and systems have undergone re-evaluation and re- assessment over time, providing a more complete reading of their histories. During the course of the research, I also began keeping more detailed notes on the weaving process itself, including the exact details of the technical aspects of the weavings (how many threads per inch, for example, or the type of yarn, with samples), and, at a later date, stories attached to the yarns used for the weavings (how I obtained them, what their condition was, problems involved in weaving with them). I have included full records of all documentation forms in the second volume as an archive of the data.
Autoethnography and Narrative Enquiry
In the case of this dissertation, a recurring issue I have encountered is that I am acting as both subject and researcher, as original creator of the records and subsequent archive, as well as the archivist who is arranging them, and also as writer and editor of the written material. Given that I am working on a personal archive, in an act of “performative archiving” (Kouros 2012, p. 103), it is also appropriate that I draw on autoethnographic methodology for investigative tools. Although not an autoethnographic study per se – I am investigating the creation of an an/archive through the materialisation of memory, not examining my identity as it is constituted by the archive – the methods of that tradition, particularly those of life writing (Martin 2002), or examining documents of a life history (Plummer 2001), are fruitful for my research. In addition, techniques that are used for narrative inquiry research projects, which may also be aligned with autoethnographic, or more broadly ethnographic studies in anthropology or sociology, including personal and creative writing practices (see Nash 2004), have informed my own research.
I have combined these methodological traditions because, in my research at least, the two are informing and supporting each other within the space of the an/archive. For autoethnographic studies, the researcher becomes the focal point of the study as a way of providing personal examples which act as exemplars of larger social relations or actions or situations (Bochner 2012), and undertakes reflective practice to illuminate the processes involved (Schön 1983). As already mentioned, although my life is not the focus of the research, it has become the means of illustrating the effectiveness of the techniques I have proposed by focusing on “the muddled, idiosyncratic, florid eccentricities that make us unique” (Muncey 2010, p. xi). It would be impossible to seek to materialise someone else’s memories through the creation of an artwork as anarchive without an exhausting and intrusive connection to a research subject. As my
26 focus is on the creation of personal archives, it makes sense to use my own life history, of which as a participant observer I “have privileged access” (Davies 1999. p. 184), and traces of that life, the “re-membered fragments of my memory… and their re- construction in the form of a collage narrative” (Garoian 2013, p. 43), to test tools and techniques. To link the personal to the artistic once again, I draw on David Hawke’s ideas of autobiography as methodology:
Perhaps it is the tendency towards creative isolation and other life influences on the practice of the visual artist which gives rise to the importance of the artist becoming principal researcher of his or her own artistic endeavours. Autobiographical self reflection [sic] has the capacity to be a sensitive and appropriate research tool for understanding life-worlds through description, contextualisation and personally structured explanation (1996, p. 34).
I have also adopted a personal, idiosyncratic approach to the writing up of my research process and results, which draws on explorations of writing styles in PhD theses and other types of research documentation (see Paltridge et al. 2011; Martin & Booth 2006; Hanrahan 1999). I particularly draw on Richardson’s approach to “writing stories” (in Richardson & St Pierre 2008, p. 481, where ‘writing’ is a gerund; i.e., stories about writing), and feel that my research involves telling an art story, an archive story, a research story, as well as a personal history story. Rather than adopting a uniform “‘objective’ academic style”, Sarah Pink suggests that “different ‘registers’ (subjective, objective, written, visual, and mixing academic and ‘other’ voices)” can be used to show “different versions of reality and different types of knowledge” (2006, p. 291). The narratives and histories included with the weaving documentation forms are written like I would write my daily diary, as an imagined conversation with a reader, or my future self. Many of the sections in the ‘A’ is for Alphabetical part of this dissertation began with a ‘Narrative and Context’ paragraph, which I initially wrote in italics; I wanted to emulate the stories I was writing for the discarded objects, showing why I had chosen the art, literary, or scholarly works, and my history with them. I eventually gave up this idea, but many of the older sections still begin with a personal, chatty story that contrasts with the later academic analysis of the works.
I attempt, in the space of my expansive an/archive, to tell, as Paul Carter suggests, “two plausible stories – one to read, and one to see” (2004, p. 129) – the artwork installation shows an anarchive that is clearly multiple and diverse and pluralistic in its art and aesthetic choices, as well as clearly drawing on archival practices in its use of description and arrangement strategies; this dissertation sets out to combine aspects of a practice-based and an archive-based research project which shows the history of the research, its position within the contemporary art and archive theory fields, and its
27 attempts to recuperate and materialise memory for future, indeterminate uses. With this juxtaposition of elements within the spaces of the anarchival installation, I have followed personal paths to research based on my history as an artist and as a librarian. As Søren Kjørup suggests:
Research is not just following certain rules, but trying to find answers to questions that we find pressing or interesting, solving urgent problems, creating things we want or need – or just satisfying curiosity (2011, p. 30, emphasis added).
As I have been exhorted to focus my study on a number of occasions, it seems that combining 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 does not need another level of conceptualisation to be considered worthy of a PhD-level research study.
28 Past Research
It’s just another story caught up In another photograph I found. And it seems like another person lived that life A great many years ago from now. When I look back on my ordinary, ordinary life, I see so much magic, though I missed it at the time.
Jamie Callum, Photograph (2005, CD)
I have explored the use of cast-offs and detritus – chiefly human hair and socks – as a medium for artistic expression in both my Honours and Masters research, and for both I intertwined the artworks with ideas about groups and individuals. My concepts and concerns have been evolving, as have the techniques and methods to make the art, and have led to the current research.
In my BFA Honours research (Love 2002), I explored the use of human hair in artworks, investigated meanings and symbols of hair as expressed in cultural works (stories, art, religion, etc.), and interrogated my own interactions with hair that have helped shape my interest in its use as an artistic material. The major artwork that I produced consisted of an installation of 180 sheets of hand-made paper with hair imbedded in them (along with a series of works that made further use of these sheets of paper). I obtained the hair from donors interested in being in the project. Each sheet contained the hair of only one donor, and I saw it as a representation of that person, a portrait, or an indexical sign. Each sheet of paper therefore represented one individual, and that sheet could exist by itself. The installation, however, set these “individuals” in a 9x20 grid, which I saw as a symbol of society, of disparate individuals, unconnected except by their inclusion in this artwork, joined together.
This installation, entitled Memento Vivere (2002) (figs. 1 and 2) – Latin, roughly, for ‘remember [that you must] live’ – was in distinction to the idea of the memento mori, that which reminds us that we will die. I had used the idea of groups in a number of artworks before this, but this was the first time that I had explored the idea of the known (and named) individual within groups. Previous works had presented anonymous human hair bunched or woven together as a proxy for a society that forces individuals together with no concern for them as individuals; a society that oppresses, cages, and kills the individual. Many of the previous works had concentrated on death, often mass-death themes like the Holocaust. The grid of paper that was Memento Vivere acted as a symbolic society of known individuals, all equal, together, but free to be moved around and placed individually.
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Figure 1. Memento Vivere (detail), 2002
The written component of that research has strong parallels with this current dissertation. Firstly, the different aspects of research – the faux fortune telling technique of human hair embedded in paper, the use of hair for sympathetic magic, the art of Gu Wenda, the religious meanings and uses of hair – were broken into sections, each with a title that was a hair colour from professional dyes – Alpine Blonde, Golden Blonde, Chestnut Copper, Rich Burgundy, Black Cherry, Blue Black. Each section also included a personal anecdote about hair, to emphasise the relationship I had had with hair up to that point, and justifying my interest; these anecdotes included having my hair washed in Japan (face forward), brushing my mother’s hair as a child, shaving my head, and encountering Gu Wenda’s artworks for the first time. In a way I was echoing Sei Shônagon’s Pillow Book, years before I had read it. Another parallel with the current dissertation is the use of only my own artwork as images. The works I discuss in this current paper are by well-known artists, and readily available on the internet. By interspersing this dissertation with images of the weavings I have included in the final installation, I am hoping to suggest that it is analogous to an archival collection, and it strengthens the claims that this document acts as a personal archive.
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Figure 2. Memento Vivere, 2002
I developed the ideas of groups and individuals further in my Master of Fine Arts thesis and artwork (Love 2007). I again used the idea of individuals joined together in a group, but for one of the series of work I wove human hair into rectangular panels, so that each individual (distinguishable by hair colour) was inextricably, irrevocably woven together with other individuals into a group. Each panel ended with the hair of an individual, and the next panel in the series started with that same person’s hair, so that all the panels were connected by the presence of individuals across two panels.
Figure 3. Six Degrees (detail), 2004-07
The title was Six Degrees (2004-07) (figs. 3 and 4), and was an embodiment of the six degrees of separation, the idea that fewer than six individuals connect us to everyone
31 else on earth. The individuals who populated two panels also represented the phenomenon in our lives of being part of a number of different groups, which collectively make up who we are as people. This idea was further examined in the series I Am Because We Are.
Figure 4. Six Degrees (detail), 2004-07
Figure 5. I Am Because We Are, 2004-06
I Am Because We Are (2004-06) (fig. 5) was an installation made from socks which had been donated by people from around the world in response to my requests. Like Six Degrees, it consisted of objects from individuals woven together to make groups.
32 These two series also included the names of the donors with the hair and socks, and I explored the use of names in memorials. I proposed that memorials act as sites of symbolic communitas, or communities of equals, joined together in liminal spaces, without hierarchies, and away from the everyday world. I considered memorials from around the world for a myriad of events and reasons (for the living and the dead), all of which used names of people as part of the memorial. These were memorials that provide examples of the concepts I had been exploring in my artworks – that groups are made of individuals who retain their individuality rather than being absorbed by the group into anonymity, even in death.
Figure 6. Silence, 2011
An individual work, unrelated to any of the above research, was a piece called Silence (2011) (fig. 6), which I produced for the 1st Tamworth Textile Triennial, which perhaps provides an origin for my display of the weavings in the installation Geniza. The work consisted of a pile of wire dolls stuffed with human hair, which was covered by a textile woven in a honeycomb pattern from human hair. The dolls and fabric were on top of a 178cm high plinth (my height), which had the dimensions of a single bed. I wanted to suggest both a pile of dead people covered by a shroud, and a group of babies covered by a blanket (honeycomb weave often being used in textiles for babies). I put the work on a tall plinth to make it difficult to see, for some misanthropic reason; I decided at that time that viewing art was too easy, and people needed to put in a bit more work when looking at my art! The six hundred weavings that make up Geniza are all rolled up, and stacked on shelves, not displayed flat for easy contemplation. Just as
33 the discrete narratives and histories collected about my weavings are not necessarily interesting by themselves, but become meaningful as part of the whole, so each individual weaving is not meant to be seen as an individual art work, but only as parts of the anarchival installation.
34 Biographical Note
I never knew that I had a birthmark at the back of my neck until I was about 20 years old. No one had ever mentioned it before. Had my mother not noticed at birth? Had she just neglected to tell me? I found out when I had a haircut which involved shaving the back of my head. There was a big red mark that was now clearly visible to the world. It has since made a few appearances as my hairstyles have changed over the years, but in between I usually forget it even exists.
Rodney Love, Memento Vivere (2002, p. 11)
Rodney Love was born in Perth, Western Australia. He attended Morley Primary School, and Trinity College. After high school he worked for two years in the Commonwealth Bank, in the South Perth, and Maddington branches. At night school during this time, he studied the Japanese language. He began studying a Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) degree at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (later Curtin University) in 1986. In 1988 he went to live in Japan, with work on the JET Program. He taught at junior high schools for three years, and then worked for language schools for another three years. He returned to Australia and moved to Sydney, where he worked in hotels, and as a personal carer, before starting a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the College of Fine Arts (later the Faculty of Art and Design, UNSW) in 1999, completing an Honours year in 2002. During this time, he began exhibiting as an artist in various group and solo shows, at artist-run, commercial, and public galleries. In 2004 he started a Master of Fine Arts degree at the same institution. During his studies, he worked part-time in the university library, and after completion of his MFA, he worked full time in the Library for five years. During that time he began a postgraduate degree in Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, leaving with a Graduate Certificate when he left the library in 2012. In that year he completed a Graduate Diploma in Education at UNSW, and the following year began this PhD. He lived in Timor-Leste from 2016 to 2019, and then returned to Sydney where he has been working as a high-school teacher while completing his PhD.
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36
‘A’ IS FOR ALPHABETICAL
37 Anarchives 40 Archival Sedimentation 44 Archival Theory 47 Break Down, Michael Landy 53 Christian Boltanski 55 The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Danilo Kiš 61 Georges Perec 64 Installations 69 The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, Ilya Kabakov 72 Mass Observation 75 Memory 77 Moor, Janine Antoni 82 The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk 84 Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories 87 Natalie Billing 94 One Boy’s Day, Roger G. Baker and Herbert F. Wright 96 Personal Archives 98 The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon 103 Possessions and the Self 106 Roland Barthes 110 Time Capsules, Andy Warhol 113 Walter Benjamin 115
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39 Anarchives
Against Nature is a brazen enough title in English, but in fact Against the Grain would better have captured the suggestive range of its French Original, A Rebours, a far more open-ended title. To do something á rebours is to run countercurrent, to go against the flow, to do things the wrong way around; but it also suggests stubbornness, perversity, wilful difficulty – qualities and tendencies which Huysmans’ hero, Des Esseintes, shares with the novel that tells his story.
Patrick McGuiness, Introduction to Against Nature (2003, p. xiv)
What has been termed the ‘archival turn’ in contemporary art (Simon 2002) often involves artworks that have the appearance of archives, that challenge the politics of the archive, or that suggest new models for archives, but which are not actually archives; that is, they do not meet the criteria that archival theorists or professional archivists demand for a body of documents to be considered an archive (see also Foster 2004; Yerushalmy 2009; Crookham 2015; Osthoff 2009). What is needed is a term which can be used by those who are interested in exploring, creating or curating archives, but who are not actually archivists. The term ‘anarchives’ has been used by a number of writers to suggest a challenging of the traditional archive. Unfortunately these writers have not always used the term in the same way, and other writers have used terms such as ‘counter-archives’, or ‘shadow archives’ to denote similar concepts. In this section I want to examine these various meanings and concepts, and argue for my adoption of the one term ‘anarchive’ (and its adjectival form ‘anarchival’).
Coining a neologism is something I’m sure many PhD students dream of; you are deep in the research, finding new and interesting connections between phenomena, and in your mind you think of a startling and original new concept. In the pre-digital era, it was probably possible to create a new term, find it nowhere in the literature, and believe that you were the creator of it. In the digital age, however, one soon discovers that the new and sparkling term that was created actually exists in a number of articles, blogs or web pages. Not only has the term been used by others, but it has also been used in different ways. The researcher, therefore, needs to define the term as it is used in the original research, but also explain why that definition is better or more relevant than the uses assigned by others. This has been my dilemma with the term ‘anarchives’, which, along with ‘counter-archives’, ‘shadow archives’, and ‘pseudo-archives’, in different ways, position themselves in opposition to traditional archives.
Before I began planning this section, I thought that I had discovered the concept of ‘anarchives’ through a typographical error when intending to write ‘an archivist’ in my PhD Journal. The entry for June 7, 2014 reads, “I’m positioning myself as anarchivist
40 rather than as an artist. Oh, interesting typo – anarchivist. The opposite of an archivist? Anarchives could be the name for what I’m investigating – the discarded, the gaps.” I mistyped the words, and discovered a concept – an archive that is the opposite of an archive, or a non-archive. Unfortunately, memory being as fallible as it is, I had forgotten that in the journal on May 23, 2013, I had written: “Anarchives – anarchivist – anarchivisation.” Highlighting the problem that I am attempting to correct with this project, there is no contextualisation or commentary included with these terms. How had these terms occurred to me? Had I read them somewhere? What did I intend them to mean? Unfortunately, those questions cannot be answered now as whatever thoughts I had at the time are lost to history; they are part of, perhaps, an anarchive of forgotten thoughts.
Something I have discovered while conducting my research is the almost complete dichotomy between the literature on archives as theorized by the archival profession, and the literature on archives as defined in the art world. In fact the only professional archivist I found relevant for this section, William J. Maher, speaks of the proliferation of “pseudo-archives” – those that “constitute private and idiosyncratic collections developed ex post facto, and thus are far from the contextually based organic bodies of evidence” that make up the majority of archives (Maher 1998, p. 255). Ernst van Alphen also speaks of “pseudo-archives” in relation to the art installations of Christian Boltanski (2007, p. 378). The dichotomy in thinking about archives, then, reflects the differences in the term “archival practice” between the professional work of archivists, and the way artists “[take] archival forms or [use] archival materials or modes of presentation” in order to explore the potential of archives (Breakell 2015, p. 1). This artistic “archival impulse” (Foster 2004) has also been described (regarding the work of artist Thomas Hirschorn) as “alternative archive making,” a “paradoxical archival practice” (Balona de Oliveira 2008. n.p.), “a counter-hegemonic archive” (Foster quoted in Balona de Oliveira 2008, n.p.), and making use of “a quasi-archival logic” (Foster 2004, p.5). These can all be summed up in the oppositional term ‘anarchives’.
In defining the term ‘anarchives’, there is also disagreement about which prefix is being used. Liz Brozgal (2014) suggests that the prefix is “an-” meaning “not” or “without” (2014, p. 50). This fits with the way that artists use archival forms, but may not actually be creating archives. The sense of ‘without’ encompasses the way that many today think of databases or digital information as a form of anarchive in that, like artistic archives, they share many characteristics with archives, without actually being archives. In contrast to these meanings, Elisa Adami and Alessandra Ferrini suggest
41 that the prefix “ana-“ is in use, with the meanings of “both ‘above’ and ‘against’, but also ‘upside down’ and ‘wrong’” (2014, n.p.). These meanings are used by those with a social-justice agenda who feel that some in society have been kept out of the archives by the gate-keeping archivists intent on maintaining social power (Brozgal 2014; Zielinski & Winthrop-Young 2015). Thus the anarchive or ‘counter-archive’ is seen as correcting the exclusionary practices of official archives (Merewether 2006).
The idea of a counter-archive originates in the concept of the counter-monument, coined by James E. Young (1992) to describe the problems with commemoration in Germany after the Second World War when the traditional idea of monuments – idealistic, stable, solid, permanent, heroic – were at odds with the idea of memorializing the crimes of the Nazi regime. Artists led the way with alternative forms of commemoration that were diffuse, unheroic, impermanent and unspectacular. The idea of a counter-archive, then, is one that challenges ideas about official archives, particularly those of states that practiced regimes of surveillance (The Democratic Republic of Germany), or that documented the extermination of their own citizens (the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) (Merewether 1998). The suggestion by Ria Van der Merwe (2015) that African story quilts can be seen as counter-archival also fits with the idea of art works being a different type of archive, one ‘above’ or ‘against’ the dominant idea, which can work to question the values of the appraisal process for archival inclusion.
This sense of the inclusive anarchive is echoed in the use of the term “shadow archive” by Alan Sekula (1986, p. 10). He sees it as a general archive of (in his case) photographs that expands to fill the whole world. Joseph Pugliese (2011) expands on this idea to link it with the sense of counter-archival inclusivity, which embraces those who have been marginalized. In contrast to this sense of the term, Akira Lippit (2005) uses ‘shadow archive’ to suggest something that is hidden within the archive. He refers to Freud’s hiding of his manuscript of Moses and Monotheism amongst his other papers, hoping that in the future it would find a time and people more receptive to its message (Lippit 2005). This sense of the term is harder to reconcile with any of the meanings posited for ‘anarchives’; it is possible to have an archive contain within itself a hidden component without negating the idea of the archive, or suggesting that it is ‘above’ or ‘against’ the archive. For that reason I would suggest that Sekula’s definition can be subsumed within the idea of the anarchive, but that the idea of a hidden section of an archive can be called a ‘shadow archive’.
42 A further glossing of the term ‘anarchive’ is the way that it sounds similar to ‘anarchy’. This is explored by a number of writers who see the lack of hierarchy and order of the anarchive – “the chaos, the inert disorder, the indeterminacy” (Stewart 2011, p. 152) - as being synonymous with the loss of social order in anarchy. This can also be reflected in the idea of the destruction of the archive, when Jacques Derrida suggests that the Freudian “death drive” is “anarchivic” (Derrida 1995, p. 10), in that it destroys its own archive, and leaves no trace. (Since the use of the term ‘archival’ is well established, I lean more to the use of the adjective ‘anarchival’ rather than ‘anarchivic’, as indeed Foster does when he suggests that the exploration of archives in contemporary art may in fact be seen as an “anarchival impulse” (2004)). Garrett Stewart also uses the idea of anarchy when he describes book art works that destroy information, but present the results in an archival form, as really representing anarchives (2011, p. 151).
For my own research, I choose to call my installation Geniza an anarchive as it has been created through the destruction of items that could have entered an archive, as evidence of transactions in my life. Instead they have been cut up and shredded, and remediated as anarchival forms which no longer contain the evidentiary value they may have had. In addition, by rolling the woven forms into scrolls and stacking them on shelves, I have hidden the information that they do contain from the audience, in what could be considered a shadow archive. The sense of awaiting disposal, contained in the idea of the geniza, also suggests the sense of it being not an archive, that it lacks the permanence of the archive, but also with the idea that the information may be available for an unspecified use in the future. In contrast with the anarchival impulse that has destroyed the material culture of my existence, an archival impulse simultaneously operates to record the narratives and contexts of those items, and the process of the creation of the woven forms, in the documentation forms that constitute a separate archive.
43 Archival Sedimentation
“Imagine,” [an archaeologist] had said, “a summer. At the end of it the leaves fall. They lie on the ground. They almost dissolve, you might say, but not quite. The next year the same thing happens again, And again. Thinned out, compressed, those leaves and all the other vegetation build up in layers, year after year. It’s the natural process. It’s organic.
“Something similar happens with man, and especially in a city. Each year, each age, leaves something. It gets compressed, of course, it disappears under the surface, but just a little of all that human life remains. A Roman tile, a coin, a clay pipe from Shakespeare’s time. All left in place. When we dig down, we find it and we may put it on show. But don’t think of it just as an object. Because that coin, that pipe belonged to someone: a person who lived, and loved, and looked out at the river and the sky each day just like you and me.
“So when we dig down into the earth under our feet, and find all that is left of that man or woman, I try to remember that what I am seeing and handling is a huge and endless compression of lives. And sometimes in our work here, I feel as if we’ve somehow entered into that layer of compressed time, prised open that life, a single day even, with its morning, and evening, and its blue sky and its horizon. We’ve opened just one of the millions and millions of windows, hidden in the ground.”
Edward Rutherfurd, London: The novel (1988, p. 1298)
It’s why archaeologists get so agitated about illicit excavations today. For although the precious finds will usually survive, the context which explains them will be lost, and it’s the context of material – often financially worthless – that turns treasure into history.
Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (2012, p. 104)
The metaphor of sedimentation is how Michael J. Hill (1993) describes the way an archive comes into being, from the choices of the creator of the archive, through the mediation of third parties after the death of the creator, to the archival decisions made by professional archivists when the materials reach an archive. Any potential archival material that is deemed worthy of preserving goes through processes of selection, erosion, arrangement and re-arrangement, ordering and disordering, before finally settling into an institutional archive. What a researcher finds there, then, “is likely to be partial, fragmented, and uneven” (p. 14), and “the materials may indeed rest in archival configurations that would be foreign or puzzling to the people who originally created or kept them” (p. 19). Just as the addition of narratives to individual items gives us a greater knowledge of the materials, and the history and personality of the subject who collected them, so the narrativisation of the archival sedimentation process can identify gaps – especially of materials that have been culled along the way – explain ordering principles, and allow researchers to better understand the archival deposit that they confront.
44 Hill’s concept of “primary sedimentation” (p. 9) involves the original creator or collector of the materials which may end up in an archive. He invokes a hypothetical scholar who collects materials that she finds “‘interesting,’ ‘useful someday,’ or just something to be ‘saved’” (p. 10). Occasionally, when space becomes short, she may cull this cache, but in an unpredictable, idiosyncratic way. Hill notes, “Most people keep things, but we usually have no assurance that they save the most important or significant materials” (p. 11). By keeping an inventory of discarded items, or explaining the rationale for keeping and discarding certain items, the archive creator can aid future researchers by identifying lacunae in the potential future archive.
Adding to the problems of erosion of materials at the primary phase of sedimentation is the ordering system that the creator brings to the materials. How the documents are discovered after this phase can have a huge influence on the shape of the final archive. Hill’s hypothetical scholar keeps items in different locations, which may pose a problem for the future:
Unless she simply piles one thing endlessly on top of another, creating a chronologically structured modern-day midden, she adds other, nonchronological complexities to her accumulation. Her “personal filing system” may be such that only she understands its rationale. Many academics of my acquaintance mix systematic filing with idiosyncratic practices having no apparent system (p. 12).
Contextualisation and narrativisation of the ordering of the materials can make it easier for archivists to create a system which allows appropriate materials to be placed together, and for researchers to understand their connections and significance, and to avoid problems such as this: “Sharply varied materials that are closely related in our scholar's mind (eclectic mementos from a trip abroad, for example) are thrown together in a drawer with no discernable rhyme or reason” (p. 12).
The “secondary sedimentation” (p. 14) phase occurs after the death of the creator, when they can make no more changes to the contents or the ordering of the materials, but when the potential archive becomes at the mercy of third parties, and “suspended betwixt and between oblivion and preservation” (p. 14). A creator’s wishes may be ignored, or not completely understood; items may be destroyed in an attempt to prevent scandal, or create a more favourable impression of the creator; or an heir may not understand the nature of the materials and throw everything out. At this point, even a carefully narrativised, ordered, and contextualised archive may be destroyed if sufficient instructions have not been left by a creator, or if a suitable institution cannot be found to house it.
45 If the materials are accepted for deposit by an archival institution, then they undergo a process of “tertiary sedimentation” (p. 16), where the institution’s own priorities and procedures have an effect on the final shape of the archive. Even being accepted depends on the worth of the materials for their documentary evidence and research potential, as judged by the curator archivists. The value that society places on the lives of some people over others creates worth in the documents of those lives. Hill notes that even though some institutions collect from a wider variety of people, elite and ordinary, “even these archives cannot hope to build comprehensive collections for every individual who might like to donate his or her papers and memorabilia. There are too many people and far too little archival space to go around” (p. 17). The materials that researchers may find in an archive, then, have been placed there often through random outcomes, or highly selected and mediated means. Their value needs to be judged against the other possible materials that could have been deposited, but for various reasons weren’t. Hill sums up:
Thus, through the processes of primary, secondary, and tertiary sedimentation, materials come to rest in boxes and file folders, on shelves and in vaults behind the locked doors of archival repositories. These materials are archival sediment, residual traces of human activity. They are selective traces, however, filtered by the combined imprint of personal machinations and idiosyncrasies, family sensibilities, professional envy and collegial admiration, organizational mandates, bureaucratic decisions, archival traditions, social structure, power, wealth, and institutional inertia. From such traces, we seek data from which to make sense of individuals, organizations, social movements, and sociohistorical settings (p. 19).
In my research, I am attempting to make visible one of the stages of this archival sedimentation by documenting the excision of materials from a potential archive. It is an attempt to increase the traces that remain, while recognising the finitude of space for potential archives. Even when the fame of an archives creator, such as Le Corbusier, or Andy Warhol, is such that every scrap of paper can be retained for its possible future use, still the sorting, organising and cataloguing of such materials requires the time and effort of archivists, and even after such processing, much of the material may be opaque to the researcher. Just as PhD researchers are urged to be self-reflexive, and to convey to readers their biases, and positions from which they approach their research, so archive creators can leave their creations more useful and transparent by making the sedimentation process more visible, and explaining decisions to potential future users. Although we cannot know the future use that will be made of our archival efforts, we can at least reduce any potential confusion or misunderstanding by fully documenting the archival sedimentation process.
46 Archival Theory
The house looked incredibly bare and bleak after they had gone, and when I took a last look round before I left it, my footsteps making a hollow sound on the bare, dusty floorboards, I felt a wave of sadness flood through me, at the fragility of our grip on life, the ease with which the marks we leave on the surface of the earth are erased. Tony Harrison said it all, in a few lines:
The ambulance, the hearse, the auctioneers clear all the life of that lived house away. The hard-earned treasures of some 50 years sized up as junk, and shifted in a day.
David Lodge, Deaf Sentence (2009, p. 303)
When the focus of this research became that of creating an installation from items that I was disposing of, the idea that I was creating an archive came to the fore. I therefore set about reading widely about archives, believing that I was creating an archive of woven forms, and fully intending to adhere to archival principles as far as possible in relation to the construction of the artworks, and this dissertation. What I discovered was that no theory of archives covered what I was doing, and that the ideas I have discussed in other entries in this section, such as personal archives, and the use of archives in art, differed widely depending on the writer or theorist. Archival theory, as defined by Luciana Duranti, “is the whole of the ideas about what archival material is, whereas archival methodology is the whole of the ideas about how to treat it. Archival practice is the use that archivists make of both theoretical and methodological ideas in their work” (1994, p. 330). I have, therefore, cherry picked theoretical and methodological ideas that match my own creative uses of the archive, or, to use a more apt metaphor, woven together disparate threads to create a fabric that is this dissertation, the installation Geniza, and the archive of documentation. I have created my own archival rules, based on the needs of my research and of my creative practice. This is justified, because, as John Roberts asserts: “Archival work is intrinsically, inescapably ad hoc” (1990, p. 112), and, in an article which wonders whether archival theory is in fact “much ado about shelving,” Roberts states:
Above all, it should be remembered that archivy per se is a fairly straightforward, down to earth service occupation; it is not a liberal science…. The knowledge that archivists must have to be effective can easily be summarized: they need to know procedures and technology; … they need to know history; and they especially need to know their records. Everything else is either unnecessary or will fall into place well enough without the mediation of a priesthood of theorists (Roberts 1987, p. 74).
Archivists also need to be adaptable, because, as Terry Cook writes:
I suggest that archival science should view archival ideas, strategies, and methodologies over the past centuries, and from here into future centuries, as
47 concepts that are constantly evolving, ever mutating, continually adapting, because of radical changes in the nature of records, record-creating structures, organizational and work cultures, societal and institutional functions, individual and personal record-keeping predilections, …and the wider cultural, legal, technological, social, and philosophical trends in society (2001a, p. 17).
I have, therefore, adapted archival ideas to fit with my own creative research needs, and output.
Another feature to note about archives is that they “hold singular information not duplicated elsewhere” (Ridener 2008, p. 4) – often like museums, but unlike libraries, which hold published works available in other places. Because of this singularity, “[it] is logical that individual archives would each create their own specific approach to keeping their unique collections” (Ridener 2008, p. 4). The “specific approach” I am taking towards the an/archive described here, and explored through the creative work produced through this research process, is that all the items in my life constitute records of my actions, ideas, opinions, and experiences, and that keeping a record of them, and, more specifically, a record of the objects or documents I do not retain, constitutes a richer archive, with more context, more information, and therefore forms a basis for greater use, “for any number of reasons by any type of user” (Millar 2010, p. 19). Given that I have been required to justify my own research decisions, and explain what the research could be used for, I quote Laura Millar’s statement about archives, but suggest it applies equally well to PhD research and results: “While it is dangerous to overemphasize the immediate research value of archives, it is equally risky to choose not to keep archives because no one can see a possible use for them today or next week” (2010 p. 129).
Archives
What, firstly, constitutes an archive? Looking at the so-called ‘Dutch Manual’ of the late nineteenth century, we see that an “archival collection” – the translator’s term for an archive – is
the whole of the written documents, drawings and printed matter, officially received or produced by an administrative body or one of its officials, in so far as these documents were intended to remain in the custody of that body or that official (Muller, Feith & Fruin 1968, p. 13; italics in original).
This manual was produced to deal with governmental, and bureaucratic archives that proliferated in the modern era, and this definition reflects those concerns. Englishman Hilary Jenkinson (1937) wrote his manual after World War I, and was similarly concerned with dealing with large amounts of government documents. His definition of archives is “documents which formed part of an official transaction and were preserved
48 for official reference” (Jenkinson 1937, p. 4; italics in original), including “both documents specially made for, and documents included in, an official transaction” (p. 5; italics in original), but which also extends to “collections made by private or semi- private bodies or persons, acting in their official or business capacities” (p. 8; italics in original). The above definitions are similar in their emphasis on official documents and business; Theodore Schellenberg, writing in America after World War II, has a more inclusive, if not vague, definition:
Those records of any public or private institution which are adjudged worthy of permanent preservation for reference and research purposes and which have been deposited or have been selected for deposit in an archival institution (1956, p. 16).
There is no longer the necessity for the documents to be for the use of the creator, or in the custody of that creator, or any mention of official business. He does go on to emphasise the “primary values” and “secondary values” (Schellenberg 1956, p. 16) of documents in archives, referring to the reasons they were originally used, and the uses – indeterminate, and possibly unknowable – to which they may be put by future users.
The manuals mentioned above form a trinity of archival theory texts, and are still influential today, but many other nuances are added to definitions of archives. Archives are “authentic evidence of human activity and experience [transmitted] through time” (Ketelaar 2004, p. 25), and store “information that will provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time (Ham 1975, p. 5). These “actions and experiences” recorded in archival materials “support the protection of documentary memory and heritage for the benefit of society today and in the future” (Millar 2010, p. xviii), as well as “[serve] to stimulate public memory” (Eastwood 1992, p. 71). Ann-Marie Schwirtlich’s pithy definition of archives is: “The non-current records of an organisation, institution or individual which are selected for preservation because of their continuing value” (1987, p. 2) (with ‘continuing value’ “mean[ing] simply that records are kept for some reason, however minimal” (Hofman 2005, p. 135)). The term “total archives” was a Canadian concept from the 1970s, which meant that “[a]nything historical was “archival,” from diaries and letters to government correspondence and corporate files” (Millar 1998, p. 110), and that “archives in their broadest sense… [encompass] everything that constitutes the remnants of the past (including debris)” (Cox 2004, p. 240). “Archives”, then,
frequently appear hospitable to anything that has proved capable of being stored in an organization’s or individual’s filing system. Archives are often said to be ‘organic’, insofar as they accrue more or less naturally in the course of organizational business or personal life, but in another sense they are shaped
49 by retention and aggregation decisions made by their custodians (Yeo 2010, p. x).
“Total archives,” however, means that all items are possible archival materials, not that all materials become part of archives; in fact, archives are “constructed by archivists from some of the records of certain creators, not all of the records of all possible creators” (Nesmith 2006, p. 265). They do this through making appraisal decisions.
Appraisal
Appraisal is the process by which archivists determine which items to keep, or acquire for inclusion in an archive, because, given the vast number of records created in contemporary bureaucratic, literate societies, “all records cannot possibly be kept on an enduring basis by archives. Hard choices must be made” (Cook 2011, p. 174). These choices are determined by the purposes of the institution creating the archives: government agencies collect records of government business; corporate archives keep records for legal as well as historical reasons; regional archives might collect items of historical as well as sociological or archaeological importance to that region; art museums collect documents related to the artworks or artists in their collections (Craig 2004). Given the diverse nature of archival institutions, and their collection policies, “no amount of archival theory can definitively answer the questions of what to keep and what to discard” (Millar 2010, p. xix), or, as John Roberts puts it, in his article questioning the validity of archival theory as a concept, “Flawless application of a pseudo-scientific model would not produce a good records appraisal any more than flawless penmanship would produce a good novel” (1990, p. 115).
Appraisal decisions, then, determine not only the contents of a particular archive, but what information is available for future use, because archivists “[select] only a comparatively few records for survival” (Nesmith 2006, p. 263), and what they “[decide] to keep becomes valuable as much because it has been kept as because it was worth keeping” (Millar 2010, p. 115) – that is, the very act of appraising documents for acquisition and retention confers importance on them, regardless of their contents. In order for future users to understand the decisions that have gone into shaping the contents of the archive, it is essential that archivists conduct appraisal “in defendable, accountable, well-researched, participatory, and transparent ways, leaving a clear record of our keep-destroy decisions, and why and how they were made, and by whom, and then whether the related records were actually acquired in whole or in part” (Cook 2011, p. 178). My research has been exploring not just the creation of an archive and an anarchival artwork, but the ways that those items which have been appraised as not worthy of retention in my everyday life are prevented from
50 disappearing altogether, because “[whatever] is not kept is, in the normal course of events, gone forever; as the documents are destroyed, so too are the stories and events and lives they depict” (Millar 2010, p. 115). As Terry Cook suggests, “we are what we do not keep, what we consciously exclude, marginalize, ignore, destroy” (2011, p. 174). In an earlier work, he suggests that “archivists should consider placing “negative” entries” in their descriptions of archives (Cook 2001b, p. 34), so that the absences of documents, subjects and voices are clear to future users of the archive, an idea which is at the core of my research concerns.
Context
If an archival document is the record of an activity of its creator, then knowledge of “its contextuality and its transactionality” (Upward & McKemmish 1993, p. 1) is key to understand not only the importance of the document, but the appraisal decisions that led to its retention. Laura Millar defines “context” as
the functional, organizational and personal circumstances surrounding the creation of the record. If content is the ‘what’ and structure is the ‘how’, context is everything else: the ‘who’, ‘where’, and possibly even ‘why’. Context identifies who created the record, how the record was used and stored and perhaps even why the record existed in the first place (2010, p. 8).
The recording of the context of documents by archivists is a way of “mapping the provenancial interrelationships between the creator and the record,” as well as “explaining to users the context behind the text” (Cook 2001b, p. 28). The creators of archival records, whether individuals or groups, change over time, and the nature of the activities undertaken may also change; Paul Brunton and Tim Robinson suggest, “these new directions are reflected in the records and provide important evidence for the researcher” (1987, p. 130). Given that many records created are not included in an archive, these changes may not be reflected in the records themselves, but require archivists to provide contextual information; if, however, the “creators and original users are no longer available, the appraiser is unable to talk to these important sources to develop a fuller understanding of the implicit knowledge that users brought to the records and their system of keeping” (Craig 2004, p. 101). It is essential for archivists to “[research] the contextualities of the records... to provide sufficient contextual meaning to make retention decisions” (Nesmith 2006, p. 263), and, as part of Terry Cook’s “macro-appraisal” method,
archivists would seek to understand why records were created rather than what they contain, how they were created and used by their original users rather than how they might be used in future, and what formal functions and mandates of
51 the creator they supported rather than what internal structure or physical characteristics they may or may not have (1992, p. 47).
In order to foster a “richer understanding of creator contextuality that can turn information into knowledge” (Cook 1997, p. 37), then, my research shows the importance of the record creator’s own attempts at contextualisation, especially of disposed items, because otherwise it would be impossible for a curator-archivist to fully understand the context of the records, let alone my appraisal decisions which determined which records were retained (in my diaries, or other storage means), and which were disposed of.
52 Break Down
Michael Landy
Besides, how can one appreciate the work of a writer as a whole if one does not take it from its beginning and trace it step by step; most importantly, how can one follow the progress of Grace in a soul if one suppresses the traces of its passage, if one wipes out its first prints?
Joris-Karl Huysman, Against Nature (2003, p. 214)
During a two-week period in February 2001, as an art performance/installation, Michael Landy destroyed 7,227 items, the sum total of all his possessions at that time (Landy & Lingwood 2008). In an abandoned department store in London, a faux waste reclamation facility was created that circulated the various material possessions on a series of conveyor belts to display them to the audience, but also to take them to functionaries whose job it was to break them down into small granules which eventually made their way to landfill – “[A] lifetime of consumerism ended in heaps of dust” (Shone 2008, p. 39). At the end of the two-week period, there was no material evidence left of the consumer and lifestyle choices, the gifts, or the creations that together created a biographical documentation of Landy’s life; all that remained was the inventory that took a year to create, listing every item which was destroyed (Landy 2001).
This inventory contains mostly mundane descriptions of personal and household items (“C544 Sainsbury’s single blue cotton/polyester sock”; “K1527 Large circular stainless steel dinner tray” (Landy 2001, n.p)), which could belong to almost anyone. Occasionally entries provide a narrative which makes the items more personal, and reveal details of Landy’s life and relationships:
“C425 Sunspell medium size light blue cotton boxer shorts, purchased at Selfridges with Kathy Temin”; “C651 Derek Rose worn medium size stripy blue and white cotton pyjama top, present from Abigail Lane purchased at Harrods”; “K1533 Large wooden peppercorn grinder, stolen from Pizza Express by Mat Collishaw and Abigail Lane”; “L1774 Green plastic moulded tree on base, part of toy broken in fit of temper”; “S5715 Two steel etching pens with points embedded in polystyrene, borrowed from Peter Kosowicz” (All inventory items Landy 2001, n.p.).
Presumably almost all of the items could have had some narrative attached (although Landy has suggested many of them were “things you find at the bottom of a drawer that have fallen off something else and you can't remember what” (Landy & Stallabrass 2001)), but that may have made the creation of the inventory stretch out to multiple years.
53 Although destroying everything one owns may be considered a radical form of dispossession, other people have attempted to sell all their material possessions. The creation of eBay, the online auction site, made it much easier to dispose of items that once may have been disposed of through, say, garage sales. It also allows for the accumulation of photographs and descriptions of the items for sale which can remain after the fact, acting as evidence of the transactions of a life, or at least of the sale itself. John Freyer created the website allmylifeforsale.com in 2000 as “an online project that explored our relationship to the objects around us, their role in the concept of identity, as well as the emerging commercial systems of the Internet” (Freyer 2001), as well as a platform for the display and narrativisation of all his possessions. He linked the items on this site to eBay and made them available for auction with a starting price of $1 (eventually making around $6000 for the 600 or so items (Garfield 2002)). This way of disposing of the material culture of one’s life is perhaps less radical than destroying everything, but it still acts as a means of dispersing en masse the evidence of consumer choices, or accumulation patterns of a life. This form of disposal has had imitators, or at least others who thought along the same lines, including Ian Usher (2010), and Shane Butcher (Thier 2012), who also listed all their possessions for sale on eBay, and “an imitator in Australia who was selling her life on a site called AMLFS.com” (an abbreviation of All My Life For Sale, Freyer’s website) (Garfield 2002). Jasper Joffe, another British artist, tried to sell off his possessions through an art gallery exhibition, in a combination of the strategies of Landy and Freyer. He bundled his possessions into lots for sale for £3333 (Pryor 2009).
Unlike these examples of radical dispossession, Geniza is not an attempt to completely destroy all the artefacts and documents of my life; instead it is suggested as a way of keeping track of that which is discarded in the course of a normal life, and of recuperating the narratives and memories that brought those aspects of material culture into one’s life (and out of it again). The year-long creation of Landy’s minimalist inventory suggest the amount of time it takes to record such details of a life, let alone the amount of time it would take to contextualise, and create comprehensive narratives of every item. I am exploring the possibility of making a record of items as they leave one’s possession a part of everyday life.
54 Christian Boltanski
It was just a casual hobby, nothing serious, but I noticed that among the photos I found, the strangest and most intriguing ones were always of children. I began to wonder who some of these strange-looking children had been – what their stories were – but the photos were old and anonymous and there was no way to know. So I thought: If I can’t know their real stories, I’ll make them up.
Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children (2011, p. 358)
I wrote extensively about French artist Christian Boltanski’s different artistic tropes during my research into memorials (Love 2008); at that time, I was interested in the way that individuals were remembered as parts of groups, and the way that Boltanski’s works had an almost lenticular effect, where the focus was on the group, and then the individual, and back again. For this research, Boltanski’s oeuvre again provides numerous examples for tropes that both emphasise and question the importance of the archive, especially the ability to preserve that which he calls “small memory” (in Golding 2000, p. 60), or the ephemeral memories of individuals that do not become historical and cultural memories, and that are particularly vulnerable to erasure. Although Boltanski’s works seem to encourage an obsessive personal archivisation programme in order to secure these small memories from dispersal and destruction, they also question the ability of archives to retain narratives of the documents so secured.
Christian Boltanski has been described as an “ethnographer of the everyday” (Marmer 1989, p. 177) who engages in “a pseudo-anthropology of past and present” (Eccles 2004, p. 12) and an “Archeology of the Personal” (Kemme 2006, p. 129) by using “the trivia and detritus of everyday living” (Hobbs 1998, p. 121), searching for an “exemplariness of the banal” (Semin 1997, p. 49; italics in original); I would hope that the preceding sentence, without the multiple references, could be used to describe my own explorations of the an/archival through this research project. The benefit of using artistic means to explore issues of the archive, the everyday, and the autobiographical is that it allows viewers to interpolate themselves into the imaginative space of an installation in order to think about their own archival futures, or about the survival of their autobiographical singularity. As Daniel Soutif suggests, Boltanski’s artworks “lead the observer to recognize himself in the images or the objects he is given to look at” (Soutif 1997, p. 145), and Boltanski himself describes the artist as “someone who holds a mirror and… all those who look in the mirror recognize themselves, but each one sees a different image” (in Marsh 1989, p. 40). In addition to providing general works about the archive, though, Boltanski also provides more personal works – “willfully contradictory and ambivalent at the same time” (Gumpert 1994, p. 147) – where his
55 “methodical self-mythologizing [is] embellished and enhanced by (pseudo)autobiographical anecdotes” (Gumpert 1994, p. 45). He proves to be an unreliable archivist not only in his exploration of archival tropes, but also (perhaps especially) when he deals with the potential archives of his own life.
One series of works which exemplifies these various strategies employed by Boltanski, exhibited over forty years from the early 1970s in various iterations, is the Inventories. The quotidian banality and triviality of the possessions of anonymous individuals has been presented in places as varied as Oxford, Charleston, Baden-Baden, Jerusalem, Barcelona, and New York, amongst others. Photographed and labeled in catalogues, presented in vitrines, and on plinths, the objects of these varied lives, through “museological framing… appear extraordinary, like a collection of ethnographic artifacts” (Putnam 2001, p. 43). Mary Jane Jacob describes this further:
Boltanski’s exhibit spoke about how objects become memorialized and made valuable by the passage of time and through their manner of presentation. Even unimportant items of today will take on a heightened significance in the future. Moreover, within their specificity he found anonymity: using the belongings of one individual, he touched upon the life of Everyman. Telling directly of one person’s life, he allowed us to identify strongly with that individual in terms of our own lives and surroundings. And here, as arranged by the artist, the items took on an enhanced meaning: in them we viewed ourselves, came face-to- face with our own mortality, and saw in tangible terms the profundity of the everyday (1991, p. 84).
The ability of these random objects to reflect the viewer’s own life is precisely because, some argue, they reveal nothing about the individuals whose belongings they were. Didier Semin suggests that these items “lost their value when they were separated from their owner; they teach us nothing about that person but mark out the absence that makes them desperately useless” (1997, p. 60). James Putnam also points out that “no attempt is made to point out the particular personality or character of the former owners. The objects might therefore be seen as material evidence of social trends” (2001, p. 43). This becomes even more relevant when one considers the veracity of the claims that the items in the Inventories even belonged to individual owners: in the case of the Bois-Colombes iteration of the series, “Boltanski admitted that he had ‘cheated’ the audience by exhibiting furniture he had borrowed from personal acquaintances” (van Alphen 1997, p. 114). Boltanski has claimed that the artefacts he uses “are simultaneously presence and absence. They are both an object and a souvenir of a subject” (in Marsh 1989, p.36); when the story of what the object is a souvenir of is lost or obscured, however, does the item have any relevance other than as a generalised object of its era, reminding viewers of their own possessions?
56 The idea of preserving the minutiae of a life is one that Boltanski has concerned himself with for decades. He has often spoken of the difference between personal and collective memories, and the fragility of the former:
Part of my work has been about what I call ‘small memory’. Large memory is recorded in books and small memory is about the little things: trivia, jokes. Part of my work then has been about trying to preserve ‘small memory’, because often when someone dies, their [sic] memory disappears. Yet that ‘small memory’ is what makes people different from one another, unique. These memories are very fragile; I wanted to save them (in Garb 1997, p. 19).
In the case of the Inventories, there are no stories attached to the items displayed; their ‘small memory’ may still exist in the minds of the owners, but that is not transmitted to the viewer. Boltanski has often also spoken about the influence of natural history museums on him, and the way the displays of artefacts of lost cultures puzzle us today: “All these things once meant something which is now lost…. Even the simplest things can become so quaint and often even cryptic” (in Beil 2006, p. 68). He seems to be caught between two desires: the first is to preserve the stories of a life to ensure the continuation of ‘small memory’, and the second is to appreciate the strangeness – and transmit that to viewers – of things that have lost their small memories. Some of his installations have involved lost property:
What’s so touching about lost property is that it has no story. I know the pipe I’m smoking right now, somebody gave it to me, but if I lose it in the street it has no story any longer. Nobody knows it anymore. That’s the beauty of mislaid keys or lost property. They are so important for each of us and, a moment later, they are reduced to nothing (Boltanski in Mendelsohn 2010, p. 155).
This obsession with the fragility of memory is worked through in his installations, but he seems more interested in lamenting the loss of memory, or at least raising the awareness of the issue with viewers, than in attempting to retain it. It has a personal dimension, as Boltanski wonders, “What will remain of me?” because, as he point out, after death, “There’s not much left of someone. But soon other people won’t even be able to make much sense of that which remains, such as the papers and notes that have been kept” (in Beil 2006, p. 56). The answer, it would appear, is in the archive.
Richard Hobbs notes that Boltanski is concerned that “experience is continuously reduced to fragmentary and inaccurate memories of the past,” and therefore, “archives represent for him a potential means of regaining access to what has been lost…” (1998, p. 121). Golding also argues that the archive serves this function because “it is in the transformation of our experience into forms that give it a continuing life that culture is made and meanings created – and in which alone ‘small memories’ can enjoy an after-life in the histories of the great” (Golding 2000, p. 67). What is needed,
57 then, is the preservation of not just the documents, and evidence of a life – in the form of material culture artefacts, photographs, or bureaucratic documents – but the narratives of those items, and their significance to the subject of the archive.
One way for these narrativised memories to be recorded is through personal archiving. Boltanski’s work often suggests that “the archive can counter the erosion of our identity and self-consciousness” (Hobbs 1998, p. 125), whether that occurs through the natural dispersal of memories as we age, or after death. Boltanski himself has written a crie de coeur about the efforts required to secure life after death:
We will never realize quite clearly enough what a shameful thing death is…. What we need to do is attack the roots of the problem in a big collective effort in which each of us will work towards his own survival and everyone else’s.
That’s why – because one of us has to give an example – I decided to harness myself to the project that’s been close to my heart for a long time: preserving oneself whole, keeping a trace of all the moments of our lives, all the objects that have surrounded us, everything we’ve said and what’s been said around us, that’s my goal. The task is vast, and my means are frail….
But the effort still to be made is great, and so many years will be spent searching, studying, classifying, before my life is secured, carefully arranged and labelled in a safe place, secure against theft, fire and nuclear war, from whence it will be possible to take it out and assemble it at any point, and that, being thus assured of never dying, I may, finally, rest (Boltanski 1997, p. 126).
The artwork that this statement accompanied – a booklet of photocopied photographs and documents, sent as mail art, called Research and presentation of all that remains of my childhood, 1944-50 (1969) – actually contained false information, and the childhood represented was mostly that of Boltanski’s nephew (Gumpert 1994, p. 24). Even though much of Boltanski’s work can be seen “as a continuing autobiography made up of self-portraits” (Gumpert 1994, p. 152), the documentary value of the alleged archives is constantly undermined by Boltanski himself: “A large part of my activity has to do with the idea of biography, but biography that is totally false, and that is presented as false, with all kinds of false evidence” (in Gumpert 194, p. 12). How, then, are we to view autobiographically archival works such as The archives of C.B. 1965-1988 (1989), and The impossible life of C.B. (2001)? Both are purported to contain documents and photographs from Boltanski’s life – “the lifetime detritus of the artist” (Albers 2011, p. 252) – created by “[removing] from his life and his studio years of accumulated clutter, shuffling his past into the boxes and out of sight, both from himself and from his audience” (Gumpert 1994, p. 140), an action reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules. The first work has the items inside rusted biscuit tins, while the second has them inside wall-mounted vitrines, with documents overlapping and
58 obscuring each other, further obscured by a fine mesh over the top, and displayed in low lighting. Thus, while seeming to reveal information about himself, Boltanski is further concealing his past, because although the documents used in these artworks may be preserved, they do not include any narratives or contextualisation which would explain their purpose in Boltanski’s life, or his reasons for preserving them. They also fail to fulfill one of the main purposes of an archive – accessibility.
In order for an archive to preserve personal or cultural memories, the information contained within it must be arranged, catalogued, and available for research and interpretation (Reed 2005). In regard to The archives of C.B. 1965-1988, Lynn Gumpert suggests that Boltanski’s “irrepressibly ambivalent and contradictory spirit was in evidence. True, the papers and ephemera were saved in an archive, but lacking any index or order, it is, practically speaking, unusable” (Gumpert 1994, p. 140). This would suggest that the work was not, in fact, “a ‘real’ archive, but only has an archival effect” (van Alphen 1999, p. 42); that is, it is an anarchive, made up of real and potentially archival documents. Boltanski himself has stated that: “It’s not an archive. It’s art about archive[s];” “You know, it’s a piece. It’s not an archive;” “It’s like, to speak about an archive, but it’s not an archive. I don’t care about archives. I care to speak about archives. It’s not the same thing” (in Albers 2011, p. 260). It is this “categorical indeterminacy” (Albers 2011, p. 260) that makes Boltanski’s work able to be interpreted in multiple ways, and which makes it interesting for viewers and theorists alike. A desire for the survival of autobiographical singularity through archival preservation is undercut by ambivalence about the ability of archives to achieve this. Aleida Assmann sums this up:
[Boltanski’s] artistic formats of the archive display and suggest all aspects of the acts of preservation and storage, for example: selection, conservation, aseptic cleanliness, perfect organization, overview, control, recall. This, however, is in no way fulfilled by Boltanski. He does not create an archive, he only cites the form of the archive; he does not preserve or store anything, but he simulates the act of storage. His inventories, released from the confines of names and writing, the irreplaceable medium of registering, do not list anything. His archives are purely a façade; the rooms of these archives are hollow spaces, the patinated tin boxes and cardboard boxes are empty (2006, p. 95).
Boltanski’s archival strategies come from a desire to preserve everything in order to cheat death, but with the recognition that this is impossible. As Hobbs suggests, “Boltanski is not deriding the archive; he is investigating its operation” (Hobbs 1998, p. 126). His investigations, though, have failed to address some of his concerns about the way the archive remains mute:
59 Someone tries to keep something safe, to store it, only to have it misunderstood later on. It’s all for nothing.
There are thousands of letters and hundreds of photos in La vie impossible de C.B., and yet they don’t explain anything.
It doesn’t matter how many archives you set up – it’s just not possible to hold onto life (in Beil 2006, p. 64-65).
Perhaps Boltanski has been going about his investigation the wrong way; his “fascination with the idea of saving everything” (Albers 2011, p. 249), and his “recommendation of an absurd and impossible life-style as untiring self-archivist” (Hobbs 1996, p. 125) are meaningless without the stories of the life that produced the documents in the archive. The small memories of a life need to be converted into tangible form in order for them to survive the death of that life. They may remain in the memories of families or friends, but then disappear when those lives are lost. By recording memories, narratives, histories, and contexts of various material documentary forms, and combining them as metadata with the contents of an ordered, catalogued, stored, and accessible archive, the lives of ordinary individuals can join with the ‘great’ memory of culture and society. Boltanski’s artworks have so far only critiqued the flaws of archives, without attempting more radical interventions into their procedures and practices.
60 The Encyclopedia of the Dead
Danilo Kiš
Days which if you put them all together and squeezed hard wouldn’t yield a drop of life. But that’s life: massed together and dry, filled with sterile, repetitious events always the same, whose memory is lost.
Aldo Busi, The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman (1989, p. 284)
The Encyclopedia of the Dead is a 1983 short story by Serbian writer Danilo Kiš (1989), which has an unnamed female protagonist discovering in the Swedish Royal Library a volume of The Encyclopedia of the Dead containing the biographical details of the life of her recently deceased father. The Encyclopedia entry has captured every detail of her father’s life in minute detail, and serves as a metaphor – prophetically – for the sort of digitised totality that seems to be becoming increasingly possible. It corresponds to my own research in its desire to rescue memory from oblivion, and to capture even the most trivial details of a lived life in some form of recordable representation.
The encyclopedia has been compiled by a religious group that has the aim of “redressing human injustices and granting all God’s creatures an equal place in eternity” (Kiš 1989, p. 44). The Encyclopedia of the Dead, therefore, only includes people not included in any other encyclopaedia or reference work, so that everyone has the chance of being remembered. The entries are compiled with the belief “that there is nothing insignificant in a human life, no hierarchy of events” (Kiš 1989, p. 56), and together the entries record a history, which “is the sum of human destinies, the totality of ephemeral happenings. That is why it records every action, every thought, every creative breath…” (Kiš 1989, p. 56). If no person is insignificant and undeserving of attention, then no detail is either.
Kiš emphasises this totality repeatedly throughout the story. The protagonist reads in wonder the details of her father’s life, and, as she only has one night in the library, attempts to record some of the information in a notebook, which then becomes the story we read. She writes:
The facts I have recorded here, in this notebook, are ordinary, encyclopedia facts, unimportant to anyone but my mother and me: names, places, dates. They were all I managed to jot down, in haste, at dawn. What makes the Encyclopedia unique (apart from its being the only existing copy) is the way it depicts human relationships, encounters, landscapes – the multitude of details that make up a human life (Kiš 1989, p. 42).
61 This is possible, “[b]ecause it records everything. Everything” (Kiš 1989, p. 42). Further: “Every period of life, every experience is recorded: every fish caught, every page read, the name of every plant the boy ever picked” (Kiš 1989, p. 46). We are reminded of the fantasy element of this tale when she states that the fifty years of her father’s life in which he lived in Belgrade, “the total of some eighteen thousand days and nights (432,000 hours) is covered here, in this book of the dead, in a mere five or six pages” (Kiš 1989, p. 48).
This seemingly impossible compilation of facts does seem, though, to have a correlation with the desire to record all of human knowledge that was the idea behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia (Gleick 2012). Founder Jimmy Wales “would be happy to see a biography of every human on the planet” (Gleick 2012, p. 386) on Wikipedia, not just notable and famous people – an ideal goal, but one presumably unattainable. The difference between this and the creation of The Encyclopedia of the Dead is that the fictional encyclopaedia exists in only one location, with only one copy, whereas Wikipedia allows for a wide distribution of the information, and unlimited access, which is surely a better way to ensure that the memory of lives is not lost. As the protagonist of the story states:
I wanted some evidence, for my hours of despair, that my father’s life had not been in vain, that there were still people on earth who recorded and accorded value to every life, every affliction, every human existence. (Meager consolation, but consolation nonetheless) (Kiš 1989, p. 64).
Perhaps this is the future of digital information and networked dissemination: consolation for the loss of our own lives, and a feeling that we will be remembered after we are dead.
My own attempt at the preserving of recuperated memories does not aim for this unrealisable totality of a life; it may be based on a similar desire for a type of immortality, a fear of being forgotten, but, like the Encyclopedia, it exists as a single and unique work of representation. It is, however, like most archives, not a complete picture. Just as the protagonist compares her own notes to the Encyclopedia – “I won’t try to retell it all from memory, everything, the way it is recorded and depicted there… it would all seem insufficient, fragmentary, compared with the original” (Kiš 1989, p. 50; italics in original) – so my installation, and the archive of memories and narratives, is only a fragment of a life, but it is a compilation that attempts to fill in some of the information gaps that may not otherwise be accessible. And, of course, I attempt to do this through a technique that has not been attempted in quite the same way; even though I have found other works of art and literature that contain analogous elements
62 to my own research, nothing is quite the same as my own attempt at archiving the discarded self. As the protagonist in the story writes:
After all – and this is what I consider the compilers’ central message – nothing in the history of mankind is ever repeated, things that at first glance seem the same are scarcely even similar; each individual is a star unto himself, everything happens always and never, all things repeat themselves ad infinitum yet are unique (Kiš 1989, p. 51).
It is this sense of uniqueness, of autobiographical singularity, that I am attempting through the installation Geniza, and this dissertation.
63 Georges Perec
If I’m going to write about it, I have to give up on the ordering logic of grown- ups; it would only distort what happened.
Benjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments (1997, p. 4)
I’m not sure that I had ever heard of French writer Georges Perec before starting this research, although recently I re-read sections of a Christian Boltanski monograph and found a mention of Perec, so I guess I had read of him, but skipped over an unfamiliar name. I first read his novel Things: A Story of the Sixties (Perec 1990) after having read about it in a number of books related to material culture, which formed the earliest reading for this research. It seemed relevant because of its emphasis on the objects in the lives of the protagonists. When my interests turned to autobiography, Perec’s W, or The Memory of Childhood (Perec 1996) was mentioned in a book which described different ways of approaching the writing of autobiography. Much later I again had Perec brought to my attention when I read about the Everyday; Perec was interested in those aspects of life that are not spectacular and extraordinary. Instead, he focussed on events, places and memories that expose the minutiae of life, the banality and mundanity of the everyday, that which he termed the “infra-ordinary” (Sheringham 2006, p. 249). His works make readers think of their own lives – the places they live, the objects they collect, the stories they tell; “a commonality of experience that is endlessly forming and reforming in human activities and encounters – if only we deigned to notice it” (Sheringham 2006, p. 398) – and remind us that that which is fleeting, or unspectacular can also be worthy of being preserved for posterity. It became obvious that we shared many of the same concerns – autobiographical storytelling; memory; the minutiae of everyday life; classification and inventorying – and so Perec had to have his own section. How, though, to reduce and incorporate this large volume of material by and about him that I had accumulated? Having re-read my notes and sections of his writing before assaying this section, I settled on a Perecian solution: an inventory, a list of quotes from Perec’s own work, each of which will be linked to my own research.
1.
At the different stages for preparation for this essay – notes scribbled on notebooks or loose sheets of paper, quotations copied out, ‘ideas’, see, cf., etc. – I naturally accumulated small piles: lower-case b, CAPITAL I, thirdly, part two. Then, when the time came to bring these elements together (and they certainly needed to be brought together if this ‘article’ was finally one day to cease from being a vague project regularly put off until a less fraught tomorrow), it rapidly became clear that I would never manage to organize them into a discourse. …
64 What came to the surface was of the nature of the fuzzy, the uncertain, the fugitive and the unfinished, and in the end I chose deliberately to preserve the hesitant and perplexed character of these shapeless scraps, and to abandon the pretence of organizing them into something that would by rights have had the appearance (and seductiveness) of an article, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
‘Think/Classify’, from Penser/Classer (Perec 1997, p. 184-5)
These statements about his article reflect my own thinking in regard to this written component of my thesis; how do I convey the results of my research while remaining faithful to the spirit of the archive? How can one reconcile the call for originality in PhD research, while submitting to the conformity of the presentation of the results? Can the dissertation be as creative as the artistic component? Given the relative newness of creative arts PhDs (Blackmore 2014), format and style have yet to coalesce into rigid expectations for written work. Because of this, and in the spirit of Perec’s own experimentation, I have chosen to present my research in imitation of an archive, or at least an inventory, which opens possibilities of reading paths, and allows for browsability, and random discovery. Sherringham has suggested that Perec’s Espèce d’espaces, “disdains disciplinary orthodoxy and plays cat and mouse with organized forms and procedures of knowledge” (Sheringham 2006, p. 49); it is this sense of unorthodoxy that I wish to emulate in my own writing – even within this alphabetically- arranged section, this entry differs from other entries; I want to capture the full range of possibilities of presentation of knowledge.
2.
The alphabet used to ‘number’ the various paragraphs of this text follows the order in which the letters of the alphabet appear in the French translation of the seventh story in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller…
‘Think/Classify’, from Penser/Classer (Perec 1997, p. 200)
Thus, the sections in the above essay are labelled D, A, N, S, U, R, E, L, I, G, T, C, O, etc., as the letters correspond to their first appearance in the text of the short story. By choosing such an idiosyncratic ordering system, Perec highlights the arbitrariness of most classification systems. Equally, the conventions around PhD research have developed because of choices made by academics over the years, and may not reflect the best ways of pursuing or presenting research. Instead of trying to create a flow of text which seems logical and ordered, I have ordered this section alphabetically to emphasise the indeterminacy of the archive, and also to suggest that that which has been included might just as easily have been excluded and replaced by some other piece of information.
65 3.
On the bedside table, to the right of the bed, there is a reading lamp with a yellow silk shade, a cup of coffee, a box of Breton shortbread sablé biscuits on the lid of which you can see a peasant tilling his fields, a phial of perfume whose perfectly hemispherical base recalls the shape of the inkwells of old, a saucer containing a few dried figs, a piece of cooked Edam cheese, and a metal lozenge with moonstone stud-nails set at each corner framing a photograph of a forty-year-old man in a fur-collared jacket sitting in the open at a rustic table groaning under the weight of victuals: a sirloin, plates of tripe and black pudding, a fricassé chicken, sweet cider, stewed-fruit pie, and plums in brandy.
Life, A User’s Manual (Perec 1987, p. 69)
This description of the bedside table of Madame Moreau is typical of Perec’s approach to material culture – a surfeit of detail not only gives us information about character and personality, but makes us think of the objects in our own lives, and what they might be saying about us. Life, A User’s Manual is filled with such detail, from how the characters look, and what their apartments are like, to collections of objects left on the stairs, for example, or reproductions of catalogues, and store inventories. He creates not just a sense of how individual lives are lived, but gives a sense of a shared, collective history, using objects that may be familiar to many of his readers (admittedly, this would apply more to French readers, but there is at least a shared familiarity with French culture which for English speakers makes the novel understandable, if not slightly exotic – not quite the everyday).
Similarly, his short novel Things: A Story of the Sixties (Perec 1990) shows us the lives, and aspirations for future life, of the protagonists through the stuff that they own, and that they yearn for. We learn of their apartment and neighbourhood, the activities they pursue in order to escape their small apartment, the shops they browse in order to fantasise about the things they could have, but which they’re not quite sure how they will ever afford, while knowing that they deserve them. The novel “suggests that we fail to engage with the everyday when we succumb to manufactured lifestyles, allowing these to dictate our patterns and responses…” (Sheringham 2006, p. 256). The accumulation of detail not only tells us about the life and desires of the protagonists, but also gives us a glimpse of the material culture of the society of the time, or at least some aspects of a certain class in society.
Perec also sought to capture this sense of the importance of objects in our lives through his non-fiction writing, in pieces such as ‘Notes Concerning the Objects that are on my Work-table’, or ‘Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books’ (both in Perec 1997). In the former he writes that the objects are there because
66 he has chosen them; he becomes the common factor that creates cohesion between these otherwise disparate and mass-produced objects:
The passage of time (my History) leaves behind a residue that accumulates: photographs, drawings, the corpses of long since dried-up felt-pens, shirts, non- returnable glasses and returnable glasses, cigar wrappers, tins, erasers, postcards, books, dust and knickknacks: this is what I call my fortune. (‘The Bedroom’, Perec 1997, p. 24.)
Not only do these items give us a sense of his extended self, but also his own history and narratives become connected with these objects, giving them a provenance, and a singularity they might not otherwise possess
4.
I have no childhood memories. Up to my twelfth year or thereabouts, my story comes to barely a couple of lines: I lost my father at four, my mother at six; I spent the war in various boarding houses at Villard-de-Lans. In 1945, my father’s sister and her husband adopted me.
W, or The Memory of Childhood (Perec 1996, p. 6)
This is an interesting assertion at the beginning of an autobiography, especially one with the subtitle it has. He does manage to piece together some memories of his life, but it is a short account. He intersperses this autobiography with a short story he wrote as a child, about an island where athletes compete in a dystopian Olympic world, where only winners are rewarded. In the absence of strong memories of his own childhood, and with the knowledge that even his adult memories are fleeting and prone to dispersal, he seeks to capture the details of everyday life in his writing. I have realised the limitations of my own memory while collecting data for this project; I may know why I have a particular item, but not where it came from, or alternatively, where something came from, but not why I have bothered to keep it over the years. Memory is fragile and fleeting, and only an emphasis on, and a recording of the everyday, as it is being lived, can hope to carry our stories into the future. As Perec observes:
There are few events which don’t leave a written trace at least. At one time or another, almost everything passes through a sheet of paper, the page of a notebook, or of a diary, or some other chance support (a Métro ticket, the margin of a newspaper, a cigarette packet, the back of an envelope, etc.) on which, at varying speeds and by a different technique depending on the place, time or mood, one or another of the miscellaneous elements that comprise the everydayness of life comes to be inscribed (‘The Page’, 1997, p. 12).
It is these traces which need to be preserved in order to transmit our lives, our memories, our sense of self into the future, for unknown others to read.
67 5.
I began to be afraid of forgetting, as if, unless I noted everything down, I wasn’t going to be able to retain anything of the life that was escaping from me. Scrupulously, every evening, with a maniacal conscientiousness, I began to keep a sort of journal. It was the exact opposite of a journal intime: all I put into it were the ‘objective’ things that had happened to me: the time I woke up, how I spent the day, my movements, what I had bought, the progress – measured in lines or pages – of my work, the people I had met or simply caught sight of, the details of the meal I had had in the evening in one or other restaurant, my reading, the records I had listened to, the films I had seen, etc.
With this panic about losing track of myself there went a fury for preserving and classifying. I kept everything: letters with their envelopes, cinema checkouts, airline tickets, bills, cheque stubs, handouts, receipts, catalogues, notices of meetings, weekly papers, dried-up felt pens, empty cigarette lighters, even gas and electricity receipts for a flat I hadn’t lived in for more than six years; and sometimes I spent a whole day sorting and sorting, imagining a classification that would fill every year, month and day of my life.
‘The Scene of a Stratagem’, from Penser/Classer (Perec 1997, p. 167)
I don’t think that I felt the same way at the beginning of this research, but as I have sought to capture details of those things which are being discarded, I have realised how much detail potentially accumulates around the objects in our lives, and just how little I could recall of those details. Emulating Perecian projets – “an appropriate general term for the types of activity through which he and other explorers make themselves… what Certeau calls practitioners of the everyday” (Sheringham 2006, p. 387) – I have not only started writing down details of items I have purchased in the past two years, but also jotted down details of those items which I have discarded, and chosen not to weave for the installation; I have kept time-use diaries to provide (for whom?) details of the everydayness of my life at various times; written a history of the objects on my own desk, and taken photographs of all the items in my bathroom (emulating Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography, 1980), all of which I have included in Appendix 2; and in addition to the daily diary I have kept for thirty-odd years, I have also kept a PhD journal to capture the changing course of my research. A realisation that so much of my past has already disappeared has made me endeavour to capture as much of the present as possible for transmission into the future.
68 Installations
…my mother said she always preferred the Gestalt to the mere details.
Edmund White, Reprise (1994, p. 295)
The installation Geniza is perhaps the first real installation that I have created. In past works I have really just assembled large numbers of small works into larger accumulations, often wall mounted, without really creating an immersive environment. Even the pseudo-memorial installation that was I Am Because We Are (2004-06), created for my MFA, really only existed as a photographic image; the final presentation of the work had to accommodate the physical space of the gallery where it was exhibited, and ended up dispersed, and its cohesion diffused. This section took a long time to gestate; it began in my mind as a justification for using the Installation form as my research method, but what I wanted to say wasn’t really clear to me. It wasn’t until I re-read the materials I had collected over the previous four years that the similarities between Installation Art, and Archives became clear to me, and provided justification for the form of my installation Geniza. Not only are archives and installations places that bring together disparate elements to form a new entity, but they can also be sites where different spaces and places can comingle – those which Foucault has called ‘heterotopias’ (Foucault 1986). They can also be used as means to provide narratives about lives and events, focus on the Everyday, counter the ephemerality of objects, and act as storage for the memorialisation of memory. Obviously not all archives, and installations deal with all of these matters, but the fact that they have at different times and places is sufficient justification for linking them here in this dissertation (which can perhaps also be seen as embodying all the above traits which I assigned to archives and installations).
The rise of Installation Art coincides with artists’ (as opposed to, say, architects) preoccupation with use of space, which has evolved from experimental art forms and exhibition design of the Dadaists, Constructivists, and Surrealists of the nineteen- twenties, and ‘thirties, through to the Environments and Happenings of the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, to the development of what became Installation Art in the late-nineteen- seventies and continuing until the present (Reiss 1999). This type of art has been described as “’theatrical’, ‘immersive’ or ‘experiential’” (Bishop 2005, p. 6), and can consist of “constructed architectural environments” (Onorato 1997, p. 15); further, in a press release for the 1969 MOMA show Spaces, “Actual space is now being employed as an active ingredient, and the scope of the work of art has expanded to include the viewer” (quoted in Reiss 1999, p. 95). Not only can the viewer walk through a work of
69 art, but also the presence of the viewer becomes essential to complete the installation (Broadfoot 2001, discussing Robert Morris, p. 74), because of the “activation of space which takes into account the subjective, temporal specificity of the beholder” (Geczy & Genocchio 2001, p. 3). That is, the apprehension of the work of installation art, by moving through a physical space, “however brief, takes time” (Reiss 1999, p. 60). Thus, an expansion of the space taken up by the artwork has resulted in an expansion of the time required to perceive it. However, the installation also comes to embody multiple times and spaces, from the history of the site where it is installed, the time taken by the artist to create the work, the individual histories and places of origin of any elements within the work, the subject of any photographic or textual elements and their times and places, as well as other times and places represented in audiovisual works. Because of this convergence of diverse temporal and physical elements, Monica McTighe has seen installations as being examples of Michel Foucault’s “Heterotopias” (2012).
Foucault has described heterotopias as being places in societies, or “counter-sites,” where “other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places…” (Foucault 1986, p. 24). He suggests that they are “most often linked to slices in time” and are therefore “heterochronies” as well as heterotopias (Foucault 1986, p. 26). Foucault suggested examples such as cemeteries, ships, gardens, prisons, museums, and festivals (Johnson 2018). These “worlds within worlds” (Johnson 2018, n.p.) are also described, amongst other things, as “juxtapos[ing] in a single space several incompatible spatial elements,” and “encapsulat[ing] spatio-temporal discontinuities or intensities” (Johnson 2018, n.p.). These could be descriptions of installations, or of archives, both of which assemble diverse materials from different sites and times of a society or societies, and make them available for study, critique or reevaluation. McTighe’s justification for calling installations examples of heterotopias is because they are
a place set off from society where different times and places intersect via objects, materials, and images. Installation seems to be a particularly appropriate practice for artists interested in memory and history because it can take on the form of these structures that are charged with keeping memory and history: the archive, the library, the museum collection, and even the stage and movie theatre (2012, p. 19).
Installations don’t necessarily have to emulate these sites in order to be heterotopic; they are well-established enough in the art world to constitute their own kind of heterotopia, one that “directly engages the patchwork, composite character of
70 contemporary experience and [which] does so with a stunning diversity of materials and practices” (Crary 2003. p. 7). That is, installations bring together heterotopic and heterochronic elements to form a new site, which can be used to investigate aspects of contemporary society.
One aspect of contemporary life that is explored is the problem of ephemerality, whether of memory and history, or of physical objects, and our attempts to halt the decay of time in “spaces that are connected to the materialization of memory” (McTighe 2012, p. 19), such as the ones McTighe mentions in the quote above. Mary Ann Doane is also interested in what she calls “memory traces” which “are conceptualized as an actual etching into a material” (2002, p. 41). McTighe’s interest is in the use of photography as this material, recording the traces of ephemeral Installation Art. She quotes Craig Owens: “The site-specific work becomes the emblem of transience, the ephemerality of all phenomena: it is the memento mori of the twentieth century” (in McTighe 2012, p. 11). I am using the installation Geniza as a way of preserving the ephemeral within my own life, by not only remediating the material culture that would otherwise be discarded, but by also recording in texts the history or narratives attached to those objects, which until that “materialization,” existed only in my own memory. In this way I am creating my own heterotopia as an anarchival installation that attempts to see if my autobiographical singularity can be preserved in a “continuous present” (Lawson in McTighe 2012, p. 14). I think this can all be summed up in a quote from Annette Messager:
In the end my work is nothing but a very large patchwork, just like our culture is cobbled together, a bric-à-brac of different elements, of heterogeneous recollections juxtaposed like a patchwork quilt that constitutes our identity… (in Johnstone 2008, p. 21).
71 The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away
Ilya Kabakov
Mother, who lifted cut-glass vases and antique clocks from her obsessively dusted curio shelves to ask, “If this could talk, what story would it tell?”
Richard McCann, My Mother’s Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame (1994, p. 546)
This is an installation I was aware of before starting my research, and an obvious work to link to my own. The tagged, narrativised items comprising this installation are similar to my own tagged, discarded (although transformed) artefacts. The main differences, though, are the (alleged) completeness of Kabakov’s work, and the fact that it has been compiled by what I consider – what I thought was a neologism – an unreliable archivist. Kabakov is, however, at least forthcoming about the fictional nature of his archive, and uses it as a metaphor for life in the Soviet Union.
The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away (1988) is an installation which purports to be the contents of the apartment of a resident in a Soviet-era communal apartment. The fictional narrative accompanying the accumulation of materials which constitute the work tells us that these objects – each one tagged with details of its history – were discovered by other residents of the apartment when they had to enter the rooms of this character. Also found was a written discourse on the nature of garbage, explaining why the man had inventoried all his possessions, which look like nothing more than trash. The collected garbage which forms the installation is not just a metaphor for the disrepair and disorder of the Soviet regime, but also constitutes an archive and a history, which stands as a memorial to that life for future generations.
The installation not only tells the story of this man who never threw anything away, but also reflects Kabakov’s own life. In his own life he found himself surrounded by
the pathetic remnants of life: receipts, notes, everyday garbage. I started to make crates and folders: to collect, sew together everyday Soviet… garbage which surrounded me in the studio, and to write a commentary to go with each object detailing where it came from, why, how it wound up here (in Wallach 1996, p. 69).
Thus each item comes to be not just a metonymic representation of a life, real or fictional, and a metaphor for the decay and destruction of life in the Soviet Union (in which all goods were far inferior to similar items in the West - “In the world of socialism, everything is decay, dust, and garbage” (in Stooss 2003, p. 181; italics in original)), but also a self-contained biographically narrativised object, unique and individual. Without the tags, the items would still have memories for the person who collected them, but,
72 as Kabakov suggests, “Here, of course, one might object that these memories exist only for me, while for others who don’t know my memories, these papers are simply trash” (Kabakov 1989, p. 44). Thus the need for an externalised memory, a written record to communicate to others, and, as an artwork there is the means of allowing others to not only access the memories associated with these items of one man’s life, but also to reflect on the relationship with the artefacts in their own lives.
In this installation, Kabakov suggests the same links between the artefacts of a life, and the creation or aggregation (whether one sees this as a conscious or unconscious process) of the self. The garbage becomes “the emblem of personal memory, of individuality” (Wallach 1996, p. 70), and if we dispose of these items then we “part with who we were in the past, and in a certain sense, it means to cease to exist” (Kabakov 1989, p. 44). We are what we own:
Objects – the infinite sea of all types of things, mechanisms, home appliances, clothing, furniture, millions of objects surrounding a person that help him to live and work – completely fill up his life every day and cling to his body and even, as they say, to his soul (in Wallach 1996, p. 84).
Moreover, strange as it seems, I feel that it is precisely the garbage, that very dirt where important papers and simple scraps are mixed and unsorted, that comprises the genuine and only real fabric of my life, no matter how ridiculous and absurd it seems from the outside (Kabakov 1989, p. 44).
It is normal for people to associate the objects in their lives with themselves, and equally normal to edit one’s own biographical narrative, through the acquisition or disposal of material culture; however, a perhaps pathological condition exits when one fears that the disposal of items that one owns constitutes a loss of the self, a diminution of the life force:
This feeling is familiar to everyone who has looked through or rearranged his accumulated papers: this is the memory associated with all the events connected with each of these papers. To deprive ourselves of these paper symbols and testimonies is to deprive ourselves somewhat of our memories. In our memory everything becomes equally valuable and significant. All points of our recollections are tied to one another. They form chains and connections in our memory which ultimately comprises our life, the story of our life (Kabakov 1989, p. 44).
Not just the objects themselves, but also the associations they have for us constitute our biographical singularity. Kabakov explores this further through other installations which use both garbage, and more conventionally archival materials to examine his own life, and allow viewers space to examine their own. 16 Ropes (1984), The Rope of Life (1985), and The Rope Along the Edge (1985) are all variations of annotated garbage tied to ropes to suggest the links that material objects have with the course of
73 life, with The Rope of Life explicitly acting as a metaphor for such an existence. Memorial to Useless Things (1998) makes explicit the evidentiary nature of artefacts, both for individual lives, and for societies, in Kabakov’s case the Soviet Union. Of course, he probably couldn’t have predicted the demise of the USSR within the decade after these installations, but they, or at least the record of them, now exist as evidence (or at least the artistic interpretation of evidence) of life in those years.
More explicitly autobiographical are installations such as The Arriving Archive (1998), and The Boat of my Life (1993). Both use real (or so he alleges) artefacts from Kabakov’s own life: “In essence, this is the idea of presenting my life, the story of my life, in the form of an installation” (in Wallach 1996, p. 230), using the same techniques he had developed in his fictional archives. Accompanying a photograph of a teddy bear is a text which reads: “There was a stuffed Misha bear, a small one. Sawdust was spilling out of him, but I still wouldn’t part with him…. I cannot remember absolutely anything else” (in Wallach 1996, p. 231). Even the lack of memories associated with this item is reminiscent of tags attached to items in The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away: “I don’t know how I got it. Probably it was meant to wash the bathtub. But I didn’t use it – I just put it under the table so it wouldn’t tip” (in Wallach 1996, p. 175).
This trouble finding suitable memories has been an issue in my Geniza installation. Using the minutiae of a life means that even the memories or narratives might also be minute, mundane, and perhaps unworthy of reflection. The worth of the installation, however, comes from the accumulation of these small details, from the biographical singularity that comes from not just the narratives attached to specific items, but even the inventory of the items themselves. The combination of even mass-produced objects creates an individual mosaic, or archive, if I want to be consistent with my metaphors (or weaving, if I want to emphasise a textile analogy). In Kabakov’s installations, “Wholeness… could only be achieved through a grab-bag accumulation of details, memories, incidents, and ideas, however contradictory; through categorization” (in Wallach 1996, p. 56). My own installation is the presentation of the artefacts of a man who does throw things away, but who also recognises the potential importance of those items, and who strives to record some evidentiary details to act as a record for the future, just as Kabakov has done through his works.
74 Mass Observation
What did a 1930s housewife have in her larder? How did a 1940s office worker spend their lunch hour? What clothes were hanging in a 1950s teenagers' wardrobe?
(“Mass Observation Reveals Minutiae,” 2014, n.p.)
Not when it is understood that I will attempt to be as honest with you as possible. About other people, as I have said, I may palter and pretend, but the business of autobiography is at least to strive for some element of self- revelation and candour.
Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles (2010, p. 224)
Mass Observation was an initiative which originally ran from the 1930s to the 1950s in Great Britain which, through written contributions from volunteers, sought to record the minutiae of everyday life for thousands of British people (“Mass Observation,” n.d.). It was revived in the 1980s as the Mass Observation Project by the archive which houses the original contributions (“The Mass Observation Project,” n.d.). Thousands of people have contributed their opinions, feelings, and thoughts on different subjects through diary entries, essays, observations, and other pieces of writing both short and long. It now constitutes a collection of data available for use by social historians, sociologists, and others interested in knowing how ordinary people live their lives.
As a form of data collection, the contributions to Mass Observation may be questioned in terms of “the accuracy of recall, the extent of fictionalisation, methodological questions about representativeness when working with small numbers of self-selected respondents rather than with randomly selected samples of the population” (Sheridan 1993, p. 29). For my own research, I can provide no proof that the narratives I record about the discarded items are true; some photographs provide evidence of the existence of the items in my life before being woven, but that does not suggest that the claims I make for them are accurate. Certainly, fictional archives have been created by artists, but I can only think that creating fictionalised accounts would entail much more work than just relying on my (admittedly faulty at times) memory.
The Mass Observation ‘directives’ – as the calls for writing are called – have covered many different areas of life: “they may invite reactions to national or international events, views on political, ethical or religious matters, accounts of personal practices in everyday life, descriptions of people, places and things within everyday experience, and retrospective accounts: memories of the past on specific themes (education, childhood, family life)” (Sheridan 1993, p. 30). The first Mass Observation collections included many accounts of life during World War II, and the renewed collection asked
75 for contributions during the Gulf War. In a press release, Kirsty Pattrick suggests that: "It's the everyday detail that makes it so powerful" (in “Mass Observation Reveals Minutiae,” 2014, n.p.). She continues:
It’s incredibly rich; peoples’ experiences and thoughts, their hopes and fears. Just as our visitors are enthralled to read about the drinking habits and conversations of people in a 1940’s pub, we can equally imagine the interest people will have in 100 years' time of what our lives are like now (in “Mass Observation Reveals Minutiae,” 2014, n.p.).
Dorothy Sheridan, who worked at the Mass-Observation Archive at the time of writing her article, argues that:
Mass-Observation writing can be considered a form of collective or multiple autobiography which draws on a very wide range of existing conventions: letter- writing, answering questionnaires, being interviewed, keeping a diary, writing a life story. No single cultural form provides precisely the appropriate ‘fit’ … (1993, p. 34).
In a similar way, my own research seeks to find new ways and genres to capture that which would otherwise be lost to posterity – my memories of objects and events, the stories I tell about them, and how I perceive that they have affected me, and my life story. Any individual piece of information does not purport to be of huge significance, but the accumulation of minutiae allows for a diachronic autobiographical representation. Although disparate items may be disposed of simultaneously, their origins may span decades, and give information about a variety of aspects of my life. The installation Geniza can be seen, to use yet another metaphor, in the same way Sheridan sees the Mass-Observation Archive, as “a kaleidoscope of experiences mediated by a multitude of texts” (1993, p. 33). Stephen Johnstone, writing about the Everyday as a theme in contemporary art, suggests that artists “[draw] on the vast reservoir of normally unnoticed, trivial and repetitive actions comprising the common ground of daily life,” based on “a desire to bring these uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility” (2008, p. 12). By weaving similar items from my everyday life at different times, I also have the opportunity to remember (or misremember) different stories about those items, building up the layers of data. In this way, I am not only providing a form of autobiography that shows how I have lived my life, and where I have come from, but also, perhaps, seeing where I am going. Mass- Observation participants also provide aspects of their lives which survive into the future, and may perhaps be saying, “Here I am! Look at me! See what I am trying to become!” (Sheridan 1993, p. 38).
76 Memory
That story will be lost forever, if I do not now take it out of my perishable head and write it down.
Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (1981, p. 224)
For the truth is, over this past year, I have become increasingly preoccupied with my memories, a preoccupation encouraged by the discovery that these memories – of my childhood, of my parents – have lately begun to blur. A number of times recently I have found myself struggling to recall something that only two or three years ago I believed was ingrained in my mind for ever. I have been obliged to accept, in other words, that with each passing year, my life in Shanghai will grow less distinct, until one day all that will remain will be a few muddled images.
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000, p. 80)
A chief concern while creating the installation Geniza was with the conservation of memories associated with the objects of my life that are facing disposal. The conservation of memories associated with these items, though, assumes that I have memories to be conserved; the idea that objects act as aides-memoires assumes that there is a remembering mind which is aided in the act of remembering. What I have discovered during the course of this research is that many of the objects which I own, and plan to dispose of, are shrouded in mystery, and provide very little aid to my memory. Prosaic issues like cost, or date of purchase, are lost to time, but more personal reasons – the reasons I acquired an object, which may provide a guide to my extended self – are similarly lost. Are these objects useless as data, then? Not if we see the point of the installation being its use as a macro-lens, revealing the whole of my extended self, rather than as a micro-lens trained on each individual object; not if we see it as an anarchive, as a contextualised whole, rather than as a collection of discrete documents; not if we see it as a means of engaging with audiences, and inviting them to attempt to remember their own lives through the recuperation of memories attached to most of their own discarded objects, if not all. The issue of memory, then, is crucial to my concerns, but what is involved in the creation of those memories, and how do I transfer my personal memories to others, allowing them to be seen as a part of my extended self, and to transcend the spatial and temporal limitations of my own self? The metaphor of the archive in describing memory (or the use of memory as a metaphor in describing the archive) is a common, but flawed one, which I will examine here.
Unlike Funes, the memorious, the Jorge Luis Borges (1974) character who falls off a horse and finds he can now remember every detail of his life, my memory of my own autobiographical past is filled with gaps; what I remember is vastly outweighed by what
77 I have forgotten. I’m not sure that this is either a problem, or very uncommon; indeed, the “overly replete world of Funes” was one of “nothing but details, almost contiguous details” (Borges 1974, p. 104), which in the end prevent him from being able to think (as opposed to remembering) because his mind is so full of the memories of his life. I’m not sure that I could be described as hypomnesic, as having a particularly abnormally poor memory (as opposed to Funes’ hypermnesia), but even memory theorists cannot agree on many aspects of memory. As Jens Brockmeier writes:
We know much about human memory. Yet as it is with memory itself, we do not know very much for sure. And, what is more, we only have a vague idea about memory as a whole. We cannot even say if there is such a thing as memory (or a memory, or specific memory systems) at all… (2010, p. 5).
We can at least define the term ‘memory’, if not its operations; I’ve borrowed three of the seven definitions used by Blouin and Rosenberg (from the 1970 Funk and Wagnall Dictionary): “The mental process or faculty of representing in consciousness an act, experience, or impression, with recognition that it belongs to time past…. That which is remembered, as an act, event, person, or thing…. That which reminds; a memorial; a memento” (2006, p. 216). The act of memory occurs within the brain or the mind of the remembering subject, and a sense of self is constructed by our ability to remember; “the self is a projection forward of remembered experience into present time” (Mack 2003, p. 25). However, as Barbara Craig reminds us, “our personal memory, with all its subtlety nurtured by recollection of direct experience, will pass irrevocably with our death” (2002, p. 280). How, then, to prevent this complete dissolution of the self? What “arms against oblivion” (Mack 2003, p. 8) might we employ?
In order to prevent the dissolution of our memories at death – or, as we age, during our lifetimes – there needs to be a materialisation of those memories; we need to capture the thoughts, feelings and narratives of the events of our past in “traces of recollection” – “informational fragments which allow… access to a certain trace of memory” (Mitroiu & Adam 2009, p. 146). José Van Dijck refers to such traces as “mediated memories” (2004, p. 261) – the use of media technologies to record and store personal memories allows a mediation between the individual and the collective, as well as between the past and the present, and continuing into the future (Van Dijck 2004, p. 270); what is internal and personal becomes available for use, study, or analysis by others, and is able also to transcend the physical limitations of the human by being dispersed (potentially) temporally and physically. This sense of memory being stored against loss, of being available for use by others, and of carrying the past into the future –
78 “extending the temporal and spatial range of communication” (Foote 1990, p. 378) – is why the metaphor of memory as an archive is so prevalent.
Archives and memory are often compared because of their perceived similarities in capturing the past, and bringing it into the present, with the idea that everything that has occurred has been stored for future use. Archives have been described as “houses of memory” (Cook 2013, p. 97), a “form of artificial memory” (Jenkins in Brown 2013, p. 88), and “a secondary or prosthetic memory” (Nora 1996, p. 10). The link between archives and memory is similar to Caroline Steedman’s comparison of history and “modern autobiographical narration” – “there is the assumption that nothing goes away; that the past has deposited all of its traces, somewhere, somehow (though they may be, in particular cases, difficult to retrieve)” (2002, p. 75; italics in original). The permanence of memories in the unconscious is explored by Sigmund Freud (2007) through the metaphor of the “Mystic Writing-Pad,” the child’s toy that allows one to write or draw on a plastic sheet, which, when lifted, erases the inscription, but leaves a faint trace on the wax layer below. The assumption is that we retain memories just as the wax retains impressions, but any attempt to retrieve the erased inscriptions would be similar to looking through a huge archive without benefit of any ordering system, or means of searching for information. What is emphasised is the fragility of personal memory, and the need for a link between “institutional and psychological ‘repositories,’ the latter being, of course, the brain” (Blouin & Rosenberg on Derrida’s Archive Fever, 2006, p. 1). The archive is the memory we wish we had, and material inscriptions of personal recollections are necessary to retain memories, but a well-ordered and searchable archive is probably very unlike the mechanics of memory.
When we say that memory is like an archive, we mean to suggest that it preserves the recollections of autobiographical experience; that it keeps these remembrances safe and secure, to be brought out at some future date, dusted off and looked at afresh, for some particular purpose. It may be that we want to know why we are doing something in the present, and feel that the past may have the answer. We may be buttressing an identity claim by referring to some similar action in the past. Or it may be a nostalgic longing for a sense of self that once existed, but no longer does. Memory, like the archive, though, is not in the business of storing everything, like a lumber room, for some possible future, unspecified use. They both store fragments, a selection – chosen consciously or unconsciously – and sedimented over the months or years, sometimes with strong contextual and narrative links, other times just a scrap, which may prove to be mysterious and intriguing, but ultimately useless when brought to the surface. Even if a memory/document is an accurate reflection of a past
79 autobiographical experience, the interpretation of it may change over time, as the self changes, and one draws different conclusions about the evidence of the past.
Rather than being analogous, then, because of the security of, and ability to access information in both archives and memory, perhaps what they have in common is their fragmentary nature, changeability, and openness to interpretation. Andreas Huyssen reminds us “how slippery and unreliable personal memory can be,” and that it is “always affected by forgetting and denial, repression and trauma” (1995, p. 249). Research in False Memory Syndrome “question[s] the permanence, truthfulness, and reliability of memories and instead emphasiz[es] the ‘malleability’ and ‘plasticity’ of human memory” (Brockmeier 2010, p. 10), and that “memories are fluid, modified by context and sometimes simply confabulated” (Hood 2011, p. 60). Further, memory is filled with “incoherent fragments” offered to us in a “fragile way” (Farr 2012, p. 12), and “the forms memory will take are invariably contingent and subject to change” (Huyssen 1995, p. 2). These views of memory suggest a different metaphor, that of
a compost heap in a constant state of reorganization. Just like the garden refuse that you put on the compost heap, experiences are laid down with the most recent still retaining much detail and structure but, with time, they eventually breakdown [sic] and become mixed in and integrated with the rest of our experiences (Hood 2011, p. 59).
Furthermore, “[memories] change over time as they become distorted, merged, turned over, mixed in and mangled with other experiences that eventually fade” (Hood 2011, p. 161). How does this sense of memory, then, connect with the idea of the archive?
No archive, even in our age of digital storage, can store everything; in the metaphor of archival sedimentation (Hill 1993) we see that selection, disposal, accident, and destruction shape the form of an archive, just as what is available as memory depends on contingency, reinforcement, and forgetting. “The Archive is made from selected and consciously chosen documentation from the past and also from the mad fragmentations that no one intended to preserve and that just ended up there,” as Carolyn Steedman puts it (2002, p. 68). There is, also, “too much evidence, too much memory, too much identity, to acquire more than a mere fragment of it” (Cook 2013, p. 113), and, as an admonishment against the desire for total archives, Pierre Nora cautions: “Archive as much as you like: something will always be left out” (1996, p.9). What could one do with an archive if it did contain everything? The amount of information would be overwhelming, and “it is precisely [in] the serendipitous survival of some information, and not others, that lies the joy of using archives” (Breakell &
80 Worsley 2007, p. 179). If the archive were like Funes the Memorious, replete with information/memories, then there would be no space for creative use of the documents therein, no room for “possible resurrections” (Huyssen 1995, p. 15) of the memories of others. In both the archive, and the brains of individuals, then, “remembrance cannot occur without forgetting, preservation without destruction, the archival desire without the death drive” (McDonough 2012, p. 191).
With Geniza, then, I am exploring these tangled connections between archives and memories: the attempt to store personal memory documents (“so-called ego- documents” (Van Dijck 2004, p. 267)), while simultaneously disposing of (some of) the material culture of my lived experience. Memories attached to the objects I am weaving are not always easy to access, and I have found errors in my own recollections as I have compared memories with written accounts in my diaries. Fond memories I had of books I had read have been erased by rereading those books, and reinterpreted in light of my subsequent experience and tastes. And, should others use my data in future for some purpose other than an art installation (or even in a different form of art), the meanings of my memories may be distorted, or misinterpreted (from my perspective), or used creatively and in a manner completely alien to those I have imagined. The meanings of memories and archives are not fixed, just as the information contained in both can shift and change. By collecting my personal data, and transforming the objects and documents of my life, I hope to highlight some aspects of memory and archives, and explore the usefulness of metaphors related to both.
81 Moor
Janine Antoni
The many connections between text and textiles are so densely interwoven that they are difficult to unravel. The nouns ‘text’, ‘textile’ and ‘texture’ all come from the Latin word texere – to weave. The English language is threaded through with expressions derived from textiles, many of them associated with narrative or story-telling: spinning a yarn, losing the thread, embroidering the truth, a web of deceit. We also talk about wool-gathering, cottoning on, a seamless transition and the fabric of society.
Sara Impey, Text in Textile Art (2013, p. 14)
Moor was a sculpture/installation piece created for an exhibition in Stockholm in 2001, by Janine Antoni, using traditional rope-making techniques to combine materials donated by friends and family. The rope was tied to a pillar within the gallery space, draped across the floor, and stretched out the door to connect with a boat in the water of the port. In 2003, in connection with this work, a monograph was published which included pictures of the rope, and a comprehensive list of the materials used for the work, and the narratives which the donors had provided.
Just as the rope connected the boat to the gallery, being moored, so too does the rope form a bond which moors Antoni within her relationships with others, and acts to remind us all of the connections we have with other people. Her friends and family were asked to provide something with “significant meaning” (Antoni 2003, n.p.), and include with the item a story or narrative which indicated that significance. Some of those descriptions were paraphrased by Antoni, and some included direct quotes from the donors, but all were presented in the book and include the following:
…Paul’s nightshirt is entwined with a tie given to Byron by his Korean cousin that he has never worn and Byron’s tie is entwined with Anissa’s swimsuit goggles worn “when I learned to swim the butterfly, but honestly, who knows, and I usually swim with two alternate suits and just replace them as they wear out and I was definitely wearing it this spring when I was particularly obsessed with swimming over art” and Anissa’s swimsuit goggles is entwined with Byron’s green shirt that he didn’t like because it has a zipper at the top and it felt cold against his skin and with a red tie that his ex-girlfriend Sarah gave him…
…flower pajamas worn by Ella and Addie, which were also a gift from their maternal grandmother, and Ella and Addie’s pajamas are entwined with a Mickey Mouse shirt that Lisa’s friend Laura Maria gave to Emmett and all three kids wore and finding it makes Lisa wonder why she hasn’t seen Laura Maria in so long and Emmett’s Mickey Mouse shirt is entwined with Mark’s blue button- down shirt, and with Brian’s navy, wool sailor pants which he gave to Paul when they got too small for him and now they are too small for Paul…
…Meg’s bathing suit is entwined with Melissa’s 100% vinyl jacket from Sweden and she anticipated brutally cold weather and was surprised to discover that
82 she didn’t need the full-length arctic outfit she had packed and she bought this one instead at a thrift store and Melissa’s vinyl jacket is entwined with Danielle’s orange argyle sweater… (Antoni 2003, n.p.).
Through these narratives we learn not just about the materials themselves, but about their history, the histories of the people who donated them, and the relationship networks to which these people belong. Sometimes the story behind the items may be forgotten – as Anissa asks, “…but honestly, who knows”? – but the task of writing a narrative makes the donors think about the past, and about past relationships and events. Even though they dispose of items with significance to them, the stories attached to those items have been preserved by Antoni.
The significance of this artwork for me when I wrote about it in relation to memorials was the metonymic relationship of the materials to the donors. When I realised that the current research project was about collecting narratives, I can’t say that artworks like this that I had previously encountered weren’t an influence. When I requested donations of socks for my I Am Because We Are (2004-2006) memorial project, I also received – unsolicited – narratives about the socks from several of the donors. Some of those stories were about the making of the socks, where they had bought them, or how they became worn out. At the time I didn’t think about the connections that people had with their belongings, or what those belongings could tell us about the owners; I was only interested in the socks as a stand in for the donors. It was this current research which made me think about the way that even mundane items like socks act as evidence of a lived life, and the recuperation and storage of memories related to those items can outlive the objects themselves and remind us of the contexts in which we have lived our lives, just as the objects Antoni uses tell us about her friends and family.
83 The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
Because everything is important. Every detail. We just don’t know why yet. Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand. Peter used to say, an artist’s job is to pay attention, collect, organize, archive, preserve, then write a report. Document. Make your presentation. The job of an artist is just not to forget.
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (2003, p. 137)
I have noted on weaving documentation forms that prior to starting this current research, I encountered things which at the time didn’t mean much to me, but in the light of my present interest in archives and narratives, seem to presage the same ideas and themes. I wonder now if some of these encounters created the conditions for the research to develop. One such encounter was the book The Innocence of Objects by Turkish Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, which is a catalogue to the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul (Pamuk 2012). I first saw it when I worked in the library at UNSW. It intrigued me because of my long-standing interest in collections of disparate things – collages, encyclopaedias, museums, libraries, archives. When I began thinking about the narratives that material objects can tell, I remembered this book, and borrowed it again. I subsequently read the novel The Museum of Innocence (Pamuk 2009) specifically for this research. I bought it in Australia and had it on my bedside table for a year or more. I finally got around to reading it when I moved to Timor-Leste and was waiting for my personal effects to be sent from Australia so I could start weaving and writing.
Orhan Pamuk had the idea simultaneously for a museum and a novel based on the stories contained within objects (he writes in the catalogue to the museum, Pamuk 2012). He started to collect interesting objects from bazaars and antique stores that evoked for him life in Istanbul in the 1970s and 1980s. He then imagined these objects as belonging to a protagonist, Kemal, a young businessman who falls in love with a shopgirl, Füsun, who is also a distant relative. Although Kemal is engaged to another woman, he becomes obsessed with Füsun, and collects the ephemera of their lives that allow him to remember the times they had together, and which evoke the emotions he felt at the time, and the memories he retains after her death. The novel was published in 2008, and the museum opened in 2012 (which I finally visited in 2019).
84 Pamuk’s first concept of the novel was one “that resembled an encyclopedia,” and later he had the idea that it would be in the “form of a museum catalogue with long and richly detailed notes” (2012, p. 17). He rejected these ideas for that of a conventional narrative, but the original idea manifested in The Innocence of Objects, the museum catalogue. His “Modest Manifesto for Museums” contained within this book (Pamuk 2012, pp. 54-57) outlines his rejection of large state museums (like the British Museum, or the Louvre) because of the way they present national ideas and symbols “as being far more important than the stories of individuals” (Pamuk 2012, p. 55). Small, house museums allow the stories of individuals to be highlighted, “displaying the depths of our humanity” because “the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane, and much more joyful” (Pamuk 2012, p. 55). He suggests that museums “tell people’s stories not through paintings but through objects that everyone knew and used, [then] they could touch the common humanity of their visitors” (Pamuk 2012, p. 53), as well as enabling “new generations to reconstruct the lives and histories of these people of the past through the things that they had left behind” (Pamuk 2012, p. 51). Through our contemplation of the artefacts of the lives of Kemal and Füsun, we can ponder our own relationships to objects, and think about our own histories and legacies.
In the novel, Kemal’s philosophy of objects and museums reflects the author’s own as presented in The Innocence of Objects. The protagonist muses, “Sometimes… I would imagine it possible for me to frame my collection with a story, and I would dream happily of a museum where I could display my life – the life that first my mother, and then Osman, and finally everyone else thought I had wasted – where I could tell my story through the things that Füsun had left behind, as a lesson to us all” (Pamuk 2009, p. 680). For him, these objects “preserve the colors, textures, images, and delights as they were more faithfully, in fact, than can those who accompanied us through those moments” (Pamuk 2009, p. 98). Each of the mementoes becomes “the vessel of a lost past” (p. 312), and Kemal becomes “the anthropologist of my own experience” (p. 39), so that his memories and the histories of the objects are combined in prose such as:
So it is precisely to illustrate the solicitude in the caresses that my eighteen- year-old lover bestowed upon my thirty-year-old skin as we lay quietly in this room in each other’s arms, that I have chosen to exhibit this floral batiste handkerchief, which she had folded so carefully and put in her bag that day but never removed. Let this crystal inkwell and pen set belonging to my mother that Füsun toyed with that afternoon, noticing it on the table while she was smoking a cigarette, be a relic of the refinement and the fragile tenderness we felt for each other. Let this belt whose oversize buckles that I had seized and fastened with a masculine arrogance that I felt so guilty for afterwards bear witness to our
85 melancholy as we covered our nakedness and cast our eyes about the filth of the world again (Pamuk 2009, p. 39).
He describes himself as being “like a shaman who can see the souls of things, I could feel their stories flickering inside me” (Pamuk 2009, p. 702), and in order to preserve those stories, and make others remember the stories attached to their own objects, he creates his museum of innocence.
Kemal, surrounded by the objects of his and his family’s life, “recalled moments from my childhood and youth that I hadn’t even realized I’d forgotten” (Pamuk 2009, p. 26). It is this memory-jogging aspect of objects that I seek to preserve in the installation Geniza. An object on a shelf or photograph on a wall may make us remember specific incidents from our past, but what if that object is not there to remind us? Perhaps memories slide because there are no anchors to connect them to us. In the case of items that we deliberately purge from our lives, the moment of appraisal and dispersal may be the last time that those memories come to mind. We may have every intention of remembering their histories, but without their physical presence, good intentions may not be enough to preserve memories and histories. Pamuk’s idea of preserving these memories, either through a novel, or through a museum, or both, is analogous with the preservation of my own memories through the creation of an anarchival installation.
86 Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories
‘I thought there was no such thing as the self.’ ‘No such thing, no, if you mean a fixed, discrete entity. But of course there are selves. We make them up all the time. Like you make up your stories.’ ‘Are you saying our lives are just fictions?’ ‘In a way. It’s one of the things we do with our spare brain capacity. We make up stories about ourselves.’
David Lodge, Thinks… (2002, p. 99)
At first, it had been the words that interested me most. But with time, I began giving more and more thought to the grammar of the thing itself, the dull reddish stain across the top of the page, the weave of the paper, the faded brown tint of the ink. For every object had its story; every key or rock or piece of glass made its own meaning as it moved through the world, from pocket to hand, closet to shelf, attic to kitchen table. And somewhere, beneath those words, hidden in the space between the letters, was the story of the object itself, the thread of its passage through the centuries, from father to son, father to son, and eventually it found its way to me.
Michael David Lukas, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo (2018, p. 83)
I borrow the title of this section from the title of a book of material culture essays (Dudley, Barnes, Binnie, Petrov, & Walklate 2012), as it sums up the thrust of my research, which uses soon-to-be-discarded items from my life to tell autobiographical anecdotes which I assemble into an an/archive. While reviewing my notes for this section, which emphasise the variety of life documents, and ways of collecting narratives, it once again became obvious to me that I was forcing myself to make each section conform to an essay-like structure, to show my academic writing, and ability to fashion an argument. I have already written the section on The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon, which argues for a diversity of writing styles, and suggests parallels between that book, and the creation of an archive. The ‘A is for Alphabetical’ section of this dissertation is meant to also emulate an archive, assembling disparate writings, which together show the structure of the research, provide justifications for my research choices, and form a loose narrative of the project as a whole. I have written some of these sections using lists, or using sub-headings to break up the text, rather than relying on paragraphs in order to reflect the research, and my life, in its multiplicity.
Narrative Inquiry
Narrative inquiry as a research tool stems from the belief that humans are innate storytellers, and that through our stories we can learn about ourselves and others – “If you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too,
87 must come to know my own story” (McAdams 1993, p. 11). I suggest that, just as the objects we accumulate are parts of our extended selves, so, too, are the stories we tell, and just as we are shaped by our possessions, we are changed by the stories which we create and collect. Peter Redman examines the claim “that the stories we tell to and about ourselves in some sense construct who we are” (2005, p. 28). Not only do we become through our stories, but we are also connected to others through them: “Stories provide coherence and continuity to one’s experience and have a central role in our communication with others” (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber 1998, p. 7). Narrative research, then, is interested in generating results “in the form of a story in which the researcher is the protagonist whose purpose is to generate knowledge” (Polkinghorne 1997, p. 17), and that knowledge can be about the researcher or others. A more nuanced definition suggests that narrative inquiry
refers to any study that uses or analyzes narrative materials. The data can be collected as a story (a life story provided in an interview or a literary work) or in a different manner (field notes of an anthropologist who writes up his or her observations as a narrative or in personal letters). It can be the object of the research or a means for the study of another question. It may be used for comparison among groups, to learn about a social phenomenon or historical period, or to explore a personality (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber 1998, p. 2).
My own research uses short vignettes of personal memories related to disposed objects as data to see if the accumulation of such data can be useful for further research purposes, by myself, or by others. A criticism of such research is that “it fails to provide representative cases and thus hurls the reader into the eccentric world of the atypical,” but Ken Plummer suggests that such a view “completely misunderstands the nature of such research – where insights, understandings, appreciation, intimate familiarity are the goals and not ‘facts’, explanations or generalizations” (2001, p. 153). My research explores a narrative approach that can be used by individuals in compiling their own life stories, or an archive of their life documents. My research explores an in- depth approach, collecting the stories of multiple objects to allow a narrative of my life to appear (or be constructed). Although my data collection is a method available for all, the narratives I generate about my own objects “allows us to witness the individual in her or his complexity and recognise that although some phenomena will be common to all, some will remain unique” (Josselson 1995, p. 32), an argument against having to provide representative examples.
Storytelling
What, then, constitutes ‘narrative’? I am taking a broad approach to the term, accepting that it can be considered as “personal experience as expressed or communicated in
88 language” (McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich 2006, p. 4), or, more relevant in this study combining an art installation with an archive and a dissertation, “as verbalized, visualized, and/or embodied framings of a sequence of actual or possible life events” (Ochs & Capps 1996, p. 19). Nicola King “suggest[s] a threefold model of narrative as 1) the event; 2) the memory of the event; and 3) the writing of (the memory) of the event. It is the third stage of this process that constructs the only version of the first to which we have access” (2000, p. 5). “Story,” according to E.M. Forster, “is the chronological sequence of events. Plot refers to the causal connection between those events” (in Herman & Vervaeck 2001, p. 11). Therefore, the “otherwise disconnected events” (Ochs & Capps 1996, p. 19) of a life, such as the ones I am presenting in my archive of narratives, make sense through what Paul Ricoeur calls “emplotment” (in Lawler 2008, p. 11), in which both the narrator and the audience engage in “processes of linking” (Lawler 2008, p. 11).
In narrative research we might see that “a life story establishes what counts as the main line of the plot and, thereby, which incidents should be construed as making progress or as retreats or digressions” (Ochberg 1994, p. 113); this could be because of the way the narrator told the story, or because of the way the researcher has presented it (and, of course, the narrator and researcher may be the same person). However, this leaves little room for the involvement of the audience in the emplotment process. For this research I present a number of disparate narrative events, and leave them for others to turn into a story (if the data is thorough enough). Drawing on the work of Monica Fludernik’s “narrativity,” Herman and Vervaeck note that “a text does not need to have a plot to count as a narrative. It suffices to encounter on any textual level an anthropomorphous agent who has certain experiences, which urges the reader to interpret the text as a narrative” (2001, p. 172). This involvement of the audience is something I have touched on in other sections; through artworks, literature, and archives there is a communication with (possibly unknown) others, in a future time period, in a different place. Not only do these possible audiences learn about the life of the narrator of the stories, but they also might ask:
What do I have to learn from the experience? What does this life story mean from the perspective of my own life experience? What do I see of my own life in this story? What can I learn from it to tell my own story more effectively? (Plummer 2001, p. 243; italics in original)
89 Fragments
The assembling of disparate elements is an idea that I keep returning to in this paper, and it is often mentioned in narrative research, and the telling of life stories. Rather than trying to force together a series of quotes into a Frankenstein’s monster of a paragraph, and in the interests of breaking up the text, I am going to present the next series of quotes as a list, in imitation of a commonplace book, and as homage to Walter Benjamin’s collecting of quotes, as well as reference to Sei Shônagon’s lists (this could be Quotes about Fragments):
“…most life stories are strings of episodes and generalizations punctuated by gaps and uncertainties” (Wiener & Rosenwald 1993, p. 30).
“Our experiences and memories include a vast aggregation of narratively structured episodes and stories” (Polkinghorne 1991, p. 143).
“Ricoeur referred to the configurational dimension of narrative, which ‘construes significant wholes out of scattered events’”(Ochs & Capps 1996, p. 26).
“…accept the granular and multifaceted nature of the narratives in the record…” (Battley, Daniels, & Rolan 2014, p. 156).
“…the creative assemblage of disparate elements. … That is, out of the millions of things that occur in a life, only some will be selected as ‘events’ with which to construct a story” (Lawler 2008, p. 16).
“…precisely those tiny fragments they were interested in. Afterward they put them together, like archaeologists reconstructing a Roman pot” (Ash, in Wallen 2009, p. 272).
“…the archival assembly of the fragments of a life into the detailed portrait” (Wallen 2009, p. 275).
“Even if one should try to present a series of artworks by objectively arranging them on the neutral walls of a white cube, it would still work as an assembly with an (unknown) narrative potential. The narrative invariably arises from the montage of these altering sets of conceptual, literary, cinematic, museological and theatrical elements. In short, it is the cohering force and creative power of montage, which brings any narrative environment to life” (Oudsten 2012, p. 29).
“What is needed, or anyway must serve, is tableaus, anecdotes, parables, tales: Mini- narratives with the narrator in them” (Geertz in Clandinin & Connelly 2000, p. 7).
“For us… life is filled with narrative fragments, enacted in storied moments of time and space, and reflected upon and understood in terms of narrative unities and discontinuities” (Clandinin & Connelly 2000, p. 17).
“…Emily Carr’s admonition when she writes that her journals seem to be ‘made up of scraps of nothing.’ ‘…the little scraps and nothingnesses of my life have made a definite pattern” (Clandinin & Connelly 2000, p. 104).
“Indeed, the way Klumpke has written this life document can best be described as nomadic, bringing together many different voices, following storylines that ultimately remain open-ended and irresolute, taking abrupt bifurcations, dispersing its meaning in
90 a variety of non-hierarchically organised levels of narrativity and even decentering its narrative characters” (Tamboukou 2010, p. 23).
“…an assemblage of narrative lines…” (Tamboukou 2010, p. 27).
Life is fragmented; identity is fragmented; the archive is fragmented – why shouldn’t my research be fragmented? I am exploring the process of storing memories and narratives, through discarded objects, in an installation and an archive, in an effort to show that this assemblage of the multiple aspects of a life is an adequate form of data collection; through these, we can come to know the life story of another, as well as prompt viewers/readers to reflect on their own lives and life documents. This complex array of concepts requires a complex structure, and a fragmented, fractured narrative of smaller narratives seems adequate to the task.
Auto/biographical Documents
Claire Lynch, who works in the areas of autobiography and archives, has coined the term “ante-autobiography” to “refer to those texts which come before or instead of a full-length narrative” (Lynch 2013, p. 97). These are the documents which we accrue throughout our lives, which provide information about us, and cumulatively from which a story of our lives can be gleaned. Such documents, which Plummer (2001) variously describes as “documents of life” (p. 17), “personal props” (p. 44), and “human documents” (quoting Thomas & Znaniecki, p. 3), range from “photograph albums to video diaries, to collections of clothes, books and ‘old records’” (p. 44), and, more comprehensively, he notes that:
People keep diaries, send letters, make quilts, take photos, dash off memos, compose auto/biographies, construct web sites, scrawl graffiti, publish their memoirs, write letters, compose CVs, leave suicide notes, film video diaries, inscribe memorials on tombstones, shoot films, paint pictures, make tapes and try to record their personal dreams” (Plummer 2001, p. 17).
These documents often involve personal narratives, and to these we can add narrative genres (from a review of narrative studies), which range from
story to novel, diaries and letters to memoirs, gossip to legal testimony, boast to eulogy, troubles talk to medical history, joke to satire, bird song to opera, etching to palimpsest, and mime to dance. Counter to a prevalent ideology of disembodied objectivity, even scientific narratives can be personal in tone (Ochs & Capps 1996, p. 19).
To these lists of documents and genres I am now adding ‘installations of woven forms made from discarded life documents’ as a form of ante-autobiography, which can be used as data in narrative inquiries. The objects which I am shredding and weaving are “a goldmine of biographical incidents,” even though some have “been acquired
91 randomly and have little history,” while “others will speak hugely complex stories” (Plummer 2001, p. 57). Looking over the narratives I have composed and collected in this research, I can confirm Plummer’s assessment: some of the weavings have narratives such as, “I don’t remember where I got this,” or, “I didn’t really use this,” while others give detailed information about my tastes, feelings, history, personality, and social connections. The individual narratives “might be seen as mere fragments, inadequately detailed to be validated as life writing, but in combination – as an archive – they have a value and significance greater than the component parts” (Lynch 2013, p. 98).
The assembled mini-narratives in the installation Geniza chart a chronological record and ante-autobiography of my life: from high school (#503), to work in a bank (#276), and first university degree (#241) in Perth; teaching English in Japan (#330); working in a hotel (#384), as a waiter (#144), and as a carer (#X-16) in Sydney; my first fine art degree (#323), being an artist (#350), and my master’s degree (#213); work in the university library (#276), and a library degree (#451); my teaching degree (#331), tutoring at university (#283) and to high school students (#438); my move to Timor- Leste to work on my PhD (#419); and the death of my partner of seventeen years (#537). As the author, subject and narrator of this story, I have a privileged knowledge about the episodes that make up the story, but, as I am in media res, I can’t connect the elements into a coherent plot because I’m not sure where it is going, or how it will end. I could construct a plot which tells how I got to this point, but what comes after may be much more interesting or important (or not), and all that has come before will take on a different meaning. I am collecting this data, these “droplets of time” (Wallen 2009, p. 261), and creating an archive for potential future use, which is unforeseen, and unimagined. No-one may be interested in my data, but if others collect their own narratives of discarded objects in this way, then there will be more detailed information available for future researchers, and “the more information about the subject you collect, the closer to ‘the truth’ – the ‘whole truth’ – you get” (Stanley in Plummer 2001, p. 87). This is the value of life documents, as ante-autobiography, that is not diminished by the fragmentary nature of them. For whatever the future use that may be made of these documents, there is at least some data to be studied, which would otherwise disappear when I had disposed of the items.
Rhizomatic Narratives
I have noted elsewhere the problem of using once-fashionable concepts in research, but an article on the way rhizomatic storytelling can help construct the self (Sermijn,
92 Devlieger, & Loots 2008) gives me a precedent for approaching narrative through installation and the archive. The “comprehensive life document,” Plummer notes, “is the rarest document to come by” (Plummer 2001, p. 26), and Yvonna Lincoln argues “it is a type of realist pretense to hope that any given text can tell the ‘whole story’” (Lincoln 1997, p. 38). By presenting my narratives as fragments, combined in an archive and anarchival installation, I am attempting to “experiment with alternative, nontraditional presentation forms” (Sermijn, Devlieger, & Loots 2008, p. 632), in particular, those that allow for “multiple entryways” (Sermijn, Devlieger, & Loots 2008, p. 637), one of the defining characteristics of rhizomes (Deleuze & Guattari 1987). “From whichever side one enters, as soon as one is in, one is connected. There is no main entryway or starting point that leads to ‘the truth.’ ‘The truth’ or ‘the reality’ does not exist within rhizomatic thinking. There are always many possible truths and realities that can all be viewed as social constructs” (Sermijn, Devlieger, & Loots 2008, p. 637; italics in original). This is why Lincoln and Plummer’s views on comprehensive life documents are relevant – a life is too complex to capture in one form of narrative structure:
A presentation of a rhizome on paper is impossible as such. How could one grasp a rhizome (and consequently selfhood as a rhizomatic story) on paper when one takes into account the principles of infinite entrances, multiplicity, infinite connections, resistance against ruptures, and cartography? (Sermijn, Devlieger, & Loots 2008, p. 645).
For this reason, I am presenting my data as an installation and an archive (and this dissertation) that can be entered from any place, which have browsability, and from which a multitude of stories (a chronological history, my social relations, work life, development as an artist) can be extracted. This method allows for the capture and storage of data that would otherwise be dispersed, and it resists attempts, even by myself, to impose one reading on the data. Another researcher could even impose “counter-narratives” (MacNeil 2011) on the “amalgam of separate – sometimes contradictory – fragments of memories, feelings, events, and ideas” (Sermijn, Devlieger, & Loots 2008, p. 634), that I am assembling in this project. The rhizome becomes yet another metaphor of disparate narratives or objects brought together into one collective (the archive, the installation, the list, the inventory).
93 Natalie Billing
I am trivial, endlessly trivial, she thinks. And yet.
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (1998, p. 94)
I have never seen any of Brisbane-based artist Natalie Billing’s installations in person, but only through book and magazine reproductions. I first discovered her work doing research on memorials, and possibly through a search for Christian Boltanski, as one article compares her archival aesthetic to his (Gallagher 1999/2000). Her artistic practice in recent years seems more focused on textiles and eco-dying, but her installation work explored aspects of memory, memorialisation, and, ultimately, contemplation of the prospect of being forgotten after death.
Billing’s installations gained their power from the multiplication of small items into large aggregates of materials that often acted as metaphors for her own life, and always as a form of memory work. These installations seem to be attempts to cheat death, or at least the disappearance of the self that death usually heralds; as Franz Ehmann, in an essay on Billing’s work, suggests: “Death comes thrice. First we die physically, secondly through language and the third time round, it is due to no one remembering” (2005, n.p.). Billing’s installations, though, are even more ephemeral than the objects she uses to attempt to secure memory, and it is only through articles, books, the internet, or other forms of written and photographed documentation that her art about memory can have a future.
Archive (1999), was the first of Billing’s works that I became familiar with (Soapbox 1999, p. 22). It consisted of rows of shelving upon which hundreds of archive boxes were stacked. Within each box was a plastic-wrapped and tagged item from her own life, complete with her memories around that object. A book on a table in the room gave details of the contents of each box, and its position within the ‘archive’ – a word I am questioning because unlike a real archive, this one only came into existence during the course of its exhibition (Ehmann 2005). In an exhibition review, Jane Gallagher suggests that, “Archive represents a reordering of the artist’s personal possessions,” and “Billing has executed a self-portrait through her belongings” (1999/2000, p. 51). The installation therefore becomes an autobiographical representation of the self through an inventory, essentially (since the contents of the boxes remain hidden from view), but an ephemeral one since I have found no published list of the contents of the work (unlike Michael Landy’s Break Down). In a separate room from the shelves, Billing’s personal possessions, as yet unboxed, filled a space with cardboard boxes, and rolls of plastic, awaiting packing, storing, and recording. This part of the installation
94 represented “an artwork in progress and as an archival process” (Ehmann 2005, n.p.), suggesting the ongoing need for preservation of one’s self, as well as the memories attached to those items.
Other installations analogous to my own include Record Room (1997), which consisted of sheets with Billing’s memories of her life typed onto them: “Each individual piece of paper is dated and starting from 1976 to 1987 with almost each entry beginning ‘I remember…’” (Ehmann 2005, n.p.). This makes me think of George Perec’s own attempt at such a preservation of memory (Je me souviens, 1997), which he acknowledges he borrowed from American Joe Brainard’s earlier attempt (called I Remember – perhaps the source of Billing’s own work?). Records Department (2000), is a similar collection of memories, but each is enclosed within an envelope, with the type of memory category marked on the front of the envelope which shows “…an obsessiveness at work that is driven by the compulsion to record, to itemise, to compartmentalise, to hoard and to list an experienced life as memories” (Ehmann 2005, n.p.). Museum of the Mundane (1998) is less about Billing’s own life, but continues with the exploration of memory and narrative by presenting works obtained from flea markets and secondhand stores as if they were museum collection exhibits. Their display as part of an installation “perform[s] a resurrection from oblivion” (Ehmann 2005, n.p.) for these items, and they remain “repositories of intensely personal memories for those who owned them” (Middleton 2005, n.p.). Unfortunately those personal memories are lost if they have not been recorded, and the installation suggests the power of the mundane in securing memory, but only, I would suggest, if there is some kind of metadata attached to the items to expand them beyond the generic.
My own installation for this research, like Billing’s installations, explores “issues of remembering, living and death” (Ehmann 2005, n.p.) through archival and anarchival forms. Like her, I believe that the power of mundane objects of daily existence can bring memories back to life, and that recording those memories extends their life beyond that of the person who remembers. Ultimately, though, the power of these installations is not necessarily the archival storage of the evidence of lives, but the fostering of the archival impulse, and the engendering of memory work for those who view these exhibitions. Geniza will have a life beyond the temporary installation of its shelves and weavings through this dissertation, and the documentation of the individual works, memories, and narratives.
95 One Boy’s Day
Roger G. Barker and Herbert F. Wright
David watched her go, trying to fix this moment – the vivid backpack, her hair swinging against her back, Jack’s free hand reaching out to grab leaves and sticks – forever in his mind. It was futile, of course; he was forgetting things with every step she took. Sometimes his photographs amazed him, pictures he came across stored in old boxes or folders, moments he could not remember even when he saw them: himself laughing with people whose names he had forgotten, Paul wearing an expression David had never seen in life. And what would he have of this moment in another year, in five?
Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (2005, p. 320)
In the 1951 case study One Boy’s Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior (Barker & Wright, 1966), a seven-year-old boy (“Raymond”) was observed by a team of researchers for the fourteen hours of his day (April 26, 1949). The observers swapped over every half hour, and their observations and notes, taken at minute intervals, were transcribed, enhanced, and collated, and the resulting study details every action and conversation that this boy engaged in over his day. The introduction describes how the eight observers approached their task:
They tried to see and record Raymond’s directly observable behavior, his vocalizations and bodily movements. Beyond that, they reported their on-the- spot impressions and inferences of Raymond’s perceptions, motives, and feelings (Barker & Wright, 1966, p. 7).
Should readers be concerned with the objectivity of these observations, the authors assure them of the validity of the study:
One Boy’s Day is a scientific document. It is a record of what a seven-year-old boy did and of what his home and school and neighborhood and town did to him from the time he awoke one morning until he went to sleep that night. It is an objective record because it describes the actions of Raymond and the physical and social conditions of his life that could be seen and heard by skilled observers. It is an interpretive record too because it reports what these observers inferred as to the meanings to the boy of his behavior and of the persons, things, and events that he saw and heard and felt through the day (Barker & Wright, 1966, p. 1).
Although there is an attempt to enrich the descriptions by providing details about motives and feelings, there is no input from the boy himself. We don’t know if the observations about his emotional states reflect what he was really feeling. It may have been impossible to get a seven-year-old to comment on his own motives, if they had wanted to, and he may not have remembered what he felt, should he have been presented with the transcripts later. With my own data collection, I have trouble remembering just what it is about a certain object that appealed to me, or when I first
96 acquired it, or how. Although a perfect record may not be possible, an attempt to do so at least produces some valuable data.
A ‘specimen record’ has been described as a “detailed and comprehensive record of what an individual or group does over some time period” (Montello & Sutton 2012, p. 94), which has produced in this case a rich description of a day in the life of this boy. A review of the book by Samuel Strong, however, criticises the approach:
The reader is struck by the fact that he is encountering raw data. A number of questions come to mind. How can one evaluate such materials without a theoretical framework? … Is it likely that the wanderings of one seven-year-old boy during any one day would in themselves produce material sufficient for generalizations about children’s behavior in any situation? (Strong 1952, p. 321).
Whether or not the study is valid for use as child psychology data, it remains as an accumulation of everyday details that would otherwise have been lost to time. In addition to giving information about the life of this anonymous boy from a Midwestern American town, it also serves, over sixty years later, as a record of a lost world; a time when seven-year-olds walked to school alone, crossing roads with traffic without parental or adult guidance and supervision, and engaging in no electronic, or digital forms of recreation. This is the sort of history of a life that I wish to produce from my own research; my own data has been collected over a four or five year period, but the narratives produced in relation to the discarded materials cover a period of over thirty- five years of my life. Even if I do not continue with the project after the completion of my PhD, the data collected is available for use by others. Composer Mikel Rouse has been working on a thirteen-hour installation based on One Boy’s Day, featuring video, music, and song, and including transcripts from the original study (One Boy’s Day 2018). I don’t imagine that the authors of the study conceived that their work would ever be used in this way, but that is the sort of thing that the archival turn in art has made available for artistic use. Other branches of knowledge might use the same data in different ways, but the indeterminacy of the uses of data is one of the characteristics of the archive.
97 Personal Archives
To read, or not? I dread meeting myself in Eric’s pages. In a sense, the only purpose of life is the creation of a self and what matters, finally, is the sum total of all one’s attempts.
Gore Vidal, Two Sisters (1972, p. 19)
The Buddha said the greatest source of suffering is the belief in a single, continuous, unchanging personality, and the attempts to hold on to it.
Gerald Rosen, A retrospective look at The Catcher in the Rye (1990, p. 168)
There is a difference between the documents that an individual creates and collects from his or her own life – known as “Personal Information Management (PIM)” – and those records and documents maintained by institutions – “Archives and Records Management (ARM)” (Lee 2011, p. 2). The difference is more pronounced in North American literature on the subject, whereas in an Australian context, the term archives encompasses “all records of ‘continuing value’ regardless of where they reside or who is currently caring for them” (Lee 2011, p. 2). I embrace this more inclusive term here, and consider personal archives as constituting documents and artefacts that an individual collects and keeps for future use, which reflect aspects of the self, and constitute part of the extended self. In institutional archives, “the emphasis is on the corporate and collective” whereas personal archives record “the individual and idiosyncratic” (Hobbs 2001, p. 127), and “[seek] to reflect the character and interiority of individuals,” and “a creative individual forging his or her own life through time” (Hobbs 2001, p. 126). Thus, the “flotsam of the individual life” (Hobbs 2001, p. 131), gathered together and kept as an archive “is linked to the human impulse for resisting oblivion,” and “our innate desire to possess meaning about ourselves, to be able to communicate that meaning to others, and, above all, to survive by leaving something behind” (Cox 2008, p. 3) in what may be considered “a kind of autobiographical assemblage” (Cox 2008, p. 162).
Vaughan Rees in his PhD thesis raises the issue of the potential criticism of autoethnographic studies as being trivial or solipsistic, “minefields of excessive subjectivity,” and notes other PhD theses that explore - and justify his own - autobiographical approaches to art making (2005, p.5). Similarly, personal archives, especially those by unknown people such as myself, might be seen as not as serious as institutional archives, or not as important as those produced by noteworthy members of society. However, the broad range of articles related to the subject belies this reading, and indeed points to the myriad of academic ways that personal archives can be approached, analysed, and valued: Archival Theory (Cox 2008; Hobbs 2001;
98 McKemmish 1996); computer science (Rudder 2014; Bell & Gemmell 2009) and the digital (Lee 2011); Personal Information Management (Jones 2007); social media theories (Good 2013; Van Dijck 2013, 2004a, 2004b); artistic, creative approaches (Ingraham 2013; Kouros 2012; Rosenberg 2011); history (Tamboukou 2016); psychology (Stewart, Franz & Layton 1988); consumer studies (Beer & Burrows 2010); and links between art and computer science (Jones 2015; Brouwer, Mulder & Charlton 2003).
The archives of ordinary individuals have been overlooked because “Everyman’s existence hasn’t been worth recording, apart from where it intersects with a legend’s” (Rudder 2014, p. 23). However,
this asymmetry is ending; the small noise, the crackle and hiss of the rest of us, is finally making it to tape. As the Internet has democratized journalism, photography, pornography, charity, comedy, and so many other courses of personal endeavor, it will, I hope, eventually democratize our fundamental narrative (Rudder 2014, p. 23).
This highlights the role that the internet plays in the democratisation of the creation of cultural memory, through the “overproduction of informal, personal selfarchiving” (Kouros 2012, p. 204), but many people still engage in the creation of offline documents such as “[t]he personal diary, the family photo album, the community museum, [and] the libraries of individuals [which] are all examples of popular archives (DeLanda 2003, p. 16), although all of these could, of course, also be held by an individual in digital form. Whether an archive is in a digital or analogue format, or if it is available publicly via the internet, as part of an archival repository, or held in private hands, personal archives “bring to the foreground of archival practice the subject who is archiving and is being archived” (Kouros 2012), and “[help] reveal many relationships otherwise difficult to trace: between one’s public and private character, one’s outcomes and intentions, one’s inter- and intrapersonal conflicts, one’s works ‘text’ and its context” (Ingraham 2013, p. 6). More simply, every archive is a self-portrait of its creator, but to suggest “a coherent, disinterested story” revealed by the personal archive “neglects the shifting, dynamic multiplicity of that subject” (Ingraham 2013, p. 6). In order to more fully reveal, or at least make available for interpretation, my own “shifting, dynamic multiplicity,” this research seeks to capture the documents, and their related narratives, that would otherwise disappear from my personal archive, by creating a record of those things which are removed from my life.
William Jones defines PIM as “both the practice and the study of the activities a person performs in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, use, and
99 distribute the information needed to complete tasks (work-related or not) and fulfill various roles and responsibilities (for example, as parent, employee, friend, or community member)” (Jones 2007, p. 453). What I am calling personal archives, Jones describes as “Personal Information Collections (PICs)” within a larger “personal space of information (PSI)” (Jones 2007, p. 462), which includes not only the information that one collects and stores, but also information about oneself kept by, say, government agencies, or medical authorities, as well as information that one encounters, through libraries, or on the internet (Lee & Capra 2011, p. 36). From an ARM perspective, the “recordness” of this information is what makes it archival, and a document or artefact can be considered a record if:
• it has been rendered into a documentary form that is potentially accessible to other human beings; • it has been captured in a recordkeeping system in the context of a social or business activity; • it is kept in a way that enables it to continue to function as evidence of that activity (McKemmish 1996, p.44)
Any piece of information, any document, can become “evidence of me” (McKemmish 1996; italics in original) because it reflects an aspect of lived experience, whether it is creating, or acquiring an item, reading or eating or wearing something, interacting with other people, disseminating information on social media, or sitting by oneself and contemplating the world. If one could capture all that information, preferably without too much personal input, then one would have a record of one’s life that would enable any individual to “relive one’s own life story in Proustian detail” (Bell & Gemmell 2009, p. 8), as Gordon Bell has done with his MyLifeBits project.
An engineer working in the computer industry, Bell, “by means of custom programs and gadgets, now collects the daily minutiae of his life so emphatically that he owns the most extensive and unwieldy personal archive of its kind in the world” (Wilkinson 2007, n.p.). He set about digitizing all the extant documents and records of his life at the time of the start of his project, capturing all born-digital records from that date, and “recording and storing everything I saw, heard, and did from that point forward” (Bell & Gemmell 2009, p. 29). Although his mantra is “Capture everything, discard nothing” (Bell & Gemmell 2009, p. 29), he has destroyed nearly all the physical artefacts of his life, retaining his personal archives only in digital form. In one way, then, he is similar to Michael Landy, who destroyed all his personal possessions in the art performance exhibition Break Down, keeping only an inventory of the destroyed possessions. The difference, of course, is that Bell has access to any of the information that had previously been recorded on the documents he has destroyed. My own approach to
100 the items I am discarding is that the information itself is not that important to me, otherwise why would I be discarding the items? What I wish to record is the fact of its existence, and subsequent disposal, the contextual information around that item, and what it meant, subjectively, to me. I am also approaching the disposal in an artistic way, which reflects my own background, and so becomes part of the context.
Personal archives, then, are important to my research for a number of reasons: they capture the “externalised me” (Lee 2011, p. 205), and reflect my tastes and attitudes, and my social interactions; they “can be harnessed to not only illuminate a personal history but also reflect the history of the time and place from which they derive” (Rosenberg 2011, p. 91), by providing details of the minutiae of lived experience of this time, and the places I have lived; and they can reflect “[character] change over time” (Zalinger, Freier & Freire 2009. p. 8), by storing records objectively, and showing changes to my identity, attitudes, and opinions. I have in mind for my research no end goal for this data collection; indeed, there is “the difficulty of predicting the need or desire to use any given information artefact (analog or digital) in the future. One can never know with certainty whether, when, or how someone might benefit from using a particular item” (Lee & Capra 2011, p. 51).
The value of personal archives is that they contain “a sense of feelings, of relationships, and of character” (Hobbs, 2001, p. 133), and rather than being the exclusive domain of historians or sociologists looking for facts about life and history, “[there] is a place for novelists, poets, and creative writing teachers to use archives to seek out evidence of character as well as the human storytelling and self-narratives with which we all fill our lives” (Hobbs, 2001, p. 133). They are also important because “[to] paraphrase Montaigne, I believe that – because I am human – when I write about myself, I inevitably describe some aspect of the human condition” (Holbrook 2005, p. 45). By capturing in written, photographic and woven form contextual, subjective, and narrativised information about items from my PSI that I am discarding, creating a new PIC for my personal archives, I am “[extending] infinitely, as regards time and space, the range within which one mind can communicate with another; [the written symbol] gives the writer’s mind a life limited by the duration of ink, paper, and readers, as against that of his [sic] flesh and blood body” (Samuel Butler in Gleick 2012, p. 30). And should this research, the weaving documentation forms, my diaries, and the other documents of my personal archives not survive my death, at various points in my life I can at least look over them for myself, and reflect on my past; whether or not anyone else reads, looks at, or uses my personal information, I can console myself with the words of Richard Cox: “At the very least, you are writing for the unique someone who
101 will be the perfect reader, who will devour your sentences and understand: your future self” (2008, p. 273; italics in original).
102 The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon
It is worth remembering that history amounts to the fragments that survive from a vaster buried story.
Andrew Marr, A History of the World (2012, p. xxi)
My first degree was in Asian Studies, with a major in Japanese Language, so I have been aware of this book for a long time; I knew of the lists that form part of the book, and had seen Peter Greenaway’s film of the same name (a videocassette of which I have already woven), but I had never got around to reading it until this research. From what I had heard, it seemed to me that the content and organisation of the text were analogous to that of an archive, and, like The Arcades Project of Walter Benjamin (1999), something that I would like to emulate for the written part of my thesis. The collection of disparate ideas, genres, and subject matter that make up the book are also like the way that our extended selves are formed from the disparate elements of our lives to produce our autobiographical singularity.
Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past
Dried hollyhock. The objects used during the Display of Dolls. To find a piece of deep violet or grape-coloured material that has been pressed between the pages of a notebook. It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love. Last year’s paper fan. A night with a clear moon (Sei Shônagon 1971, p.51).
The Pillow Book connects us with the lost world of the Heian court of tenth-century Japan. Written by a lady-in-waiting to Empress Sadako, we know very little of Sei Shônagon, other than the writings she has left in this collection (even her name has not survived; Shônagon is a title meaning ‘Minor Counsellor’). She began writing after receiving some notebooks from the empress:
I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects. (p. 263)
The term ‘pillow book’ (makura no sôshi) refers to any type of book in which men and women wrote when they retired for the evening and stored “possibly in the drawers of their wooden pillows, so that they might record stray impressions” (Morris 1971, p.11). She records the minutiae of life at court, the everydayness that seems so inconsequential when it stretches before one, repeating year after year, season after
103 season, but which a thousand years later has completely vanished. To record that which seems inconsequential is a gift to posterity.
In addition to Shônagon’s own list of the contents above, the book has also been described in the following ways:
Apart from the 164 lists, which are perhaps its most striking feature, Shônagon’s collection contains nature descriptions, diary entries, character sketches, and anecdotes… (Morris 1971, p. 11).
It’s a genre-bending miscellany of short, largely unrelated pieces, which fall into three main categories — narratives (mostly of events Sei experienced during her time at court), thoughts and opinions on various matters, and the famous lists (“Things That Make The Heart Beat Faster,” “Occasions When Time Drags By” etc.) (McKinney 2011, n.p.).
[It is] a “collection of lists, gossip, poetry, observations, complaints and anything else she found of interest during her years in the court.” In other words, while the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet was creating Beowulf, Shônagon was writing a blog (Internal quote unattributed; Perkovic 2013, n.p.).
Like a blog, Sei Shônagon’s writing was intended to be read by others. It may have begun as a private collection, but, after being discovered by a captain of the palace guards, the book began to circulate at court (Sei Shônagon 1971, p. 263). Whether or not this public airing changed the nature of her writing is uncertain, as the ordering of the notes has changed constantly since The Pillow Book was first copied and disseminated in manuscript form. Translator Ivan Morris describes the book as “unsystematic and disordered,” but proposes that after it began to be read by others, “it developed into a more deliberate and literary work. In this case, Sei may herself have rearranged some of the sections in her book in order to make it more coherent and readable” (Morris 1971, p. 13). In what is perhaps an attempt to deflect criticism, Sei writes:
How could my casual jottings possibly bear comparison with the many impressive books that exist in our time? Readers have declared, however, that I can be proud of my work. … Whatever people may think of my book, I still regret that it ever came to light (1971, p. 264).
Of course, so few of the “many impressive books” still exist that we cannot make comparisons; Sei Shônagon’s work has become a classic just by surviving, despite what may be many weaknesses.
As mentioned above, the ordering of the text is seen as one such weakness. Morris further adds,
The structural confusion of The Pillow Book is generally regarded as its main stylistic weakness; yet surely part of its charm lies precisely in its rather bizarre,
104 haphazard arrangement in which a list of ‘awkward things’, for example, is followed by an account of the Emperor’s return from a shrine… (1971, p. 13).
It is just this haphazardness that draws me to the text, and makes me want to replicate it in my dissertation. I have bowed somewhat to convention in presenting my research, but at one stage I had the idea of ordering the whole dissertation alphabetically, in juxtaposition with the numerical ordering of the archival documentation forms. The Pillow Book seems to me like a cache of material that has been arranged into an anarchive, but where the archivist has acknowledged that he or she really has no idea of what the intentions of the creator might have been. My research has been about leaving a more detailed record, so that the intentions of the creator are not superseded by those of the archivist. I also have had to deal with the tension involved in creating personal narratives, and a personal approach to writing a PhD thesis, that will be read by others, and which may be misinterpreted. In the diary of that other great extant female writer from the Heian period, Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shônagon’s writing and personality are critiqued:
Sei Shônagon has the most extraordinary air of self-satisfaction. Yet, if we stop to examine those Chinese writings of hers that she so presumptuously scatters about the place, we find that they are full of imperfections. Someone who makes such an effort to be different from others is bound to fall in people’s esteem, and I can only think that her future will be a hard one (in Morris 1971, p. 9).
Originality in art, and in PhDs, is mandatory, and lauded, yet lockstep conformity in a dissertation is sometimes enforced. Looking at Sei Shônagon’s work gives me the justification for trying different approaches, because who knows what will survive in 1000 years; the novel, the idiosyncratic, or the haphazard may be all that survives, and may be seen as a classic of the genre by future readers.
105 Possessions and the Self
But consider what value, what meaning is enclosed even in the smallest of our daily habits, in the hundred possessions which even the poorest beggar owns: a handkerchief, an old letter, the photo of a cherished person. These things are part of us, almost like limbs of our body; nor is it conceivable that we can be deprived of them in our world, for we immediately find others to substitute the old ones, other objects which are ours in their personification and evocation of our memories.
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself.
Primo Levi, If This is a Man (1979, p. 32)
I had never felt before that everything I thought I was amounted to the clothes on my back and the books on my shelves and the calendar I kept full of obligations waiting and obligations fulfilled.
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004, p. 233)
One of the central premises of my research is that the possessions we own can tell us about the self – about my self, specifically – and to dispose of them is to dispose of parts of that self, to perhaps lose part of our identity, because the items may no longer anchor memories of our shared past (the self and the object), and no longer provide information that others can use to know us; the connection between possessions and the self is a widely used concept in psychology (Frost & Steketee 2010; Gosling 2008; James 1950), neuroscience (Hood 2011), consumer behaviour research (Richins 1994; Belk 1990, 1989, 1988), anthropology (Gell 1998, 1986; Strathern 1988), and material culture studies (Miller 2009, 2010; Hoskins 1998; Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton 1981). By recuperating the biography, history, and narratives of discarded possessions and storing them in an archive, we are not only able to prevent the loss of aspects of the self, but enable that information to be perceived, and used by unknown others in the future, and in different locations, and so in a way extending our self even further.
The idea of extending, or expanding the self, or at least the sense of self, has been widely explored. In the late 19th century William James (1950 [1890]) theorised that the idea of the Self included not only the well-discussed body/mind dichotomy, but also other aspects of life including family, profession, status, beliefs and possessions – “a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his…” (1950, p. 291; emphasis in original). Pierre Bourdieu suggests that identity comes not only from one’s possessions – “houses, furniture, paintings, books, cars, spirits, cigarettes, perfume, clothes” – but also in the “practices with which [people] manifest their distinction” (1984, p. 173). Russell Belk has proposed the concept of the ‘extended self’ to encompass these
106 ideas of self/possession interaction (1988). The objects that we possess (that we buy, or receive and keep) “are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities” (1988, p. 139). He makes a distinction between a ‘core’ self and this extended self, with the suggestion that possessions which have more value for the subject become intensely identified with the core self, and objects that the subject marginally identifies with constitute the extended self (Belk, 1989). The concept later becomes more expansive as he writes of a spatial enlargement of the self because of one’s possessions – “our possessions make us bigger people” (Belk 1990, p. 669) – and of temporal enlargement of the self whereby objects from one’s past become representations and narratives that constitute the extended self (Belk, 1990). Belk’s concept has been widely applied by other researchers (Hill 1991; Schouten 1991; Richins 1994; Ikeuchi, Fujihara, & Dohi 1999; Ahuvia 2005; Roster 2014), belying Joel Cohen’s criticism that “the extended self promises far more than it can deliver and therefore invites subsequent rejection or benign neglect” (1989, p. 125). He also wonders “whether there really is a psychologically meaningful extended self or whether the term should only be used as a figure of speech or term of art” (Cohen 1989, p. 126). For this research, it is not important to me whether or not the idea of the extended self constitutes a psychological reality, or is just a “meta concept” (Cohen 1989, p. 127); it at least exists as a metaphor for the way the idea of the self becomes entwined with material possessions and our narrative constructions, memories, and auto/biographical singularities.
The idea of an extended self – as a similar metaphor, if not using the same term – is used in the anthropological writing of Marilyn Strathern and Alfred Gell, especially when it involves the transfer of an item from one person or context to another; the discarded or gifted object retains a connection to the person who originally owned or created it. In “ceremonial exchange transactions,” Strathern writes, “[p]ersons or things may be transferred as ‘standing for’ (in our terms) parts of persons…. They are apprehended as extracted from one and absorbed by another” (Strathern 1988, p. 178). People can metaphorically be seen as “decomposing themselves – in detaching parts of themselves to bestow on others” (Strathern 1988, p. 213). Gell calls this concept “’distributed personhood’ – that is, personhood distributed in the milieu, beyond the body-boundary” (Gell 1998, p. 104). Gell discusses this concept in relation to art, and suggests that the creation and disposal of art involves a “spatio-temporal dispersion” (Gell 1998, p. 222), just as installations, and archives also involve spatio- temporal extensions of the self. He continues:
107 [A] person and a person’s mind are not confined to particular spatio-temporal coordinates, but consist of a spread of biographical events and memories of events, and a dispersed category of material objects, traces, and leavings, which can be attributed to a person and which, in aggregate, testify to agency and patienthood during a biographical career which may, indeed, prolong itself long after biological death. The person is thus understood as the sum total of the indexes which testify, in life and subsequently, to the biographical existence of this or that individual (Gell 1998, p. 222).
This “externalization of selfhood” (Woodward 2005, p. 22), corresponds with Belk’s ‘extended self’, and can be used not only to constitute ideas of the self, and personal identity, but also to display that self to others.
The objects that manifest one’s extended self not only are meaningful to the self, but also convey information to others; a much-studied arena for such display is the home. Daniel Miller is interested in the home as a means for people to create and maintain identities for themselves, which can evolve over time, and as a way to express those identities to others (2009, 2010); paradoxically, he thinks, “the best way to understand, convey and appreciate our humanity is through attention to our fundamental materiality” (Miller 2010, p. 4). Moving house is a way for people to “reconstruct their personal biography” by changing the objects they display, or even discarding some of them (Miller 2010, p. 97). Jean Baudrillard suggests that the “home-dweller” is an “active engineer of atmosphere” (1996, p. 26), and Sam Gosling “creates portraits of people based on the clues they leave” in their homes (2008, p. 6); he uses people’s rooms to examine “their occupants’ psychological footprints and to glimpse the different ways personality is expressed” (Gosling 2008, p. 11). Susan Pearce states that,
Each of our homes is a unique collection of objects which constitutes our framework for living…. Our rooms, once arranged more or less to our liking, constitute an important self-defining statement in a way which is paralleled only by the clothes which we choose to wear (1992, p. 24).
Anthony Giddens has also suggested that dress is, “manifestly, a means of symbolic display, a way of giving external form to narratives of self-identity” (1991, p. 62), but this equally applies to one’s home, or an archive of one’s possessions.
Daniel Miller recognises that in some homes, although the objects on display may have narratives and histories attached to them, it “doesn’t necessarily mean that objects hold any great significance for [the owners]” (2009, p. 213), which I recognise and acknowledge in the treatment of many of the objects I have incorporated into my installation; although individual items may not be overly significant, collectively they create a portrait of me, their former owner. Many of them were once displayed in my various homes over the years, but many of them sat in boxes, hidden from view, and
108 unable to be assessed by others, or used by me to present aspects of my personality. By being presented in an archive, or anarchival art installation, however, they become newly powerful as a tool of self-expression, identity creation, or means of expressing my autobiographical narrative.
109 Roland Barthes
The most poignant moments occur when he tries to impose order on his world, or to uncover the hidden order of the world outside. He constantly tries to classify: people, plants, ideas, information, objects, sounds, scents, tastes. He dreams of the ‘syntax’ of precious stones, the ‘grammar’ of scents; he tries to compose symphonies of tastes and reads the entire social order into the different varieties of exotic plants.
Patrick McGuiness, Introduction to Against Nature (2003, p. xxxiv)
“Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive,” said Roland Barthes.
Laurent Binet, HHhH (2013, n.p. [chapter 256])
Although I had read Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1972), and Camera Lucida (1978) years ago, the alphabetically arranged texts that I deal with in this section were unknown to me before starting this research. I discovered his autobiography, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1989), while researching that topic, and his idiosyncratic way of ordering that text made me think of unorthodox ways of presenting my own materials for this thesis. I realized the similarities between Barthes’ model and the archive, and so decided that an alphabetical listing of results could not only be justified by antecedents such as Barthes, but actually would make this written component analogous to an archival (or anarchival) form.
In the three texts that I am drawing on, he uses the alphabet as the means of ordering his discourse. Wanting to avoid an artificial order, he relies on an alphabetical listing, which allows each section to be seen on its own, as an individual fragment, and suggests the metaphor of a patchwork to describe how the figures exist together, yet apart (Barthes 1989, p. 142). Emulating Barthes, I present my own segments as parts of a discontinuous whole, but draw on the metaphors of the archive and the installation, the encyclopaedia and the weaving, to show different ways of presenting fragmented information as a (seemingly?) unified whole.
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1989) is an autobiography presented in the form of fragments of text, in the third person (hence the title of the work) arranged alphabetically. He writes, on the subject of ‘fragments’, that he has “a taste for the detail, the fragment, the rush, and the incapacity to lead it toward a “composition,”” and further suggests that “each piece is self-sufficient” (Barthes 1989, p. 94), which some might see as justification for an inability to order text in a logical sequence, but which I think of as a creative approach to the presentation of knowledge or information, and one which may appeal more to some readers than a tortuous text that seeks to compress information into an artificial order. The subjects of Barthes’ fragments are
110 also unorthodox for an autobiography; one such fragment - J’aime, je n’aime pas ~ I like, I don’t like - simply lists things that he likes and doesn’t like (making me think of the lists of Sei Shônagon): the former include “salad, cinnamon, cheese… Glenn Gould, too-cold beer, flat pillows… Pollock, Twombly, all romantic music… the Marx Brothers, the mountains at seven in the morning leaving Salamanca, etc.” (Barthes 1989, p. 116) and the latter “white Pomeranians, women in slacks, geraniums… tautologies, animated cartoons, Arthur Rubinstein… fidelity, spontaneity, evenings with people I don’t know, etc.” (Barthes 1989, p. 116). These tastes are offered without commentary, and readers have to make up their own minds what these tell us about Barthes and his life, if anything at all. Indeed, as Barthes writes:
I like, I don’t like: this is of no importance to anyone; this, apparently, has no meaning. And yet all this means: my body is not the same as yours. Hence, in this anarchic foam of tastes and distastes, a kind of listless blur, gradually appears the figure of a bodily enigma, requiring complicity or irritation (1989, p. 117; italics in original).
In the same way, the build-up of fragments about his life – and, for my research, about my own – may seem like an accumulation of disparate items, but when seen together as part of the autobiography, or the archive, come to coalesce into a distinct form, one with meaning, if not a rigidly structured argument. Just as Barthes builds up an autobiography from scraps of text, so Geniza presents aspects of my discarded self to form a representation that can also be seen as a form of autobiography - an anarchival autobiography.
Similarly, A Lover’s Discourse, subtitled “Fragments,” is conceived as a series of discourses on love, about love, and by the lover, arranged alphabetically (in French): absence… cacher… drame… exil… insupportable… monstreux… suicide… etc. (Barthes 1978). One chapter of the book, however, is called “How this book is constructed,” and details his reasoning for his idiosyncratic ordering:
Each figure explodes, vibrates in and of itself like a sound severed from any tune – or is repeated to satiety, like the motif of a hovering music. No logic links the figures, determines their contiguity: the figures are non-syntagmatic, non- narrative; they are Erinyes; they stir, collide, subside, return, vanish with no more order than the flight of mosquitoes….
In linguistic terms, one might say that the figures are distributional but not integrative; they always remain on the same level: the lover speaks in bundles of sentences but does not integrate those sentences on a higher level, into a work; his is a horizontal discourse….
It is the very principle of this discourse (and of the text that represents it) that its figures cannot be classified: organized, hierarchized, arranged with a view to an end (a settlement): there are no first figures, no last figures. To let it be
111 understood that there was no question here of a love story (or of the history of a love), to discourage the temptation of meaning, it was necessary to choose an absolutely insignificant order. Hence we have subjugated the series of figures… to a pair of arbitrary factors: that of nomination and that of the alphabet (Barthes 1978, pp. 6-7).
In my own writing and artwork, I would also stress the horizontality of the information, the lack of hierarchy, the rhizomatic nature of both the archive and the installation. Although meanings can be discerned, both autobiographical and artistic, I allow readers/viewers to choose their own pathways, to decide which aspects to read or look at first, to assign importance as they see fit, and to make their own interpretations of the materials presented, what Barthes has called an “eccentric path of possibilities, stumbling among blocks of knowledge” (2013, p. 133).
Finally, in How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (Barthes 2013), we see how Barthes uses this alphabetical ordering system in a series of lecture and seminar presentations from the 1970s. He again justifies the unorthodox form his lectures will take by stressing the discontinuity of the segments, and the cultural bias against such an ordering: “And yet, to write discontinuously (in fragments) – OK, it’s possible, people do it. But to speak in fragments? The (cultural) body resists it; it requires transitions, linking phrases” (Barthes 2013, p. 20). He mentions A Lover’s Discourse, and his use of “an artificial sequence, a non-transitional order (leaving its discontinuity thoroughly exposed): the alphabet; it’s the only option (other than pure chance; but, as I said: the danger of pure chance is that it can be just as effective at producing logical sequences)” (Barthes 2013, p. 20). So he resists order by resisting ordering.
What better way for me to present my own fragments of a discarded self, idiosyncratically appraised and culled from my extended self, than in an order that resists meaning. In addition to the alphabetical presentation of this written information, I have chosen to order the documentation forms numerically in order of the start of each weaving to deny a hierarchy of appearance or materials (although I have found that they have become more to my taste as the project has progressed, and my methods have become more, dare I say, controlled and ordered). The final presentation of the installation eschews the alphabetical and numerical orderings for one of aesthetics, to present the works in a seemingly random order that seeks to disperse the weavings, to provide a disparate presentation of colours, sizes and materials. Ultimately, even a pre- ordained system is still a system, and one which has been chosen by the cultural producer of the text. By invoking Barthes, though, I feel justified that this system will not be out of place in a PhD thesis.
112 Time Capsules
Andy Warhol
The moral here is what Henry Kissinger said of Nixon’s tape-recordings: “That’s not history. Eight years of tapes takes eight years to listen to.”
James Griffin, A Hall of Funny Mirrors (2006, p. 302)
Part of the pleasure of archives (and anarchives) for me is the serendipitous nature of discovery that can come with searching through a box of disparate items. Even if a catalogue entry in an archive says that a particular box contains, say, correspondence between two people, the actual contents of those letters is not known until one actually goes into the box and reads through them. Even going through one’s own boxes can be a nostalgic affair, with memories resurfacing, or, as time passes and tastes change, wondering why a particular item was kept. Unfortunately, though, I have never had the space or money – unlike Andy Warhol – to be able to store everything that I have ever owned, and over the past thirty years, there has been a constant churn of new possessions replacing discarded items.
Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules are 612 identical cardboard boxes (Smith 2004), which from the mid-1970s until his death in 1987 were “filled with the everyday detritus of his life, with occasional gems tossed in here and there” (Wrbican 2004, p. 23). ‘Detritus’ has negative connotations, and doesn’t really do justice to the range of materials included in Warhol’s “TCs” (“as he referred to them” (Barclay 2005, p. 15)) – records with sleeves designed by Warhol, his own record collection, film posters, travel books, original drawings (Kramer 2004); invoice from the Castelli Gallery, drafts of letters, artwork source materials (Wrbican 2004); a pair of Clark Gable’s shoes, phone messages, postcards, and souvenirs from a flight on the Concorde (Barclay 2005), amongst thousands of other items.
‘Detritus’ also suggests the act of disposal, but Warhol’s Time Capsules acted as a way of keeping this huge amount of personal and professional ephemera out of sight and out of mind, while still maintaining ownership. He seems to have exhibited classic hoarder tendencies, with his house at the time of his death filled with boxes and artworks and purchases, many still in their original wrappings, so that he was only able to live in two rooms – the kitchen and the bedroom (Kramer 2004). His own writings suggest ambivalence about possessions; he describes a way of dealing with the stuff that we all encounter in our lives:
What you should do is get a box for a month, and drop everything in it and at the end of the month lock it up. Then date it and send it over to Jersey. You
113 should try to keep track of it, but if you can’t and you lose it, that’s fine, because it’s one less thing to think about, another load off your mind (Warhol 1975, p. 145).
After describing the type of standardized cardboard box that he settled on for the TCs, he continues:
I really hate nostalgia, though, so deep down I hope they all get lost and I never have to look at them again. That’s another conflict. I want to throw things right out the window as they’re handed to me, but instead I say thank you and drop them into the box-of-the-month. But my outlook is that I really do want to save things so they can be used again someday (Warhol 1975, p. 145).
The TC project, then, became a way of storing but forgetting, a kind of lumber room of the “witnesses of Warhol’s everyday life” (Sokolowski and Kittelmann 2004, p. 8). The boxes became an “expanding external memory” so that the material within was “no longer a burden on everyday life, neither is it destroyed, for each box occupies a realm between presence and disappearance” (Sokolowski and Kittelmann 2004, p. 9).
It is this dichotomy between presence and absence which drives my own project of archiving the ephemera of my daily life in Geniza. It is also a tension between the urge to destroy and the urge to preserve, as well as a desire to provide access to the evidence of one’s life, with the desire for secrecy. Of the 612 Time Capsules found after Warhol’s death, only around 100 had been inventoried and contextualized by 2005 (Barclay 2005), but the last one was finally opened in 2014 (Spencer 2017). Many of the contents have provided biographical and professional clues which have added to Warhol scholarship (Wrbican 2004), which without Warhol’s desire to simultaneously discard and preserve, would have been lost.
114 Walter Benjamin
Sometimes he felt his life was not a narrative or a sequence of events, but a succession of disconnected images, fragments of a larger dream.
Sebastian Faulkes, A Week in December (2009, p. 315)
Untidy child – Each stone he finds, each flower he picks, and each butterfly he catches is already the start of a collection, and every single thing he owns makes up one great collection.
Walter Benjamin, One-way Street (2016, p. 57)
As with Roland Barthes, Georges Perec, and Sei Shônagon, Benjamin has not been an influence on my work or on my writing, but I recognised an affinity, a shared concern with similar themes, when I read his work. I have adopted Kathleen Vaughan’s Collage technique as a methodology for this research, but it would be as valid to claim Benjamin’s literary montage technique, as they are fundamentally concerned with the same issues of heterogeneity, temporal and spatial relational juxtapositions, and unexpected collisions of meaning. The figures of the ragpicker and flâneur also have an affinity with the methods used in this project, and the approach to the archive; the ragpicker emulates the archivist who sorts through the refuse for the treasures worth saving and repurposing, and the flâneur ambles through the maze of the archive, alighting on a document here, and a photograph there, bringing the past into the present, and creating new documents and new memories from the encounter.
My main interest in Walter Benjamin’s work is his use of idiosyncratic techniques for his writing, at least in two works: One-Way Street (1928/2016), and The Arcades Project (1982/1999). Both eschew a formal, academic writing style for a style that emulates an archive in the coming together of disparate ideas and media. The former has been described as his “aphorism book” (McFarland 2012, p. 212), an “experimental Surrealist-inspired work” (Schwartz 2001, p. 1724), which uses “snapshot-like writing” (Schwartz 2001, p. 1737), and, more fully, as “an avant-garde experiment assembled from sixty fragmentary and unorthodox texts, including everything from satirical lists to dream protocols to descriptions of children’s behavior” (McFarland, 2012, p. 211). The existence of this work is used as evidence of Benjamin’s style and scholarly preferences to justify the publication of The Arcades Project in the form that it has been (in 1982 in German and French, and in English in 1999) – a “rich and provocative collection of outlines, research notes, and fragmentary commentary” (Buck-Morss 1990, p. 6). The Arcades Project is, if nothing else, an archive of Benjamin’s research concerns over the final decades of his life, which has garnered intense critical scrutiny.
115 Benjamin had not completed his work for what became The Arcades Project at the time of his suicide in 1940, but critical opinion seems divided on whether the work was “unfinished, or simply unwritten” (Muschamp 2000, n.p.). A collection of descriptions gives a sense of the work: “a multifaceted amalgamation” (Eckert 2012, Nov. 28, n.p.); “a huge collage-text/commonplace book” (Perloff 2008, p. 244); “a massive collection of notes” (Buck-Morss 1990, p. ix); “at best a ‘torso’, a monumental fragment or ruin, and at worst a mere notebook” (Eiland & McLaughlin 1999, p. x); “an intellectual folly, a massive and spectacular ruin” (Kingwell in Schwartz 2001, p. 1721); and “clearly not a finished work in any sense of the term” (Schwartz 2001, p. 1737). Benjamin read widely to find information about Paris in the nineteenth century, particularly about the arcades that sprang up and became immensely popular. He took quotes from a wide variety of sources, added comments of his own, and included photographs and etchings. It is this archive-like quality that I hoped to emulate for this dissertation; just as an archive stores and makes available information for researchers, so a collection of research notes on a subject brings together diverse materials for the ease of fellow researchers. One of the tenets of my research, though, is that undigested material can be interpreted by a third party according to their own frameworks, and I wish, therefore, to provide more specific narratives and context to take away the potential ambiguity of documentary evidence.
If The Arcades Project is not just a collection of research notes, then what is it? Is it “a great modernist work” (McLaughlin 2003, p. 192), “a towering literary event” (Muschamp in Schwartz 2001, p. 1721), “the great nonfiction epic of Surrealist literature” (Muschamp 2000, n.p.), or “a work of art” (Eckert 2012, Dec. 15, n.p.)? What elevates the work is the fact that its form and presentation emulate not just an archive (which is where my interest is piqued), but are also analogous to the arcades which are the subject of Benjamin’s focus: “[O]ne moves at will from toyshop to skating rink to pub to Oriental carpet merchant, from cited poem to photograph to travel-guide documentation without bounded map or master plan” (Perloff 2008, p. 248). Similarly, it has been described as, “a discontinuous maze, composed of brief insights and digressions, along with quotations that glitter from the pages like wares in a shop window” (Muschamp 2000, n.p.). Benjamin himself describes his project as employing the method of “literary montage”: “I needn’t say anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse – these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them” (1999, p. 460; italics in original). Benjamin’s working method
116 is marked by the techniques of archiving, collecting, and constructing. Excerpts, transpositions, cuttings-out, montaging, sticking, cataloguing and sorting appear to him to be true activities of an author. … Fragments recombined into new things; this researcher converted them into something distinctive (Marx, Schwarz, Schwarz, & Wizisla 2015, p. 4.)
The organisation of the fragments into ‘convolutes’ is Benjamin’s archive-like way of not only bringing some order to the material, but also allowing juxtapositions to arise and create new meaning. These convolutes – “from the Latin word for bundle, file, or sheaf, a reference to the folders Benjamin used to organize the loose, handwritten pages of his manuscript” (Muschamp 2000, n.p.); also, having the sense of rolled up, like a scroll, another link to my own project – become not just archival tools to shape the material, but “a way of forcing intimacy between the legitimate, the hegemonic, and the everyday and subversive” (Wells 2002, p. 58), and a way of “producing new relational paths between Baudelaire, a quote from a Parisian tourist magazine, and the image of a storefront mannequin. As such, the archive, as an artefact of history, becomes yet another material object appropriated by Benjamin’s ragpicker” (Eckert 2012, Dec. 15, n.p.).
The figures of the ragpicker and the flâneur are two of the defining metaphors for Benjamin’s approach to the creation of The Arcades Project. The former figure he appropriates from Baudelaire, and the latter is the great Modernist figure of nineteenth- century Paris, the boulevardier who strolls through the city, observing life. Benjamin quotes Baudelaire and adds his own commentary on the ragpicker:
“Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day’s refuse in the capital. Everything that the big city has thrown away, everything it has crushed underfoot he catalogues and collects. He collates the annals of intemperance, the capharnaum of waste. He sorts things out and selects judiciously: he collects like a miser guarding a treasure, refuse which will assume the shape of useful or gratifying objects between the jaws of the goddess of Industry.” This description is one extended metaphor for the poetic method, as Baudelaire practiced it. Ragpicker and poet: both are concerned with refuse (in Marx et al. 2015, p. i)
The metaphor also applies to Benjamin’s method, as he was concerned not with “the great men and celebrated events of traditional historiography but rather the “refuse” and “detritus” of history, the half-concealed, variegated traces of the daily life of “the collective”” (Eiland and McLaughlin 1999, p. ix). Baudelaire’s poem The Ragpicker’s Wine (1857) refers to “the junk he carries,/ The jumbled vomit of enormous Paris” (Baudelaire n.d., n.p.). That seems an apt description of the contents of The Arcades Project, and the “jumbled vomit” of my own life is what I am seeking to illuminate through my research project.
117 While the ragpicker provides a metaphor for the creation of Benjamin’s great project, the flâneur provides a metaphoric approach to the appreciation of it. The flâneur is not just the man (it is always a man) “who walks long and aimlessly through the streets” (Benjamin 1999, p. 417), but one who sees in the street a conflation of time and space:
The street conducts the flâneur into a vanished time (Benjamin 1999, p. 416).
…in the course of flânerie, far-off times and places interpenetrate the landscape and the present moment (Benjamin 1999, p. 419).
The most heterogeneous temporal elements thus coexist in the city. If we step from an eighteenth-century house into one from the sixteenth century, we tumble down the slope of time (Lion in Benjamin 1999, p. 435).
The “colportage phenomenon of space” is the flâneur’s basic experience. … Thanks to this phenomenon, everything potentially taking place in this one single room is perceived simultaneously (Benjamin 1999, p. 418).
“Colportage” describes the system of itinerant peddlers who carried varied wares on trays around their necks (Eiland 2007, p. 124), and is analogous with the metaphor of montage to describe the juxtapositions of disparate items creating new meanings. In the street, the flâneur observes the varied elements of life and perceives a whole. Flânerie is an apt description of the best way to appreciate Benjamin’s Arcades Project, but also the way I like to approach the archive: browsing, picking up an item here, and then going on to another, hoping for serendipitous discoveries, or finding fruitful analogies between seemingly distant, through time or space, documents or objects. The archive, The Arcades Project, the Parisian arcade, and my own Geniza installation can all be seen as montaged collectives, heterochronic heterotopias, and all provide “not merely the juxtaposition of images new and old, but the… past and present are brought together in a simultaneous relation” (Bonura 2015, p. 422), one which can best be appreciated via a relaxed flânerie.
118 119
GENIZA
120 Geniza 123 Discarded Research 126 Disposal 135
121 122 Geniza
Geniza In which members of a synagogue entomb virtually every piece of the community's writing to avoid desecrating God's name. Of all the notes, scraps and scribbles Crushed in my fist for oblivion's food (Not to spare the name of God I wasn't pious) yours I set Apart, memorized. Syllables Spurning in mordant tones of regret, Squibs of passion . . . these are all My marshaled senses can recall. Now, though your missives may be lost, Leaves slipped long ago between pages In a book, like fading vestiges Or questions pressed fine and brittle, They'll still sway my life, last In recollection's imperfect middle Distance: a voice surging up To conjugate our fractured hope.
Daniel Kunitz, Geniza (1998)
A geniza (alternatively spelt gheniza, genizah; plural genizot; pronounced /ɡɛˈniːzə/) is a repository for discarded written texts awaiting burial, or some other final disposal. It is a Hebrew word, from the Persian ganj, meaning a storehouse or treasure, and is related to the Arabic jandza, or ‘burial’ (Goitein 1967, p. 1). The Biblical books of Esther and Ezra “speak of ginzei hamelekh, or ginzei malka – “the king’s treasuries,” and the “royal archives”” (Hoffman & Cole 2011, p. 12). Any religious texts, or texts which contained any of the Hebrew names for God, were considered too sacred to be destroyed, and, “just as the human body, having fulfilled its task as the container of the soul, should be buried, that is preserved to await resurrection” (Goitein 1967, p. 1), these texts were set aside to be buried in a cemetery, preferably “alongside a saint or righteous individual” (Hoffman & Cole 2011, p. 13). As Hebrew was considered by the Jews to be the language of God – “lashon hakodesh, “the sacred tongue”” (Glickman 2011, p. 7) – eventually all texts written in Hebrew, whether of a religious nature or not, were considered sacred, and were therefore consigned to a geniza until burial.
Genizot were often just storerooms or attics in synagogues, and the discarded texts of the congregation could be placed there until a convenient time for burial. The most famous such geniza was that of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, or Old Cairo, and is known as the Cairo Geniza. Whereas other synagogues interred their texts after
123 periods of time, for some reason the geniza of the Ben Ezra Synagogue was never emptied, and in the late nineteenth century, it contained documents and scraps of paper from nearly 1000 years of Jewish life:
Barely more than eight feet long by six and a half feet wide, and extending to a height of some six yards, the Ben Ezra Geniza was the size of a glorified walk- in closet. Yet here was an entire civilization…. [A] space crammed to bursting with nearly ten centuries’ worth of one Middle-Eastern, mostly middle-class Jewish community’s detritus – its letters and poems, its wills and marriage contracts, its bills of lading and writs of divorce, its prayers, prescriptions, trousseau lists, Bibles, money orders, amulets, court depositions, shop inventories, rabbinic responsa, contracts, leases, magic charms, and receipts (Hoffman & Cole 2011, p. 16).
One of the people responsible for preserving this “treasure trove of a discarded past” (Goldberg 2012, p. 127), by transferring a majority of the documents from the geniza to an archive, Solomon Schechter, said of the Cairo Geniza that it was “a battlefield of books, and the literary production of many centuries had their share in the battle, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area” (in Hoffman & Cole 2011, p. 70). If these texts are analogous to a human corpse awaiting resurrection, then the discovery and preservation of the contents of the Cairo Geniza have enabled the resurrection of the Jews of Fustat, in that their stories and lives are, to a certain extent, now available to us for research; the Cairo Geniza “is the story of countless Jews from many lands and centuries who somehow left a bit of themselves in these old documents. For in these scraps we see reflections of the lives of millions” (Glickman 2011, p. xiii), and, as Solomon Schechter has noted, “Every discovery of an ancient document giving evidence of a bygone world is, if undertaken in the right spirit… an act of resurrection in miniature” (in Glickman 2011, p. ix).
It is this sense of resurrection, of carrying a life forward in time, and potentially through space, carried to different locations, and read or seen by people in myriad places, that I created the installation Geniza. My research has explored, in an artistic context, ways of recuperating, collecting, and storing the history and narratives of documents and artefacts that have been discarded from my own life, but which I have decided are too meaningful (as a whole, if not individually) to completely destroy without some form of record. They may, ultimately, be only meaningful to myself, but I have approached this task with the intent that the data I have collected, and presented in both written and woven forms, can be put to secondary use by others, in ways that may not even occur to me now. Just as the Jews of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in the tenth century could not imagine that their documents would end up in London, Oxford, Cambridge, New York, St Petersburg, Paris, or Vienna, amongst other places, I do not know what may happen
124 to the data I have compiled, but I will have left small parts of myself to travel through time and space, possibly to be discovered in the future, and deemed worthy of further research. The Cairo Geniza’s contents, however, survived through neglect and luck, not because they constituted an archival collection; they were “decisively not an archive” (Hirschler 2016, p. 4). My own research, in order to be available for future use, must make use of archival practices.
A geniza is intended as a way station to final disposal, usually through burial; an archive, though, is an intentional final resting place for documents. For S.D. Goitein, then, a geniza “is the very opposite of an archive. In an archive one keeps documents in order to use them, if and when necessary…. The opposite was the case with the Geniza. Papers were thrown away there only after they had lost all value to their possessors…” (1967, p. 7). He further compares archives and genizot:
In an orderly archive, material of the same character is normally kept together in one place, which simplifies research on one topic. In the Geniza, everything is topsy-turvy. The dispersion and scrambling of the Geniza material caused by its transfer to the libraries of Europe and America did not create the total confusion in which it is found now, but only enhanced it. Today, even in the most carefully classified collections… the most heterogeneous material is bound together in one volume.
In addition to fragmentation and other damage, as well as the confusion wrought by the very process of the disposal of documents in the Geniza, there is another factor that makes it so utterly different from an archive: its erratic character, the entire absence of selection in the material deposited in it. Alongside carefully worded and magnificently executed deeds, one finds hastily written notes, accounts or letters, jotted down in nearly illegible script and in sloppy or faulty language. The very shortcomings of the Geniza, however, constitute its uniqueness and glory. It is a true mirror of life, often cracked and blotchy, but very wide in scope and reflecting each and every aspect of the society that originated it. Practically everything for which writing was used has come down to us (Goitein 1967, pp. 8-9).
To reconcile these contradictions in my own research presentation, I have considered the installation Geniza as an anarchival artwork, while this dissertation and the collection of weaving documentation forms seek to emulate or at least draw from archival practices. The artworks may not survive into the future – given the peripatetic nature of my life to date, they will need to be discarded at some point rather than be expensively stored while I live overseas – but this document, containing the history of my research, its contextualisation and narrativisation, and a complete collection of the documentation forms I have completed for each weaving, will be retained by the university, and preserved into the future, making the data and the research available to others, just as the contents of the Cairo Geniza have, inadvertently, survived to this day.
125 Discarded Research
It is in the now that history is written and in this process, we decide which things are good to keep or restore, while others we neglect and allow to perish.
Iván Muñiz Reed, Restoring politics, the politics of restoring (2014, p. 66)
The Cairo Geniza stored discarded documents, accidentally enabling them to be rescued by researchers; this dissertation acts as an archive for the discarded aspects of my research, making them available for other researchers. Just as the discarded material aspects of my life can speak of my past, so too the tangents and byways of my research which have been abandoned can add information about the history of my research, and tell a narrative of the research process; they also suggest possible paths that my research could have taken, and allow for future research possibilities. The following sections of writing come from various research proposals, and presentations over the first three years of this research. The tone of the writing is often different, as I veer between pomposity designed to deflect from the fact that I still didn’t really have a clue what my research was, to a chatty familiarity that sought to convey the personal nature of the research. They also show, for those who think that this dissertation should be more “academic” or objective, that I can and have written in that manner, but have chosen to follow a more unconventional, personal writing style and presentation of my research to align with my creative, artistic research concerns.
When I applied to do the PhD, my initial idea was to look at burial shrouds, an idea I had got from the nature of the weavings I envisaged, made from human hair, and patterned to reflect the personality of the deceased. The idea for the art led to the proposed research:
Shrouds as Manifestations of Social Understandings About Groups and Individuals at the Point of Death
This PhD aims to bring together a number of strands of my practice, specifically ideas about groups and individuals, how they interact and how one affects the other, and an interest in death and social meanings around death and dying. The main focus of the PhD will be the production of woven panels made from human hair that will be abstracted versions of shrouds. The thesis will discuss societies that use (or used) shrouds in the preparation of the dead for burial or cremation, and examine the meaning(s) that those shrouds embody for the societies that use them, particularly those that somehow manifest that society’s ideas about groups and individuals.
[March 16, 2013]
One of my initial supervisors suggested that the research proposal needed to be refined and rethought, and suggested the research should be leading the art making, and not vice versa. I gave up the idea of shrouds, but began to look at ways that
126 identity was presented and preserved after death, looking at obituaries, and textile creations like the AIDS Quilt. In this new proposal, I concentrate on post-death identity, but start to think of things like diaries and documents that might survive the life of the creator, revealing aspects of the lived life:
Archives as Postdeath Extended Self: Identity Creation and Preservation
This PhD aims to bring together a number of interests that I have, both artistically and personally. My art practice has explored notions of individual and group identity, death and society, and memorialisation. I have studied library management and worked in a university library for over 5 years, and have a particular interest in archives. My research for this PhD will combine these varied elements to look at the role archives can play in both creating and preserving a posthumous identity. What Traces Remain?
How I will be remembered after death, as an individual as well as an artist, occasionally crosses my mind. When I die, what will remain? What will happen to the possessions I own; how will they be distributed? To whom? By whom? What memories will people have of me, and for how long? Will the artworks that I have spent years of my life creating end up in landfill? I am, of course, not the first person to have had these concerns, or to have thought about the possibility of preserving traces of one’s life. With my background as a librarian, I am particularly interested in the preservation of diaries, personal papers and other items in archives. By being institutionalised, these ephemeral traces of lived experience and identity gain a permanency which survives the death of the body.
The background to my research consists of two main components. Firstly I will examine ways that we create our identities and sense of self from the possessions we own, the relationships we have with others, our beliefs and attitudes, and our place in society. As a textile artist, I am particularly interested in the way that clothes are seen as a ‘second skin,’ and can have a strong role to play in identity formation. References are common in textile-related literature about the traces that clothes and other textiles we use in our daily lives acquire throughout their, and our own lives; stains, tears, repairs, worn patches all leave their marks to create biographical reminders of our existence. In addition to textiles, we also create, acquire or receive photographs, diaries, journals, educational records, awards, artworks, music collections, books, and any number of other possessions that contribute to the idea of the self.
[April 28, 2013]
In the following revised proposal, I am still interested in a post-death identity, but I have introduced the archive of a woman, Jean Garling, whom I had cared for in the last years of her life; thinking about the documents in her archive, and what they say about her, the idea was to compare them with my own contributions to her archive in the form of carers’ notes in the diaries we kept about her. I also introduce the idea that people
127 consciously seek to preserve their identities through various strategies, including the creation of archives:
Archives and the Postdeath Extended Self: Identity Creation and Preservation.
The aim of this research is to explore the connections between the idea of the self, and the objects we collect/possess/consume, and in particular the way that these objects inform identity after the death of the owner.
David Unruh (1983) discusses strategies that those who are dying use to attempt to preserve their identity, or an idealised identity, after death, including discussions with family about funeral arrangements, dispossession of cherished items, and the writing of memoirs. Collections built over a lifetime are bequeathed to museums, and personal papers are donated to libraries to be archived as permanent records of the lives and identities of the donors. How much of the Self, though, is preserved through these means? Is the identity of the donor preserved, or a new, postdeath identity created? If identity is formed through not only possessions and self-concept, but by the opinions and memories of others, how strong an influence do the traces of life have on the creation of a public identity for the deceased?
…
As part of this investigation, I propose a case study of Jean Garling, known, if at all, as the donor of the largest cash bequest to the State Library of NSW. The State Library has an archive containing personal papers, books, artworks, and selected personal items of Ms Garling. Before her death, I was one of a team of carers and companions who looked after Ms Garling’s personal care, took her to social engagements, and interacted with visitors. I knew her for the last 2 years of her life, and my memories of her and her personality/identity are influenced by her age, disabilities related to old age and illness, and possible personality changes brought on by dementia and impending death. The sense of Ms Garling that I have from personal interactions, memories, and diary entries differs from the identity that is formed through an examination of texts about her on the State Library website, and, I propose, an examination of the texts in her archive. An initial reading of these texts suggests an idealised version of the life of a consumer and producer of culture, as well as a generous philanthropist and benefactor. In contrast, I remember an irascible, often drunk and abusive miser with hoarding tendencies. Is either of these images a ‘real’ version of Jean Garling? Are they both equally true? In addition to a hermeneutic examination of the archive in the State Library, I also plan to interview those who knew Ms Garling during her life. I want to know what memories people still have of her, how they viewed her personality, what anecdotes they have of her life. By comparing the memories and perceptions that remain in the minds (or diaries) of those living with the artefacts that remain of her life, I will be able to determine how much of the lived life has been preserved in the physical record. This data will then inform attempts and strategies of the living to preserve (or create) postdeath identities.
[June 4, 2013]
I also introduced the idea (what I thought was an original idea, but the internet revealed it wasn’t!) of the unreliable archivist, because of the knowledge I already had of various
128 artists who created artistic archives which purported to be real. I guess I was thinking of creating a fake archive around this stage, and was looking for justifications:
The Unreliable Archivist
I propose that the Jean Garling Collection in the State Library is an externalised (Lingis 1984), disembodied (Laing 1961), extended (Belk 1988) self, to combine a number of metaphors used by theorists of the Self. Through a narrative analysis of the contents of the archive I believe it is possible to describe a biographical narrative that is all that remains of the identity of Jean Garling. The study will need to include a diachronic analysis which shows the changes to the “narrative” over time, as evidenced in diary entries, articles and books she wrote, personal correspondence, etc., as well as a synchronic analysis of the entire archive as it exists today. Will a consistent ‘voice’ of Ms Garling, as the narrator of the archive, be found? Will this shape the identity that is ‘read’ in the archive?
An examination of this archive needs to consider the idea of ‘archival sedimentation’ (Hill 1993); that is, how has this particular set of documents come to be stored together? I would speculate that everything that existed in her apartment at the time of her death which could be easily archived (excluding furniture, clothing, household items, etc.) was swept up and assigned to archive boxes. The dust and detritus of her apartment (including dead cockroaches) seems to have been preserved along with the diaries and scrapbooks (an examination of Walter Benjamin’s ideas of the ‘aura’ of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction may be apposite (1968)). The items stored, then, are those that were collected and assembled by Jean Garling herself. I introduce the idea of ‘the unreliable archivist’ to suggest that the data that constitutes this archive has been idiosyncratically collected, rather than carefully and objectively assembled by a library professional. Any description of an identity suggested by this archive, then, needs to be considered as a created identity (albeit possibly unconsciously), which is now preserved in the Jean Garling Collection.
[July 30, 2013]
As the idea of the use of archives evolved, I had the idea of doing a case study of Jean Garling’s archive, but creating an archive of my own materials, to explore how the gaps in an archive can be filled. I suggest that this is an “ethnographic/autoethnographic study,” as I seek to fuse the two ideas together:
PhD Research Proposal – Rodney Love
The purpose of this ethnographic/autoethnographic study is to discover, describe and construct the most appropriate archival strategies for creating/preserving a posthumous self-selected Extended Self as a model for an art-based research practice. … Through an examination of my own archives and the archives of a woman I used to work for, discovering how they create and preserve identity, I will create artwork through which an audience can engage in critical self-reflection, and consider its own future via archives.
129 Introduction
I have in my possession a simple, short-sleeved polyester dress from the late 1960s or possibly the early 1970s. It has a dark blue bodice, a white skirt, and a row of daisies connecting the two sections. It has a matching long-sleeved coat, with a row of white daisies along the bottom, and was made by Diana Fashions Sydney. It is in quite good condition for a 40-year-old dress with a few tears to the lining of the coat, and a hole in the lining of the dress. These hidden flaws could suggest a lack of concern with things that cannot be seen; that the important thing is to appear to be neat and clean.
The dress belonged to Jean Garling, an elderly woman that I used to care for in the late 1990s. I thought of this dress when, in trying to determine the direction of the research for this PhD, I was looking at the idea of the traces that remain of people’s lives. When she died, a curator from the Powerhouse Museum came to her apartment to see if any of her clothes had any value as historical items worthy of being added to the museum’s collection. None were deemed suitable, but I liked this particular dress and thought it would be a shame to throw it out. I was allowed to keep it, along with a few other items of clothing, with appealing (to me) yarns, or patterns, none of which have remained in my possession. It was not so much a memento of Ms Garling’s life, but an interesting fashion item. It was only when I was thinking about a research topic that I realised it was probably one of the few things that remained of her life, 15 years after her death.
…
The things that she bought, the way her apartment looked, the books she read, the way that she chose to spend her time, the social relationships she had, along with all the other ways of filling her days and living her life, all contributed to her sense of self, and all can be seen as an ‘extended self’ that coalesced around the physical body of Jean Garling. How much of that extended self remains today, 15 years after her death? And how does an examination of those traces that remain help all of us understand our own lives, and the possibilities for the preservation of our own extended selves into the future? Given the answers to these questions based on the research I undertake, the overarching question is which archival strategies can best preserve a self- selected Extended Self after death?
[November 20, 2013]
I began to look more closely at archival sedimentation, and the creation of an archive, and wanted to explore the narrative potential of such an archive:
Two Characters in Search of an Archive: Archival Sedimentation and Auto/Biographical Narrative in the Archives of Jean Garling and Rodney Love.
My focus for this research is on two archives in the creation of which I have had a personal involvement, one being Jean Garling’s, as mentioned above, and the other my own (potential) archive. In order to investigate the potential of archival sedimentation (Hill, 1993), the way that particular items come to be in an archive, as a narrative device, I need to have had knowledge of the creation of these archives. I will be able to analyse the Jean Garling Collection in relation to that which has not been included to determine how the narrative(s) conveyed
130 by the archive have (or have not) changed because of the information that has not been included. My own archival sources enable me to reflect on the sedimentation involved in the creation of Jean Garling’s archive, as well as that involved in mine, and serve as the basis for the creation of an artwork exploring these notions of sedimentation and narrative.
The aims of this research are to: • examine the relationship between archival practices and auto/biographical narrative • explore the potential of archival narrative in the artistic as well as archival fields • explore the personal archival strategies involved in the creation of institutional as well as artistic archives • create a personal archive with narrative potential • test the narrative potential of archives as an artistic medium
This research contains a number of original components: taking the idea of narrative analysis and applying it in original ways; carrying out an analysis on a previously unstudied archive; and making a synthesis of narrative, archival and artistic theories and methods. The results of this research will be generalisable across many fields that utilise archives, and will provide new ways of accessing and understanding the narrative potential of archives and archival documents and objects.
The leading research questions, therefore, are: • What is the relationship between archival sedimentation and constructed narratives represented in archives? • What are the differences between the archival and artistic fields in relation to archival narrative construction? • How can narrative construction based on archival sedimentation be used in artworks?
The Unreliable Archivist
Drawing on the tradition of the unreliable narrator (Wayne, 1961), I use the term ‘unreliable archivist’ (also the title of an exhibition at the Walker Art Centre in 1998 (Dietz 1999)) to suggest a strategy whereby an artist creates what appears or purports to be a truthful representation of a subject, only to reveal that everything has been a fiction. Eleanor Antin’s Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev, 1919–1929 by Eleanora Antinova (1981), is a collection of performances, video and film works, photographs and memoirs that detail the life of a fictional ballerina (played by Antin) (Meeker, n.d.). She uses an array of archival strategies to build up documentation of a life never lived. Similarly, Hans-Peter Feldmann in his Portrat, 1994 (Spieker, 2008), presents albums of found photographs that purport to be the family albums of one subject, creating a ‘portrait’ of this woman’s life.
[March 15, 2014]
Although I could see the potential for research into archives, and looking at the narratives they could tell, I was having trouble reconciling the research into Jean Garling’s archive, with the creation of my own. At this point I dropped the idea of engaging with Jean Garling’s archive, and began to concentrate on the creation of my
131 own archival installation, which I had already decided would be called Geniza (Genizah is an alternative spelling). I had also been looking at narrative, and developed an analytical model which would be a way of looking at autobiographical singularity. I was already creating the weavings that make up the installation, and some of the weaving documentation forms talk about identity, narrative, and material culture, even though I later dropped this model. I also adapted the research questions, changing the word ‘narrative’ to ‘autobiography’, as I felt that this research was creating an alternative form of autobiographical representation through the preservation of discarded objects:
Rodney Love PhD Research Outline
With the creation and documentation of the installation Genizah, I aim to find a new model for contemporary art practice through the exploration of archival processes and techniques. The research posits the archive as the nexus of identity, narrative and material culture, and will investigate the creation of my artwork as an embodiment of that triangular relationship. It will explore how aesthetic work comes from, exists in, and is shaped by the spaces of the archive, with a particular emphasis on that which has been excluded, excised or neglected in the creation of an archive. An investigation of archival theory, archival practices and archiving as a performative act can make these connections visible, examinable and analysable.
The use of the term ‘archive’ has become elastic in recent decades, especially with the interest in the ‘archival turn’ in contemporary art, where archives have been the source and model for artistic practice. In addition to this, I explore archival process as a means of producing new knowledge about artistic practices and objects. Archiving is analogous to art making in that often what is examined – the completed artwork/exhibition, or institutionalised archive – is the representation of a long and complex process that consists of not only an additive process, where new things keep piling up until the process is complete, but a subtractive process where edits, and elisions, tangential dead ends, and discarded narratives are no longer visible, but have had a shaping process on the art or archive. Art history and criticism already rely on artists’ documents such as sketchbooks, colour experiments, or purchase records to inform interpretation, but my research goes further to combine the material objects of artistic creation with the narratives of the artist practitioner, as well as documentation of the archival sedimentation process, to create an archive artwork that also reflects the changing subjectivity of the artist, the artwork and the archive. As one element changes – material, narrative, or personal identity – so does the archive as a whole change, and the other elements subtly shift to accommodate the new realities. By making this process visible, my research highlights the relationship between art, artist and archive.
…
The aims of this research are to: • explore the potential of autobiographical representation in the artistic as well as archival fields • explore the personal archival strategies involved in the creation of institutional as well as artistic archives • create a personal archive with autobiographical potential • test the potential of autobiographical archives as an artistic medium 132
This research contains a number of original components: creation and analytical use of a dialectical triadic model of autobiographical singularity consisting of Form, Narrative, and Identity; creation and analysis of a personal, artistic archive; and making a synthesis of material culture, narrative, autobiography, archive and art theories and methods. The results of this research will be generalisable across many fields that utilise archives, and will provide new ways of accessing and understanding the autobiographical potential of archives and archival documents and objects.
… Analytical Model
In the beginning of my research, my focus was on the material aspects of documents in the archive, and what they had to say about the subject. As my research evolved, my interest turned to that of narrative, and what the stories of the documents were, and what that might tell us about the person who had collected them. Eventually these strands coalesced into a triadic model that combined the interest in materials, or what I am calling Form, the stories around the documents and the subject, which is Narrative, and what, combined, they might say about the subject of the archive, coming together as Identity. Using a spatial metaphor, my model might look like this:
IDENTITY
FORM NARRATIVE
The three aspects of the model exist in a dialectical relationship with each of the others, and changes to one category necessarily lead to changes in the others. The combination of the three aspects of the model results in an auto/biographical singularity. This model can be used as an analytical tool by researchers or biographers, but I am suggesting in my research its use by a potential archive creator to confer autobiographical detail on archival documents, thereby increasing their research potential. Future users of a potential archive may not be known at the time of creation, but even if the creator-archivist is not a famous person who may be the subject of a biography, or an ordinary person who may be an exemplar of a group being researched by an ethnographer, then at least the autobiographical information added to the archive, following my model of Form, Narrative and Identity (F, N, I), may prove to be of nostalgic interest to its creator at some point later in life.
[February 15, 2015]
Just as the discarded material culture of my life becomes data through the creation of the installation Geniza, for use in auto/biographical, narrative, or artistic research, by
133 myself or others, at some unspecified time and place, so these strands of discarded research become data which elucidates not only my own research history, and evolution, but the PhD process itself.
134 Disposal
Things that are thrown away or lost tell us as much about the past as many of those carefully preserved for posterity. Mundane everyday items, discarded long ago as rubbish, can tell some of the most important stories of all in human history…
Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (2012, p. 22)
There is something about that burning of all those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and be brought into the light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let thirty years of shared conversation go spiraling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it does not mean you have to pass it on. Losing things can sometimes gain you a space in which to live.
Edmund De Waal, The Hare with the Amber Eyes (2011, p. 347)
As a middle-class, middle-income citizen of a developed country, I find that I have a churn of material possessions: I buy new books more quickly than I can read them; I buy new clothes oftentimes just because I may as well; I buy knick-knacks when on holiday; and I have more scarves and pieces of interesting fabric than I could ever need, in addition to magazines, and cards, and stationery items, and yarns, and art supplies, and the myriad of other things I buy or acquire because I just like them, or think they may come in handy one day. In order not to be swamped by this constant accumulation, there must be a corresponding outflow of goods; in archival theory and practice, this is known as Disposal, “a term which embraces evaluation, transfer to archives, or any other final decision such as destruction” (Reed 1987, p. 86). It has been, of course, the main aspect of my research – how to dispose of material possessions, without losing the narratives and histories attached to them, which can give so much information about the person who possessed and is now disposing of them?
Almost no archive is capable of retaining every document that is a trace of the actions of a person or organisation; in the past, the idea was that everything should be collected as a bulwark against loss, but the “strategy today is to have documentary objectives that conceptually limit the universe of sources,” and the “good archivist is as good a destroyer as a preserver” (Cox 2004, p. 7). Indeed, “a discriminating destruction of a portion of [modern records] is a service to scholarship” (Schellenberg 1956, p. 152). Users of those archives, however, must also be able to determine not just “what was worth remembering” – and therefore retained in the archive – but also “what was forgotten, deliberately or accidentally” (Cook 1997, p. 18). Archivists engage in what Livia Iacovino describes as “disposal actions” (1993a, p. 59), “disposal processes,” and “disposal practices” (1993b, p. 74), but these actions and processes must be
135 transparent, and, as best practice, retain some trace of the passing of the disposed items. Unlike Louise Crewe, who states that, “Objects die but do not disappear; things are dismantled, cast aside, destroyed, and disposed of but remain in countless material and immaterial forms – traces, remnants, fragments, and memories” (2011, p. 27), I believe that in fact there is often nothing left to remind us of that which we have disposed of, and of what those things can say about us.
I have written of consumer researcher Russell Belk’s concept of the extended self, and how the material possessions we own (amongst other things) constitute a symbolic extension of our sense of self; Belk has also written of the effects that disposal and divestment can have on the extended self, and the possibility of a sense of a loss of self (1988, 1989). Consumers, Belk suggests, may easily dispose of items when they “no longer fit [their] ideal self-images” (1988, p. 159), or when “they are replaced with more desirable substitutes” (1989, p. 131); however, “if possessions are viewed as part of self, it follows that an unintentional loss of possessions should be regarded as a loss or lessening of self” (1988, p. 142). Even voluntary disposal may lead to such a sense of loss if the person has an excessive attachment to objects; Irene, a subject in a study of hoarders, claims that, “If I throw too much away, there’ll be nothing left of me” (Frost & Steketee 2010, p. 98). Consumers can, then, “symbolically divest extensions of themselves” (Lastovicka & Fernandez 2005, p. 813), but in so doing, also are engaging in practices of re/creation of the self, and editing of their own life narratives.
In a research/artistic project designed to capture such narratives, and explore such practices, artist and photographer Corrine May Botz liaised with the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD) to collect items from participants, combined with their written stories, in order to study the ways that people can learn to cope with the loss of meaningful possessions (Roster 2014). When I discovered this project, I was initially a bit annoyed because it seemed too similar to my own research; the data submitted by the participants (the cherished object, and the narrative) matched my own data collection, so was I just repeating what another artist had already researched? The study, however, only involved eleven participants, and involved them giving up one meaningful possession to the artist who photographed the items, and presented them in an exhibition. My own research is therefore fundamentally different in that it involves an artist who is also the subject, and involves a much larger sample size of discarded possessions. My own data collection involves not only the items discarded, and the narratives attached to them (as in Botz and the ICD’s study), but also the woven forms created through the destruction of the original objects, presented in an anarchival installation, as well as an archive of the documentation forms created for each new
136 weaving. The project of Botz and the ICD was mainly concerned with how consumers deal with disposal of possessions in relation to the sense of self, but my own study is more concerned with the collection of the data itself, and not its interpretation. By exploring the means of recuperating memories while disposing of the documents of one’s life, and encouraging others to do the same through the means of an installation artwork, I am enabling the creation and preservation of data for future – unspecified – uses, by myself or other researchers.
Figure 7. Geniza, 2013-21
How successful, then, has the installation Geniza been in meeting these goals? With six hundred weavings, and their accompanying documentation forms, I have certainly provided a large amount of data. The output of this research project contains auto/biographical information from my teens up until my early 50s. It contains information about my (changing) tastes in books, movies, music, art, and clothes. It contains information about my social networks, my working life, and my leisure activities. Although any one weaving or documentation form may not provide a huge amount of information, or even very much of interest to anyone at all, as an archive, and an anarchival installation, collectively they give a comprehensive representation of Rodney Love as person, as artist, and as researcher. This research succeeds in its goals of recuperating and storing memories of the items I am discarding, and of showing, through this written component, the installation, and the documentation forms, the engagement with artistic and archival methods to highlight a process of an/archival creation and sedimentation that is often hidden, or under-documented. The weavings, like documents in a synagogue’s geniza, will eventually be dispersed or disposed of, and their passage from my life will be complete, but the histories,
137 narratives, and images of each item are included in the documents which will continue to exist as part of UNSW’s research repository.
Figure 8. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
A major problem with this research has been the non-inclusion of items for disposal that could not be cut or shredded and subsequently woven, or of books and clothes that I decided it would be a waste to destroy, even though I no longer needed them. If all one’s possessions are reflections of the extended self, then surely the sofa which Andrew bought, and which we shared for many years, but then was given to charity before I went to Timor-Leste, is as relevant as a book I read, or a video I watched. So, too, the IKEA Billy bookcases where I stored my art books, the office desk where I wrote my diary for twenty years, or the kitchen table on which I wove hundreds of textiles, that were all too bulky to store. I sold books to secondhand book stores, sold art supplies, and clothes to students and staff at the university, and donated bags of clothes to charity shops. The installation Geniza is therefore not a complete collection of all that I have discarded since beginning this research. By including inventories and projets produced over the same period (mainly while reading about Christian Boltanski and Georges Perec) in the appendices, I am attempting to include more complete information, but in most cases there is no narrative or history attached to the lists, so I have failed in my own stated research objectives. Gordon Bell’s MyLifeBits project is therefore a more complete way of storing information about disposed items, but such a
138 digital database has no interest for me; as an artist (or maybe just having personality traits that led me to become an artist), I prefer the tactile and the visual, and want to see and feel the results of my research, or the accumulated documents of my life, in a way that “the coldness of digital stuff” (Cox 2004, p. 263) can never satisfy. Nicholson Baker, in his essay on libraries and their rush to digitise their collections, has noted that
digital storage, with its eternally morphing and data-orphaning formats, was not then and is not now an accepted archival-storage medium. A true archive must be able to tolerate years of relative inattention; scanned copies of little-used books, however, demand constant refreshment, software-revision-upgrading, and new machinery, the long-term costs of which are unknowable but high (2001, p. 242).
The irony is not lost on me that almost everyone reading this will be doing so from a digital copy, but that is the price for longevity, and communion with others. I just hope that the university places enough of a premium on the research output of its students that it maintains the digital copies of theses into the far future.
Figure 9. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
In addition to the items disposed of during this research that were not included in the installation, there are also thousands of items that I discarded, sold, destroyed, or lost over the forty-plus years before starting this PhD, often in what I think of as ‘mass- extinction events’ – the times when I moved house, or moved overseas, or just had a giant clean-up to get rid of the vast array of stuff I had accumulated. I moved house
139 three times as a child, moved to Japan, and back, from Perth to Sydney, three house moves in Sydney, to Timor-Leste and back, plus at least two big discards from the apartment I lived in for over ten years when I first came to Sydney, so at least thirteen times when I have disposed of a large collection of items, many of which I wistfully thought of as I was choosing items for Geniza. How perfect those materials would have been for weaving, or how interesting the narratives would have been, if only I had retained them until the time I began this research! As I have been keeping a diary for over thirty years, the details of many of these things would have been included in entries from those times, but I didn’t have all the relevant dates to look up entries, and even if I did remember a particular date, sorting and discarding items often took place over weeks before the actual move, so any inventory would be scattered amongst the day to day entries of those times.
Figure 10. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
This worry I have about the items, stories, or histories not included in this research reflect concerns about the fragmentary nature of archives, autobiographical texts, or academic research. The discussion of archival sedimentation (Hill 1993) in this paper detailed the process by which archives are created, and showed that the various stages of sedimentation can result in incomplete records, and partial archivisation of the documentary record. Anna McNally sums up the situation: “An archive can never be complete, but to say it is lacking items is also to miss the point. An archive is what it
140 is: it is what is left, no more and no less” (2013, p. 99). The limitations of the anarchival installation to record the processes and data collected as part of this research led me to create the weaving documentation forms, and add more details on them as the research progressed. Even these forms, though, cannot provide a complete autobiographical representation, because of loss of memory in regard to certain items, but that, too, has been sanctioned in autoethnographic research by Norman Denzin, who states that “No self or personal experience story will encompass all of the stories that can – or could – be told about a single life, nor will any personal history contain all of the self stories that could be told about that life’s story” (2014, p. 32). And in relation to narrative research, “the essence… is that it is always a story that is unfinished” (Flood 2002, p. 108). Indeed, concerning my project overall, “it is possible to argue convincingly that all research is selective and therefore any knowledge outcome inevitably does not tell the whole story. No research is complete and definitive” (Usher 2002, p. 87).
Figures 11 and 12. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
After my partner Andrew died in 2017, I had to dispose of his clothes, papers, and whatever other things I didn’t have a need for; in an attempt to address the incompleteness of data addressed above, I decided to write about all the items I
141 disposed of in a notebook, adding narratives and history as far as I knew them. I have mentioned in this paper how difficult it would have been to write the sorts of narratives and histories about discarded objects if they had belonged to someone else. If the owner of said objects were still alive, then interviews could reveal much, but trying the same with the objects of a dead person, even one I had been a partner of for seventeen years, was difficult. Many times I just listed un-narrativised items, knowing nothing about their histories or even uses. In order to prevent this, should one have the requisite energy and determination (or obsession), a ‘cradle to grave’ documentation system could be implemented, whereby every new purchase or acquisition receives its own documentation form, and acquisition number. Details of its entry into one’s life
Figure 13. Geniza (detail), 2013-21 could be recorded, and then any interesting or notable anecdotes could be added during its lifespan. Finally, at the time of its disposal, for whatever reason, a record of its history would already exist, and relying on memory would not be necessary. Also, at one’s death, a complete history and contextualization of every item in one’s possession would exist to assist archivists (should they be interested in one’s documents) in creating the archival architecture for their storage and preservation. In lieu of this totalisation concept, for my own benefit, and as an extension and continuation of the research, I also began at that time to write about new items I bought or acquired, as well as those I discarded. I have used a series of small notebooks, and have recorded dates, and prices, and details of purchases or gifts, as well as narratives and histories 142 of items I have disposed of, and what has become of them. A friend in Dili said, “A notebook!? Don’t you have a computer?” I have written about the joy for me of rifling through an old box of papers, or flicking through a collection of images, or picking up fabrics and feeling the texture; the tactility of the archive is one of the main reasons I have completed this project in the way I have, rather than just digitising everything, and keeping a hard drive of images, so a collection of notebooks that can be picked up and flicked through, with random entries leaping out at me is something I can treasure in the future; my research interest is archives, not databases, and a notebook has a browsability and accessibility (without the aid of computer technologies) that digital records don’t.
Figure 14. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
Another flaw in the installation in my mind is the problem – mainly artistic – I had with creating the weavings themselves, from the duplication of weavings using the same materials, to not making large enough weavings, or not incorporating more yarns in the works. In the beginning of this research, before the main conceptual concerns had been decided, I experimented with cutting up and shredding different materials; I made speculative textiles, sometimes using the same insignificant book or bed sheet to make three or four weavings to try different widths, or lengths, or yarns. Later in the process, running out of time, I combined multiple shirts, or books, or videotapes to create only one weaving. Knowing what I know at the end of this research, I would have created
143 weavings using fewer agglomerations of materials, made all weavings longer and larger (where there was sufficient material to do so), had only one weaving per item, and combined yarns so that a warp consisted of two or three different yarns (to provide more contrast, to make them visually more interesting, and to use up more yarn). Despite these concerns, the fact that the (to my mind) flawed weavings are dispersed through the installation would mean that viewers would be unlikely to notice these weavings made from the same materials, or see the mistakes that I do because of my close connection to the work. The weavings as they exist, and as they are recorded and narrativised in the documentation archive in Volume 2, have become a history of this research, and of the changing concerns, realisations, and decisions I made over the course of years, and are therefore archival documents worthy of preservation.
Figure 15. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
It is this history of the research, as well as the processes undertaken to complete an anarchival autobiographical installation, and an autoethnographic archive, that are the major contributors to new knowledge of this PhD. As a “material outcome” (Batty 2019, n.p.), the installation Geniza is necessarily an original artwork as it deals with rematerialised items from my own life, and would be unique even if many artists before me had assembled scrolls of woven materials on shelves as an installation. The use of tags on items in an installation was not an original idea, and proved to be too limited as a means of data storage, which led to the creation of the more-detailed documentation
144 forms, and their inclusion as part of this dissertation. This hybrid anarchive/archive developed from a synthesis of methods from the fields of archival theory, narrative, autobiographical, and autoethnographic research, and art practice, “draw[ing] together extant ideas and/or practices with a view to generating new ideas and/or practices” (Batty & Holbrook 2017, p. 11). Rather than being yet another installation that just uses an/archival methods or tropes, this research has shown how such an artwork is created, how it fits (or doesn’t) within an archival space, and how it might be improved with application of different methods or techniques. The research has also “[explored] new implications, for… practitioners, policy makers, or theory and theorists” (Batty & Holbrook 2017, p. 11), including those in all the areas mentioned above, as the creative processes in this dissertation, the installation, and in the archive of documentation can be applied to various documents, and sets of data, because “presenting research in a novel way” (Batty & Holbrook 2017, p. 12) is another indicator of originality in research, as I have attempted to do in this dissertation.
Figure 16. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
In discussing Sol LeWitt’s photobook Autobiography (1980), a collection of photographs of everything in his studio, Rebecca Comay posed the following questions:
Can the story of a personal life be told as the anonymous inventory of things and places – and this is not as the memorabilia of grand tours and heroic
145 adventures but rather as the inconspicuous props and artifacts of the everyday? Does such an inventory inevitably become a testament and an act of mourning? And do things become truly visible only at the moment of being left behind? (2002, p. 262)
If I had followed a conventional research path, these might have been questions I posed before commencing this journey, but I haven’t, so I didn’t. At the end of this process, though, they are certainly questions that I can consider in retrospect. To all the questions I would answer with a qualified ‘yes’! I initially included LeWitt’s work as part of this dissertation, because it does give information about him and his life, but the photographs leave too much autobiographical detail to be interpreted by the viewer; for
Figure 17. Geniza (detail), 2013-21 this reason, I relegated that section of my thesis to the appendix of discarded writings, and I developed methods (first tags, then documentation forms) to increase the information I was remembering and wanting to convey to others. The mundane, everyday items were, I found, full of rich, autobiographical, sociological, and/or artistic data, and were valid as documents for inclusion in an archive. For my research, the process did, indeed, feel like a letting go, and a testament to that abandonment of items from my life; dealing with the death of my partner was a mourning process that literally was woven into the research. And the visibility of the process of disposal was, eventually, the key outcome that I explored through this research; the conscious appraisal of items, the recalling of narrative details about them, and the planning of
146 their destruction have embedded these objects and documents more firmly in my memory than the thousands of other, similar items that I have discarded over the years, which today leave almost no trace in my mind. Of course there is no guarantee that I will retain those memories, but the creation of an archive as part of this research has allowed me to
freeze time. To build a memory out of paper, to create archives from lived experience, to accumulate traces, prevent forgetting, to give life the consistency and continuity it lacks (LeJeune & Lodewick 2001, p. 107).
Should anyone reading this still doubt the value of my trivial documents, the narratives and histories of mass-produced, or mundane objects, or their accumulation into an anarchival installation, I finish with a quote about the value of archives that sums up my feelings on the subject: “An archive is principally there to allow documents to survive – in 20 to 40 years they become twice as interesting” (Robert Fleck, in Bismark, et al. 2002, p. 560). Should human civilisation survive the Twenty-first Century, perhaps a future reader will value this research and my contributions to knowledge in a way that I have valued, and found interesting, the work of Sei Shônagon, the authors of One Boy’s Day, or the anonymous contributors to Mass Observation, and the varied art and literary works I have discussed here.
Figure 18 and 19. Geniza (detail), 2013-21
147
Figures 20-27. Geniza (details), 2013-21
148
Figure 28-33. Geniza (details), 2013-21
149 150
ENDPAPERS
151 References 154 List of Images 175 Appendix 1 – Rejectamenta 179 Appendix 2 - Projets 208 Appendix 3 - Inventories 274
152
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174 List of Images
Figure 1 30 Love, R. (2002). Memento Vivere (detail). Mixed media. The Roundhouse, UNSW, May, 2002. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 2 31 Love, R. (2002). Memento Vivere (detail). Mixed media. The Roundhouse, UNSW, May, 2002. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 3 31 Love, R. (2004-07). Six Degrees (detail). Mixed media. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 4 32 Love, R. (2004-07). Six Degrees (detail). Mixed media. IDG, UNSW, March, 2007. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 5 32 Love, R. (2004-06). I Am Because We Are. Mixed media. Kudos Gallery, July 2006. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 6 33 Love, R. (2011). Silence. Mixed media. Tamworth Regional Gallery, August, 2011. Photographed by the artist.
Figure 7 137 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza. Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 8 138 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 9 139 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 10 140 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 11 141 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 12 141 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 13 142 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 14 143 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
175 Figure 15 144 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 16 145 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 17 146 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 18 147 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 19 147 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 20 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 21 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 22 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 23 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 24 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 25 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 26 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 27 148 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 28 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 29 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
176 Figure 30 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 31 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 32 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Figure 33 149 Love, R. (2013-21). Geniza (detail). Mixed media. Black Box, UNSW, January, 2021. Photographed by Adrian Cook
Composite images throughout dissertation are all by the artist, from photos by the artist
177 178
Appendix 1 – Rejectamenta
179 Rejectamenta is a term coined by artist Candy Jernigan to describe the everyday detritus that comes into and, inevitably, goes out of our lives (Howell 1999). My research has focused on the rejected, the disposed of, and the stories that they can tell. In addition to the rejected avenues of my research path, which I have included in this dissertation, I have also collected together a group of writings that failed to make the cut, which had relevance to the research, but not enough relevance. They show what could have been, especially the Table of Contents that I laboriously produced at the insistence of a panel for an annual review, to show that I would be able to complete my research on time (no-one seemed to understand that creating that document took time away from actually doing the work necessary to complete the research). The structure of the final written part of my thesis can be discerned from this sprawling document, but there was too much information to fit into the word count required, and a lot of it proved to be too tangential to be entirely relevant. Perhaps the stress of producing this table of contents is part of the reason I decided on a more minimalist approach to the ones presented in this dissertation.
Of the discarded writings, the section on Lumber proved to be a metaphor too far, in that the idea of a lumber room was too close to that of a geniza, so why add another metaphor to the already crowded mix (the idea of the geniza is that the disposed items will eventually be destroyed, but a lumber room is more like an unstructured archive, like this written document)? The sections on On Kawara, Candy Jernigan, Sol LeWitt, Katthy Cavaliere, and the Umberto Eco novel didn’t really add enough to the themes I was working with. I decided not to use these sections at various stages of completion, hence the difference in quality and length. I have kept a diary for thirty years, and was really attached to the idea of having the section on Diaries and the Everyday, but my research, while investigating the ephemeral and seemingly inconsequential, really played out over a longer time period than the everyday.
180 Table of Contents Finder’s Guide Accumulation Archives Art Geniza
1. Finder’s Guide
[Explanation of the role of the Finder’s Guide in the archive field; the role of the written thesis in this research as analogous to a Finder’s Guide. The finder’s guide then breaks down the contents into a taxonomy, and indicating what the contents are of each section that it is divided into. They often have a list of names of people included in each section; so if a collection of letters is included, then the names of the correspondents would be included so researchers can see if the person they are looking for is included and whether a trip to the archive is necessary. Mine could include the names of theorists or artists that I’m referencing in that ‘chapter.’ In that way the finder guide/expanded table of contents would be acting like an introduction in a way. It would become obvious that archives were the subject, as well as the method of the research.]
1.1 Introduction
[I start with the premise that aspects of material culture in our lives can provide information about us, and are how we create identities for ourselves. Part of the way we do this is through narratives of and around those objects. An accumulation of even the most mundane and trivial items and stories acts as a representation of the self. If all aspects of one’s life can be considered as part of the extended self, then what happens when some material aspects are discarded, or when long- cherished narratives are forgotten? How does the representation of the self change when the accumulated materials and narratives change? What happens when the narratives and materialised memories are revisited at a later date, and further narratives or comments are added to the record? The first part of my thesis examines different ways of presenting this accumulation as a portrait of the subject. One of these ways is the use of an archive to gather together these objects and narratives. I discuss different aspects of archival theory to show how these can be brought together in a meaningful and useful way to provide evidence of the life of the individual. By creating my own archive based on the mundane aspects of my life, I am attempting a self-representation based on autobiographical narratives around items from my own life. As an artist, and more specifically as a textile artist, the form of my archive is that of a collection of woven forms created from cut up and shredded items that I own. I examine the archival turn in contemporary art to see other ways of creating artistic archives. Different aspects
181 of archives have been used by artists, from an archive aesthetic, to using the archive as a database. Very few artworks actually create a usable archive. The aim of this research is to explore aspects of the archival in contemporary art, with a view to expanding the tropes available to artists. In addition, the archive produced will provide an example of means to more accurately represent the subjects of archives, and create a guide for others to follow when self-archiving, whether or not that is explored through an artistic medium.]
1.2 Aims of the Research
The aims of this research are to: • Find an effective method for recuperating and storing memories of a life when the material traces of that life are discarded and dispersed • Create an archive of discarded materials and narratives as an alternative form of self-representation • Examine the archival turn in contemporary art, particularly as a form of representation • Examine the relationship between archival practices and (self-) representational artistic strategies • Explore the archival strategies involved in the creation of personal as well as artistic archives
1.3 Organisation of the Thesis
[A discussion of what is contained in each chapter of the thesis, with an explanation of the reasons for the particular order they are in]
1.4 Putting Myself in the Picture
1.4.1 Biographical Note
[Situating myself in the world and in the work. One point of comparison is how I describe myself, and my history, and how the created archive represents the same. An intersection of my work and training as an artist and as a librarian; this is a standard feature within the archives created by one subject]
1.4.2 Past Practice
[Review of past series (of accumulated materials; memorials; portraits of individuals; the individual and the group) and how they relate to and have informed the current research. The art for my PhD has developed from my research into archives, but will be an extension and development of the interest in memorials, as well as the concerns with individual identity. I explore archival creation through the “mining” of my own personal archives to make work that positions my own identity for public consumption. Early research for the PhD centred on ideas of the shroud and its relation to identity. Etymologically the word ‘shroud’ developed from a cognate of ‘to cut’ and is related to ‘shred’. Looking at the archive as a metaphoric shroud (concealing and revealing), but also looking at the shroud as a possible archive, through the use
182 of shredded documents or other traces of life, all potentially joined by the technique as well as metaphor of weaving. Text and images from the archive become artworks, but may be in varying stages of accessibility and legibility. How accurate would such ‘narratives’ be?]
1.5 Methodology and Methods
1.5.1 Practice-Based research - Weaving Practice
[Creation of an artwork that is an archive; weaving as a reflection of my biographical interests; shredding materials; remediation of documents]
1.5.2 Creating an Archive
[Archiving as methodology; archiving as process; archive as object of analysis. My methodology for this research is the creation of an autobiographical archive in the form of an art installation. Through the creation of this archive I will be examining strategies for increasing autobiographical singularity; that is, looking for ways to make archival documents more representative of the individuality of the creator-archivist. The Form of this archive consists of the artwork that I create, as well as additional archival documentation included in the written component of the thesis.
My methods include creating woven forms from original documents culled from my own (potential) archive; documenting the creation and final form of those weavings; categorising, and cataloguing the woven forms as well as the Narratives and Identity claims they represent; and displaying the final installation archive. The use of art-based research, and the presentation of a thesis as an artwork reflect my own Identity as an artist, and an art researcher.]
1.5.3 Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry
[The creation of the archive as a representation of my life and my identity; self-reflection to connect my personal archiving activities, as a form of self-representation, with wider social and theoretical concerns. Archival creation as a form of life ‘writing’. Hoskins (1998) writes about the ethnographic interview (to discover narratives and selves) as a “complex dialogue.” She also mentions writing which offers “portraits of persons with multiple identities, allegorical personas, and complex hidden agendas.” The archive offers this more fully than a life history interview. It can reveal elements which the individual may not even be aware of. It allows many diverse and disparate ‘documents’ to be analysed and interpreted.]
1.6 The Research Process
1.6.1 Contingency
[The influence of chance on the creation of an archive as well as the conduct of research; randomness, subjectivity, idiosyncrasy
183 and whim as drivers of research. The creation of an archive involves chance events, or changes to narratives of the self which influence what and how items are stored or disposed of. I draw a parallel to this creation of the archive (see also the section on Archival Sedimentation) with the research process involved in this PhD which has seen changes to the direction of my research based on changes of focus, but also by the influence of supervisors and other academics.]
1.6.2 Metaphor and Metonymy
[The dominant artistic and rhetorical tropes used in this research. The dominant rhetorical and artistic strategy that I employ is that of metonymy, where a sign stands in for something else that it has an association with. An archive is unlikely to be the complete collection of everything that has shaped and been shaped by an individual, but consists of traces of parts of that life, or includes representative examples. The narratives that we tell about ourselves, or the narratives that our possessions convey, are necessarily incomplete, and a short excerpt often serves to convey an impression of the whole. My research involves the creation of a personal archival artwork, that is, an artwork that both has an archival aesthetic, but also acts as a metaphor for an archive in that it is a collection of objects and narratives that also reflect my personal identity and subjectivity metonymically.]
1.6.3 Writing as Archive -
1.6.3.1 Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes
1.6.3.2 The Pillowbook of Sei Shônagon
1.6.3.3 Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project
1.6.3.4 Georges Perec
[Accumulation of written work as analogous to the archival process; the written component of thesis as archive; a celebration of the anti-linear]
2. Accumulation
2.1 Material Culture
2.1.1 Material Culture and the Extended Self
[Theories of objects, their uses, their agency; Creation of identity through objects; the ‘extended’ and ‘dispersed’ self in the archive. I take the concept of the Extended Self from Russell Belk (1988), a consumer behaviour researcher. Belk has proposed this metaphor in particular relation to the objects that we possess (that we buy, or receive and keep) that contribute to identity, as well as reflect identity; that is, possessions we own to create a sense of identity also act to advertise that identity to others. He initially makes a distinction between a ‘core’ self and this extended self (Belk 1989), with the suggestion that possessions which have more value for the subject become
184 intensely identified with the core self, and objects that the subject marginally identifies with constitute the extended self (Ahuvia 2005). The concept later becomes more expansive as he writes of a spatial enlargement of the self because of one’s possessions, and of temporal enlargement of the self whereby objects from one’s past become representations and narratives that constitute the Extended Self (Belk 1990). It is this more expansive definition that I draw on for this study.]
2.1.2 The Mundane, the Trivial, the Everyday
[Investigation of the power of the ordinary to convey information, and to act as representation. Finding meaning in the everyday. The accumulation of individual items that may seem banal and unimportant but which become meaningful when seen in context.]
2.1.3 Assemblage
[The combination of heterogeneous elements into a meaningful and agential whole.]
2.1.4 Discards, Dispersal, Dispossession
[The meaning(s) of that which is no longer necessary; counter narratives to existing assemblages – counter archives, or shadow archives]
2.1.4.1 University of Arizona Garbage Project
[Archaeological and sociological studies based around examination of garbage of individual households, as well as landfills. Often found to provide more accurate data in regard to consume behaviour than individual surveys. The data applies to groups rather than to individuals.]
2.1.4.2 John Freyer – All My Life For Sale
[Project of Freyer’s to sell all his possessions through eBay.]
2.2 Narrative
2.2.1 Narrative as Identity
[Creation of identity through narrative; the narratives attached to objects. Narrative inquiry is described as “Stories lived and told” (Clandinin & Connelly 2000, p. 20). Do the disparate documents within the archive provide mini-narratives about themselves that can contribute to a larger ‘story’, with the story in this case being about the self, rather than the actual lived life, or biographical narrative of a subject? Is it possible to talk about narrative separate from the actual life of a subject, one that is actually connected to that life, but only a partial representation of it? In lieu of accessing a subject’s life stories through an interview, or a written autobiography or memoir, for example, my research will attempt to “engage in a process of storying” (Denzin & Lincoln
185 2008, p. 27) documents that are part of my life, but which do not necessarily provide biographical information.]
2.2.2 Autobiography and Life Writing
[Forms of self-representation; recuperation of memories; storing narratives. This section also makes use of existing documents from my life (diaries, journals, inventories) juxtaposed with the created archive to compare archival, narrative and contextualisation strategies]
2.2.3 Research as Narrative
[The research process as a form of narrative, and the written thesis as a genre of writing]
2.3 Accumulation as Representation
[Explores the ways that disparate elements can be combined to act as forms of representation of individual lives. Individual strategies from different fields considered separately]
2.3.1 MyLifeBits
[Accumulation in the digital age; strategies of replacing the material. Microsoft project called MyLifeBits in which Gordon Bell has recorded details of his life digitally so that now all his documents exist on a hard drive. He also wore a recording device (camera and sound) as he went about his life, recording everything that happened to him. So the potentially archivable self does, in many people, materialise or manifest as actual archives. This can include almost all-encompassing lifelogging where digital cameras record live feeds from people’s lives, or record physical data (heart rate, temperature, for example), as well as digitisation of every document from a person’s life, as Gordon Bell has done with his MyLifeBits.]
2.3.3 Facebook
[Social media and identity creation, storage and dissemination, particularly the work of Jose van Dijck.]
2.3.4 One Boy’s Day
Mass Observation
[Sociological perspectives; observation as data. In the 1947 case study One Boy’s Day (Barker & Wright 1966), a seven-year-old boy was observed by a team of researchers for the fourteen hours of his day. The observers swapped over every half hour, their observations and notes were transcribed, studied and collated, and the resulting study details every action and conversation that this boy engaged in over his day. The study is sub-titled a ‘Specimen Record of Behavior’, and in addition to giving information about the Extended Self of this anonymous boy from a Midwestern American town, also serves, over sixty years later, as a record of a lost world; a time when seven-year- olds walked to school alone, crossing roads with traffic without
186 parental or adult guidance and supervision, and engaging in no electronic, digital forms of recreation. This generalisability of the data from an individual’s archive is what attracts me to my own study. It enables the reader or viewer to not only analyse and come to understand others, but it reminds all of us of our own lives, how they are created, how we preserve or don’t preserve memories, narratives and materials, and how we may be interpreted by others in the future.]
2.3.5 Diaries
[Diary as pseudo-archive; life-writing and creation of the self. In the case of diary writers, there is a possible tension between the private solitary nature of the writing with the public display of the final result in an archive. Philip Larkin’s diaries, for example, were destroyed after his death at his request (Gekoski 2013). Robert Shield’s diaries have been sold by him to the Washington State University, although with the proviso that they not be available for research for fifty years (‘One Damn Page’ 2004). Shields kept a detailed, typed diary between 1972 and 1996 which comprises over 37 million words that describe every minute of his life during that time. He would sleep for only a few hours at a time so that he could wake and record his dreams. He recorded details of the food he ate, medications he took, and size and colour of his bowel movements. The minutiae of someone’s life is oddly fascinating, and although we can determine a lot from his described activities and social interactions, when does information become too much information?]
2.3.6 Photography
[Photographs as records, history and archive. The use of metadata to take the general to the individual]
2.3.7 Literature -
2.3.7.1 Perec, Things
2.3.7.2 Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
2.3.7.3 Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead
2.3.7.4 Borges, The Library of Babel
2.3.7.5 Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence
[Literary sources of accumulations as representations] 3. Archives
[The English word ‘archive’ comes from the Greek arkheion, the home of an archon, or magistrate who would collect and store official documents related to the law and the workings of the state (Derrida 1995). Cornelia Vismann (2002) writes of the “governmental obsession with total documentation” (p. 527) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that still shapes much
187 archival discourse, especially now with the amount of information that can be stored digitally, and made available to many users over diverse geographic locations (Gleick 2012). This sense of possible completeness of the archive is suggested by Michel Foucault’s (1972) use of the term ‘archive’ to include everything that had ever been written, or could be written, in a field. These writings are not collected and stored in the one place, but comprise a theoretical archive. I want to start with this idea for the creation of a personal archive.]
3.1 Archival Theory and History
3.1.1 History
3.1.1.1 The Dutch Manual
3.1.1.2 Jenkinson
3.1.1.3 Schellenberg
3.1.1.4 Postmodernism
[The development of archival theory based on mass governmental archives; changes over time; archives as representations of societies, cultures, organizations and individuals]
3.1.2 Theory
[An examination of archival theory to determine the best ways of creating and organizing an archive; an exploration of terms and concepts]
3.1.2.1 Documents and Records
[Documents and records are created in the course of business of individuals and organizations. They serve as evidence of transactions, and have an authenticity that can be verified.]
3.1.2.2 Sedimentation
[Sedimentation involves an editing process, what is collected or created, what is edited and discarded, what is highlighted and what is buried in the background. Sedimentation includes the stages that go into collecting and assembling the materials, and their deposit into a conscious archive facility (whether that is public or private). The sedimentation is often unknown and unknowable. By documenting the creation of an artwork/archive, it is possible to see the gaps, the changes, that which has been discarded.]
3.1.2.3 Appraisal
[Determining the value of a body of records to consider whether or not to include them in an archive. Archival institutions have policies in place to direct archivists to be evaluating based on principles that reflect the collecting focus of the institution. Personal archivists usually have a more instinctive or
188 idiosyncratic approach, and appraisal often follows identity or narrative changes to an individual’s life.]
3.1.2.4 Respect des Fonds
[Archival theory is based on the idea of keeping records created by organizations, individuals, or groups together, rather than splitting them up to create more ordered collections, or to reflect the concerns of the archival depository. It is concerned with the context of records. Similar to the idea of provenance in art history.]
3.1.2.5 Original Order and Arrangement
[As well as keeping collections together based on respect des fonds, original order is based on keeping records in the context in which they were created or placed by the creator of the records. Even if the ordering system is considered suboptimum for the concerns of the archival repository, it reflects the categorization of the original creator and should be retained.]
3.1.2.6 Description
[Keeping respects des fonds and original order in mind, archivists arrange the materials of an archive to fit into the storage available in the repository. The arrangement is concerned with the physical needs of the collection, while the description enables access to the records through bibliographic control and efficient cataloguing.]
3.1.2.7 Disposal
[The flip side of appraisal; determining when records are no longer needed in the archive. Documents may be disposed of as part of the appraisal process, or may be part of a scheduled disposal programme. As with appraisal, archival repositories usually have a policy in place, but personal archivists may operate more on whim, or based on identity and biographical changes.]
3.2 Personal Archives
3.2.1 Personal Information Management
[Differences between institutional or company archives and individual collections. More traditional forms of personal archiving include writing diaries, taking photographs, recording video, as well as collecting items that Susan Stewart refers to as souvenirs of the self (1984). So an individual engages in various activities including acts of collecting or possessing that are potentially archivable, and some of which are actually archived. Is this partial archive an accurate reflection or representation of the self? And if so, should one be consciously shaping and editing this archive? Is it for public consumption (as with many of the digital lifelogging projects)? And does it continue to exist after the death of the individual?]
189 3.2.2 The Jean Garling Collection
[A brief examination of a personal archive - The Jean Garling Collection is an archive of papers, artworks, diaries, articles, scrapbooks, oral history interviews, appointment books, letters, and other ‘documents of life’ (Plummer 2001) stored in the State Library of NSW. These documents were collected by Jean Garling herself during her lifetime, and merely boxed up and stored by the Library after her death. What interests me in this archive, and its relevance for an exploration of the preservation of the self, is that it was mostly self-curated and determined. Therefore, it acts as a self-selected series of representations that can be used to sketch a portrait or image, or rather a series of potential portraits of Jean Garling.] 4. Art
4.1 Auto/biographical Representation
[Brief discussion of artistic means of representation, from traditional portraits and self-portraits to more contemporary manifestations]
4.2 Artistic Accumulation as Representation
[All the artworks described suggest potential archival strategies which can be adapted to an artistic context, whether they are related to issues of data collection, storage or display, and which deal with either true and authentic facts, or fictions created by the artist.]
4.2.1 Song Dong
[Just as the accumulation of personal data requires the passing of many years, so, too, did the accumulation of household objects by Song Dong’s mother which form the basis of his installation Waste Not, 2005 (Wu 2011). This installation, which has been exhibited in a number of venues around the world, consists of every item from the house of Zhao Xiangyuan, sometimes credited with being one of the artists, along with her son (Wu 2011, p. 18). These include not just clothing, furniture and cooking utensils, for example, but old toothpaste tubes, broken toys, and laundry soap from the 1960s. Possible analysis of the Extended Self of the mother is clouded and obscured by the sheer amount of the information available (over 10,000 objects). The fact that she never threw anything out suggests hoarding tendencies possibly explained by her biographical details, and such a reading may overwhelm any others based on, say, her taste displayed by clothing items, or books exhibited.]
4.2.2 Richter
[Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, 1969-present (Zweite 2003), is an archive/installation that stands in contrast to his usual painting practice. Atlas is a collection of images (photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings) that has been mounted and framed
190 according to various themes (personal family photographs, mountain scenes, concentration camp images, etc.). These images have been collected by Richter over the years for possible use as source material for paintings. A few have been identified as the basis for certain works, but most of the images have only been used as a part of Atlas. Nevertheless, they serve as a document of Richter’s interests, tastes, and personality, especially as they may have changed as the decades passed. As with Boltanski’s pseudo-archive works, the issue of how to present archival documents is explored in this work. Is the information shown or presented in a way that is easily accessible to the viewer, or is it hidden away, and only suggested or hinted at?]
4.2.3 Cavaliere
[Her website describes her work as including "real and poignant material from her life and creates a personal almost biographical thread in her work to date". In a number of performances, she constructed environments which displayed the accumulated material culture of her life and through which she engaged with audience members.]
4.2.4 Healey and Cordeiro
[Through works such as Self Storage (2006), Deceased Estate (2004), Hoard (2006), and Luck Exists in the Leftovers (2010), they explore arrangement and storage strategies as forms of representation. The individual items are subsumed into an assemblage that becomes more meaningful than the items alone.]
4.2.5 Pamuk
[Novelist Orhan Pamuk has created the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul which, through displays of personal items and biographical narratives, shows the history of a family that lived in the house which has become the museum (Pamuk 2012). The objects on display show the tastes of the family members, and reveals much about their Extended Selves, except that all the items on display were collected by Pamuk from antique shops and flea markets to match items described by him in his novel of the same name.]
4.2.6 Sol Le Witt
[Examples of ways of creating representations of individual subjects through the accumulation of records, documents, material, and narratives that do not constitute an archive]
4.3 Discards, Dispersal, Dispossession in Art
4.3.1 Michael Landy, Break Down
[In contrast to the display of large numbers of items in an exhibition, whether as actual objects, or lists of items or actions, Michael Landy’s Break Down, 2001 (Oliveira, et al. 2003), was a
191 performance/installation that saw the destruction of every possession he owned at the time. Every item of clothing, books, art works (his own and that of other artists), personal documents (passport, birth certificate, etc.) where shredded, cut up and ground into powder which was later disposed of, leaving no material traces to become commodities. Landy described this work as being an “audit of my life” (Oliveira, et al. 2003, p. 176), as part of the work included the listing of everything that he owned which was destroyed. In terms of my own exploration of useful strategies, this suggests that actual material objects may not be necessary to tell us something about a subject’s Extended Self. Instead, an inventory of possessions, or books read, or art works collected may serve as the source of details about a subject.]
4.3.2 Andy Warhol, Time Capsules
[From the website of The Andy Warhol Museum: “The keystone of the archives collection is Warhol's Time Capsules. This serial work, spanning a thirty-year period from the early 1960s to his death in 1987, consists of 610 containers (mainly standard-sized cardboard boxes), which Warhol, beginning in 1974, filled, sealed and sent to storage. Warhol used these boxes to manage the bewildering quantity of material that routinely passed through his life. Photographs, newspapers and magazines, fan letters, business and personal correspondence, art work, source images for art work, books, exhibition catalogues, and telephone messages, along with objects and countless examples of ephemera, such as announcements for poetry readings and dinner invitations, were placed on an almost daily basis into a box kept conveniently next to his desk.”]
4.3.3 Arman, Poubelles
[Artistic representations of individuals through their discards; disposal as an artistic practice; the meaning(s) of that which is no longer necessary; counter narratives]
4.4 The Archival Turn
4.4.1 Archives in contemporary art
[As an artist, rather than a historian, anthropologist or sociologist, I am interested in the archive not as a source of data and information, but as a system of representation. The contemporary art field has explored these areas in numerous exhibitions (for example Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art at the International Center of Photography, New York in 2008 (Enwezor 2008); The Artist and the Archive, Shoreditch Biennale, 1998 (Williams 1998); The Unreliable Archivist at the Walker Art Center, 1998 (Dietz 1999)), books (including The Big Archive: Art From Bureaucracy (Spieker 2008); Interarchive: Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Art Field (Bismarck, Eichele, Feldmann, Koehler, Maerkel, Obrist …Wuggenig 2002); Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art (Schaffner & Winzen 1998)), and
192 installations by individual artists, some of which I will explore in detail to position my own artistic practice, and to critique possible archival strategies.]
4.4.1.1 Archive as Database
[The archive as a source of data to create artworks]
4.4.1.2 Archive Aesthetic
[Emulating the look of an archive, without actually being an archive]
4.4.1.3 Archive as Representation
[A study of artists who create archives as a way of representing an individual]
4.4.1.3.1 Messager
[Annette Messager has created various albums which collectively have been titled Annette Messager, Collector, 1973 (Putnam 2001). These albums, with individual titles like Album- collection no. 7 – My Needlework, and Album-collection no. 24 Collection to Find My Best Signature (Grenier 2012), have been shown open to random pages within vitrines to mimic standard museological and archival strategies of display. These works are supposedly about the artist herself, and seem to be an autobiographical accumulation, but the events depicted or described are allegedly fictional (Putnam 2001, p. 17).]
4.4.1.3.2 Kawara
[Another artist mining his personal life for artistic material is On Kawara. His on-going, multi-decades series such as I Got Up (in which he recorded the time he got up on postcards to be sent to people he knew around the world), I Met (in which he records the names of all the people that he met during a particular day), I Went (the places he went, including tracing of his routes on a map), and I Read (probably self-explanatory), together give a detailed picture of his life on a daily basis. Kawara’s presentation strategies also provide possible examples to explore, including the use of folders where the daily lists are collected, then displayed on tables in an exhibition. As with other types of installation and archival strategies that I will discuss, often the raw data that is presented tells us less about the Extended Self than does the very fact that the subject is recording so much of his life, or collecting so many things.]
4.4.1.3.3 Kabakov
[Ilya Kabakov has created the fictitious narrative of The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, 1977 (Kabakov, 2006). Every scrap of paper or random object that passes through this man’s life is collected and carefully preserved in his apartment in a self- created archival system. Kabakov has created a meditation on archives and junk, and how we separate the two.]
193 4.4.1.3.4 Antin
[Eleanor Antin’s Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev, 1919– 1929 by Eleanora Antinova (1981), is a collection of performances, video and film works, photographs and memoirs that detail the life of a fictional ballerina (played by Antin) (Meeker, n.d.). She uses an array of archival strategies to build up documentation of a life never lived.]
4.4.1.3.5 Feldmann
[Hans-Peter Feldmann in his Portrat, 1994 (Spieker, 2008), presents albums of found photographs that purport to be the family albums of one subject, creating a ‘portrait’ of this woman’s life.]
4.5 Christian Boltanski
[Examination of the different ways that Boltanski has used the idea of the archive; Boltanski has used all of the above archival strategies in his works over the years. The art of Christian Boltanski is a rich source of potential archival strategies for artistic purposes, and I have explored particular works in relation to some of my own practice in the past (Love 2008). Installations such as Archive of the Carnegie International 1896-1991 (1991) (Putnam 2001), and Lost Workers: The Work People of Halifax 1877-1982, (1994), emulate the hidden shelves and boxes of an archive, not usually seen by the general public. The boxes and containers of the installation contain documents relevant to these particular archives, but they are not accessible to viewers. The installation The Telephone Subscribers, 2000 (Oliveira, Oxley, & Petry 2003), replicates the reading room of an archive where researchers/viewers can examine material collected on the shelves, in this case, telephone directories from around the world. With these works in mind, I will need to determine how I will present my archive of art works; what shelving arrangements would be appropriate? How much access will viewers have? Is the data merely hinted at and suggested, or will real research be possible?
In addition to these sorts of ‘staging’ considerations, Boltanski’s work has also examined the nature of identity and representation in relation to the archive. Works such as Inventory of the Man from Barcelona, 1995 (Putnam 2001), present, in standard museological displays, objects that have belonged to certain people. These include furniture, clothing, and personal objects. There is no commentary from the artist to shape the viewer’s thinking about these items; the objects stand alone as representations of their owners. Boltanski has also applied this archival and artistic strategy in All That Remains of My Childhood 1994-1950, 1969 (Merewether 2006), where he has assembled the remaining traces of his childhood existence in an effort to record every detail of his life. He doesn’t make this effort in order to have his identity or legacy preserved, but rather that being “assured of never dying, I may finally rest” (Boltanski 2006 p. 25).]
194 5. Geniza: Archive as Self-Representation
5.1 Genizot
[Definition of genizot (plural of geniza) as storage place of discarded materials awaiting destruction; the Cairo Geniza]
5.2 Discarded Narratives
[An emphasis on that which has been discarded; the recuperation of memories; an archive of that which has not been archived. My research involves the creation of a personal archival artwork, that is, an artwork that both has an archival aesthetic, but also acts as a metaphor for an archive in that it is a collection of objects and narratives that reflect my personal identity and subjectivity. The documentation of the process of creation can be analysed to show the archival sedimentation process, and how that relates to the artistic process. What lessons can artists learn about artistic creation when seen through the lens of archival theory? The research is finding a means to represent not just the artwork or the archive, but how both come into being, despite or because of the restrictions of discursive practices. The artwork is an installation of woven forms reconstituted from objects and documents from my own changing archives. It is an archive of the gaps, of the discarded narratives of my own life. These edited elements of my archive become a new text that speaks of my own attempts at changing my autobiographical narrative. This sense of the old making way for the new, of things changing and reforming, reflects the creation of personal identity though the crucible of the archive. There is a constant flux, but a continuity that transcends the changes. The created artwork is a visible document of an archiving process, but the written component of my research is also an archive that documents not only what has gone into the creation of the artwork, but what has been discarded, or what has been changed, and the narratives that have shaped and been shaped by these processes. This exposes the archival apparatus that also forms institutional archives, and I discuss and analyse how it has been assembled, categorised, catalogued, and stored/presented. Through this explicit narrative, the history of the artwork, the history of the archive, and the history of the subject all become visible.]
5.3 Taxonomies of the Archive:
5.3.1 Form/Narrative/Identity
5.3.2 Form – Material Culture and Shaping the World
5.3.3 Narrative – Creating the Autobiographical
5.3.4 Identity – Artist/Archivist
[The organization of this artistic archive; taxonomies based on different properties of the archived]
195 5.4 Discussion
[Discussion of the installation created for this research; a portrait of the artist as an accumulation of discards]
5.5 Conclusion
Rejectamenta
The collage art of Candy Jernigan
Rejectamenta is a term used by New York artist Candy Jernigan to describe the flotsam and jetsam of modern life, the discards, the easily disposed items that we see all around us in urban environments – “objects that have lost their purpose or are disposable” (Howell 1999, p. 11). By using this rejectamenta in her collage notebooks, though, she gave them a new purpose: evidence of the life that she lived, the scenes that she encountered, and the people that she met.
Jernigan, who was little known during her life, and still a marginal figure today (she died in her late thirties in 1991), created scrapbooks that performed an archival function for her in that they collected together documents of her life and travels, and allowed the memories of her life to be recorded and preserved. She wrote:
In 1980, as I set out on my first trip to Europe, I decided to make a book that would contain any and all physical “proof” that I had been there: ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt – anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that a viewer could make a new picture from the remnants. Objects emerged for me as “icons” for particular cities and these objects became the material for EVIDENCE (in Dolphin 1999, p. 4).
In addition to the “Evidence of Travel”, as described above, Jernigan’s work included “Urban Evidence” such as Blood of a Vagrant (1986), which, along with a smear of the blood of the vagrant who was apparently stabbed on the street, and who later died in hospital, included a photograph of the scene, and a narrative of the incident. Found Dope (1986) is a collage of drug paraphernalia discovered on the streets of New York, and provides not only evidence of her own travels around the streets, and her collecting habits, but also of the types of drugs and drug packets in use at that point in time. Thus her concept of ‘rejectamenta’ embraced not only personal items with their memories and narratives, but created a personal map of her own journeys through the urban environment.
Jernigan’s scrapbooks reminded me a little of my own diaries, which include a diverse range of material artefacts from my life. Mine are mostly diary entries, with photos, magazine pictures, pamphlets, postcards, photocopies, etc., whereas Jernigan’s works are mostly pictorial ephemera with a small number of annotations. I was also reminded of the notebooks/diaries of photographer Peter Beard from his time in Africa, which are mostly image based, but much more crowded than Jernigan’s (Beard 2017). I wanted to include in this section anything from my PhD Journal about Jernigan that might have been interesting. Unfortunately all I found was this:
196 Monday, August 3, 2015
I read a book about Candy Jernigan, and got a few articles. She uses the term “rejectamenta” which might be useful.
Indeed it was, but I guess I wasn’t in the mood at the time for further musing about use of the term! For the same date, though, I included a note I had written:
Aide-memoire without the object – once you dispose of something, it’s not there to act as an aide-memoire, to anchor the memory, so does the memory disappear? This is justification for recording the disposed items, keeping records of the disposal, as well as the acquisition and use of the item(s).
Jernigan’s work is relevant to this idea of the archive – or the diary, the memoir, or other form of recording memories – as a prosthetic memory, helping us to retain information that would otherwise disappear if we only had our memories to rely upon. Unfortunately, as I have discovered, even when the object is still in existence as an aide-memoire, the memoire is not always aided!
I embrace Jernigan’s idea of reclaiming the mundane and unwanted in the installation Geniza. Just as she “refashion[ed] new memories out of a panoply of discarded objects, memories that, without Jernigan’s process, would have been dismissed” (Garcia 2012, n.p.), so my own rejectamenta become preserved not just as evidence of the role they played in my life, with the memories attached to them recorded, but they take on a new life as woven forms within an installation art work. The narrative of the objects’ purchase or acquisition, the appraisal process that resulted in them being discarded, and/or the story behind their destruction and rebirth as weavings, all constitute an archive/anarchive of evidence.
Lumber
Nicholson Baker and the Lumber Room as Metaphor
Until recently, if I had been asked the meaning of ‘lumber’, my first thought would have been of cut timber. If pressed, I may have thought of something or someone ‘lumbering’ along, suggesting something ungainly and plodding. The first meaning is the American one, and probably that which has become common because of the influence of American popular culture. The second is closer to the meaning used by Nicholson Baker in his essay ‘Lumber’ (1997): large cumbersome items, mostly useless, that have been put aside – in a lumber room – for some possible later use, or just to keep them out of sight.
I had seen quotes from Nicholson Baker over the years, both in this research and in my library degree, as he has had a lot to write about the disposal of card catalogues, old newspapers and books from libraries. A friend mentioned him in passing, and said he wrote beautiful descriptions of things on his desk, which made me think of Georges Perec, so I decided to get a couple of books from the library. This essay discusses the use of ‘lumber’ and ‘lumber room’ as metaphors from the 16th century, reaching a peak in the nineteenth. It comes from ‘Lombard room’, which was the storage of pawned items, as people from Lombardy became the pawnbrokers of Europe (Baker 1997, p. 239). It later was used for rooms, such as attics, where unwanted or unused items are dumped and forgotten. As a metaphor, it is often used for the knowledge that fills our heads, and especially book learning that, like the lumber of life stored in an attic, fills our heads with useless and unwanted information. Baker writes:
197 For in English prose and poetry, lumber doesn’t mean what most Americans think it means (“felled timber”); rather it means, roughly, old household goods, slow-selling wares, stuff, or junk – junk of the sort you might find at a junkshop, or even, figuratively, Yeats’s foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. The bookful blockhead’s head is not filed with fresh, sap-scented New England plywood, ready for postdoctoral carpentry, but rather with broken, sprung, pawed-over, and possibly pawned Old World trinkets and bric-a-brac (1997, p. 234).
Baker conducts old-fashioned, pre-internet search engine research into uses of this term in English literature, and finds it used both literally – as a room filled with junk – and figuratively – such as Alexander Pope’s description of someone “With loads of learned lumber in his head” (Baker 1997, p. 218). The dictionary definition provided by Baker from Noah Webster’s 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language gives lumber as: “Any thing useless and cumbersome, or things bulky and thrown aside as of no use” (Baker 1997, p. 241). These do seem to suggest two different approaches to the term, the first aligning more with the metaphor of useless knowledge, as the information gained from reading fills one’s mind with unnecessary information. The second definition gives the idea of disposal, or at least of storage out of sight, but with the emphasis on that which no longer has any use.
I toyed with the idea of replacing the metaphor of the geniza with that of the lumber room, as the latter at least has some familiarity for most readers, being in English, and may suggest some connotations, whereas the less-familiar Hebrew word may suggest nothing to most readers. Both have the suggestion of a storage place for discarded items – “A sepulchre of things” (Baker 1997, p. 254) – but a lumber room contains the notion that the items are there for good; they are unwanted, but the owner will not bother with the trouble of disposing of them. A geniza, on the other hand, is more of a stop in a process of disposal. The items are useless or unwanted, and they will be destroyed, but for now they will be stored in the geniza. My own installation, then, is more anarchive than archive, more geniza than lumber room, because the items stored there will not, because of my lack of importance as an artist, be likely to survive as an installation.
On Kawara
“Today,” 1966-2013; “I Read,” 1966-95; “I Went,” 1968-79; “I Got Up,” 1968-79; “I Met,” 1968-95; “I Am Still Alive,” 1969-2000
[N+C – I wrote about On Kawara’s work in my MFA thesis in 2007. My interest at that time was in the memorialisation inherent in the “I Met” series which included the names of people he had met on particular days; I drew parallels between monuments which included lists of names, and the way Kawara’s lists of friends and acquaintances recorded for posterity individual lives. The analogies with this research are more to do with the evidence of a lived life, the elevating of the mundane to the monumental, and the creation of a pseudo-autobiography through the collection of “data” from the minutiae of an individual life.]
Long before the advent of the quantitative-self movement, and personal information management, On Kawara kept detailed information about his daily activities, and collected the “data” as art series that spanned decades. His longest-lasting series, “Today,” consisted of a day, month, and year painted on canvas, each one completed on that date, in the language of the country in which he painted it. Many of the early “date paintings,” as they were known, were stored in cardboard boxes which had a page from a newspaper of the place he painted the canvas. This materialisation of time
198 also acts as evidence of at least one of the activities that Kawara performed on that day; he completes his work as an artist, and then the result of that work is archived as evidence to transmit that activity to the future. In addition, these paintings are accompanied by “Journals” which are collections of notes in ring binders which record the details of the paintings, the paint used to paint them, their size, and an inventory of each painting, with an identifying serial number. This self-archiving activity is not just the detailing of created artworks that any artist might perform, but also, in conjunction with the data from the other series listed here, forms a sort of autobiographical diary of his life.
Providing further evidence of his continued existence, the series “I am still Alive” (in which he sent telegrams to friends and art world figures with the series’ title as the only message), and “I Got Up” (postcards stamped with the date and the time he got up) can perhaps be seen as anarchival activities since the telegrams and postcards were widely dispersed, and often repeated (different people received information from the same day), but do provide information about his core “business” activities; that is, being an artist, and perhaps even being seen as an artwork in his own right.
“I Read,” (lists of things he read that day), “I Went” (a map of the city in which he spent that day, with a red line indicating the route(s) he took to the various places he went), and “I Met” (lists of the names of people he met on particular days) also record the minutiae of his life, but elevate them to the status of memorials by including them in pseudo-archival binders. They also serve to show Kawara’s connections with the outside world, but instead of dispersed relationships represented by the telegrams and postcards of other series, these binders of material evidence emphasise his individuality at the centre of a network of friends and acquaintances.
Joan Kee suggests that “these snippets of information supposedly granted us access to the inner life of the famously publicity-shy artist” (2015, p. 170), but despite the – supposedly accurate – evidence of his daily activities, which allow viewers to imagine the data of their own lives displayed in such a way, we have no idea how Kawara felt painting a date painting each day, if he was bored by the sameness of the activity, or freed from the burden of having to come up with new ideas for works. What physical effects might there have been from painting in cramped hotel rooms? What did he do with the people he met, or do at the places he went? How did he feel about the things that he read? My research suggests that by providing narrative and contextual metadata to such evidence, the autobiographical implications of such work can be enhanced. This narrativisation and contextualisation in fact become further types of evidence to show that one has in fact thought about the data that has been collected.
Katthy Cavaliere
I first encountered the work of Katthy Cavaliere in 1998 at Artspace in Sydney. The installation/performance was Katthy’s Room, and the memory I have now (and I wonder if I can find an entry in my diary to see what I wrote then) was of climbing the ladder, looking into the giant cardboard box which contained the contents of Cavaliere’s childhood room, and thinking something like, “Great, another artwork where someone has just plonked their possessions in the gallery.” It was a second or two, while thinking this, before I realised that someone was in the room. I had to change what was probably a scowl on my face (my annoyance possibly added to by the fact that this was, I believe, an exhibition of finalists for the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship – annoyance that this sort of crap was what was being rewarded in the art scene of the time), to one of social interaction as the artist chatted to me about the work. She also took a photo of me, and presumably wrote down my name, because the
199 next time I met her, possibly at a similar finalists’ exhibition the following year, or the year after, she remembered me as someone who had visited her room in the gallery.
I have been writing this section at the same time as writing the Walter Benjamin section. Although I am attracted to Benjamin’s idea of “literary montage” and the collection and presentation of research materials as a complete work (although not necessarily considering it ‘writing’), I am reluctant to consider the presentation of objects, without some kind of transformative art process, as a complete work. It’s the same opinion (or prejudice) that prevented me from seeing Song Dong’s Waste Not when it appeared in Sydney. Such works are certainly evidence of a collection process, but I want there to be something more to transform them into art.
Autobiography by Sol LeWitt
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. …
Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (2005, p. 1)
Sometimes he felt his life was not a narrative or a sequence of events, but a succession of disconnected images, fragments of a larger dream.
Sebastian Faulks, A Week in December (2009, p. 315)
Although quite familiar with the work of Sol LeWitt, I had not encountered his photography-based book Autobiography (1980) until conducting this research. Reading about autobiography led me to Roland Barthes’ and Georges Perec’s unconventional autobiographies (alphabetised snippets in the former, and the inclusion of a childhood story in the latter), and then to LeWitt’s work. It consists of hundreds of photographs of his living space in New York, taken prior to a move to Italy, arranged in 3x3 grids, consistent with his use of grids in other aspects of his artwork. The use of photography and the exclusion of all text asserts the evidentiary power of the photograph, and its memorializing function; the presentation of the material culture of his life as an autobiography shows the importance of the extended self to understanding the life of a person, and the grid format exerts a control and a shape over the otherwise disparate detritus of LeWitt’s everyday life.
A much-commented aspect of the photograph is the evidence it provides for the existence of things. Roland Barthes has written of the “evidential force” (Barthes 1981, p. 88) of photography – the proof that “the thing has been there” (Barthes 1981, p. 77). If so, then we are able to see the objects that constituted LeWitt’s life at a certain point, and know that he indeed possessed them. In addition to their “inventoried presence” (Danto 2007, p. 93), we are also able to see the context in which the objects existed, rather than just a list of items that he owned. This can be seen as “an attempt to archive and preserve what is about to disappear for good” (Richter 2010, p. xxx) – the context in which these things exist, if not the things themselves. Memory is notoriously unreliable, and it is unlikely that anyone can remember all the objects they have ever owned, let alone the arrangements of objects in a previous residence if photographs do not exist. Siegfried Kracauer writes, “Compared to photography, memory’s records are
200 full of gaps” (1995, p. 50), and, in regards to memories of childhood, Geoffrey Batchen asks, “Has photography quietly replaced your memories with its own?” (2004, p. 15). Certainly my own photographs of past apartments have been an attempt to capture the memories of those places, which now feature the only evidence of some objects, but also point to changing tastes and styles of display. Often, though, a part of the apartment that is just out of range of the photograph’s frame has ceased to have any place in my memory.
LeWitt’s title of Autobiography for this series of photographs suggests that he intends for the objects displayed to constitute a narrative of his life. Justification for this unconventional story of a life comes from his own Sentences on Conceptual Art (1968): “Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally” (LeWitt 1969, p. 12). This work is thus a conceptual autobiography, presenting his extended self through his possessions, an “external” rather than “inward journey” (Leibowitz 1991, p. 16). Susan Sontag, in relation to photography, has suggested, “What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation…. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world as much as pieces of it…” (Sontag 1978, p. 4). This may be so, but surely analyzing the extended self through material culture, provided by photography in this case, requires interpretation, and in this case that must come from the viewer. This might suggest that LeWitt’s work becomes more biographical, as the viewer must create the details of LeWitt’s life from the evidence presented. By presenting aspects of material culture of my own life as evidence of my extended self, but providing context and narrative as appropriate (and as memory can provide), my research attempts to create a more autobiographical reading of the self than LeWitt provides in his work.
In addition to this further contextual detail, LeWitt’s and my own artworks provide autobiographical detail through artistic means. While Geniza reflects my interest in weaving, and through installation emulates an archive, Autobiography’s arrangement of photographs in grid patterns reflects a career-long interest in grids for LeWitt. The description of an exhibition based on his use of the grid suggests that “LeWitt found extraordinary richness in systematic formal logic, developing complex structures out of the simplest elements” (Haxthausen 2012, n.p.). Autobiography does this not just through the details of the items in his studio and home, but through the use of the grids. The individual photographs
evoke the window that photography claims to provide onto the world, even as they firmly demarcate our separation from that world. And the grid provides these… assemblages with the unmistakable structure of narrative, with the capacity to tell a story, a power which few individual photographs possess (Batchen 2004, p. 26).
The story that they tell in this case turn what could be just a self-portrait of the artist into an autobiography through the narratives embedded in the objects themselves. The suggestion is that these objects extend beyond their own physicality to embrace the stories that they contain about LeWitt’s life. Unfortunately we the viewers aren’t privy to that information, so we have to substitute our own ideas and stories for those of LeWitt himself. The contradiction of the “antinatural, antimimetic order of the grid with the insistent realism of the photograph” (Batchen 2004, p. 26) provides the tension in the work that reflects this contrast between self-presentation and viewer interpretation.
201 The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
I returned the photographs to their envelope: most of them had no annotation on the back, and though suggestive and informative in a general sort of way, they did little to enlighten me.
Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-pool Library (1988, p. 96)
I read this book in 2012, and in the same year I studied a Graduate Diploma of Education course; I used Eco’s novel as the basis for a lesson plan about identity. I was particularly taken with the idea that Yambo, the protagonist, only remembers what he has read, and wanted students to think about the books they had read themselves, and how those books might have contributed to their identity. I also liked the images, illustrations, book covers, and photographs that the protagonist uses to try to regain his memories. When I discovered the concept of the extended self, I connected it with this novel, and saw how Yambo’s search for his lost memories in the books he read as a child echoed my desire to recuperate and preserve the memories connected with the material artefacts of my own life.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, sometimes (but not in my edition – Eco 2006) subtitled An Illustrated Novel, is the story of Giambattista Bodoni – Yambo to his intimates – who, after some kind of accident, has no memories of his personal life, but only remembers things that he has read; his doctor in the novel helpfully explains to the reader the differences between implicit, or body memory (memory of things like tying shoe laces, or getting dressed), and explicit memory, divided into semantic or public memory (consisting of things that most people in society might know, like the capital of Australia, or the years of World War II), and episodic, or autobiographical memory. It is the last that Yambo has lost access to, and which is most critical to a sense of self, as the doctor explains:
It’s episodic memory that establishes a link between who we are today and who we have been, and without it, when we say I, we’re referring only to what we’re feeling now, not to what we felt before, which gets lost, as you say, in the fog (Eco 2006, p. 13).
The fog is a critical motif, and the first section of the book especially is filled with intertextual references to fog, with Eco, through his protagonist, quoting from various literary sources. This serves as a metaphor for Yambo’s loss of clarity that has come about because of his amnesia, and, perhaps, represents the fog that all of us potentially succumb to as we age, and our memories of past events become hazy. Yambo attempts to restore his autobiographical memories by returning to his childhood home, where he searches through and re-reads the books of his youth, which have been stored in an attic:
Eco exploits once again some of his favorite metaphors for “archeology of knowledge” and Borgesian libraries, encyclopedias, museums, and a variety of other archives including the Internet. Here he employs the metaphor of the attic/storage in order to illustrate intertextual echoes of several other architectural metaphors dealing with memory dating as far back as to Aristotle and St. Augustine: the cave, palace, museum, theater of memory, Wunderkammer, etc. (Capozzi 2006, p. 465).
I, too, would evoke all these metaphors in my own installation, Geniza, and in my research. Just as Yambo is able to restore some of his autobiographical memories
202 through reading and making associations with the books of his childhood, I would suggest that the recording of autobiographically singular information about the disposed artefacts of a life, through a series of mise-en-abyme narrativised documentation forms saved in an archive, will enable people to have a greater understanding of themselves, and their past, and prevent the encroaching of the fog of memory.
Rocco Capozzi describes Eco’s work as “hybrid hypetextual [sic] historical fiction” Capozzi 2006, p. 462), with hypertextuality described as
non-linear reading, as an intricate web of possibilities of reading, and above all as a cognitive process of making associations among words and images as well as of connecting links, nodes, fragments, lexias, texts, etc. selected by the reader who may choose to follow a variety of paths in his search, depending on his curiosity, knowledge and experience (Capozzi 2006, p. 468).
Further:
Hypertextuality is essentially a multimedia rhizomatic process of witnessing the dynamics of intertextuality which at the same time gives the reader a sense of (re)constructing a new text while reading another one (Capozzi 2006, p. 469).
The archive also embraces hypertextual reading paths, and is a great example of a rhizomatic process, both in the creation, and use of them. Unfortunately once- fashionable metaphoric concepts like rhizomes (Deleuze & Guattari 1987), if used past their time in fashion tend to look dated and outmoded. I think that’s unfortunate in the case of archives, because it seems to be a useful way of not only describing them, but also enabling understanding of their place within a program of narrativisation and contextualization of one’s own past, and its preservation into the future, in a non- hierarchical medium which allows multiple entry points, and multiple opportunities to make associations between past events and stories; through this rhizomatic, hypertextual journey through the archive, especially one’s own, one can keep the fog of forgetfulness at bay.
Diaries
Diaries as Materialisation of the Everyday
A man hath perished and his corpse has become dirt. All his kindred have crumbled to dust. But writings cause him to be remembered in the mouth of the reciter.
- Egyptian author, unknown (Yakel 2006, p. 151)
My attitude to the diary was twofold and contradictory: I was intensely proud of it and wanted everybody to see it and what I had written in it, and at the same time I had an instinct for secrecy and wanted nobody to see it.
L. P. Hartley, The Go-between (1953, p. 14)
This journal is our nightly confession… In this day-to-day autobiography appear those people whom the accidents of life threw into the path of our existence.
Edmond & Jules de Goncourt, The Goncourt journals, 1851-1870 (1937, p. xi)
203 People have different reasons for keeping diaries; LeJeune & Lodewick (2001) have noted four main reasons – as expression, as memory, as reflection, and for the sake of writing. The daily diary that I have kept for close to thirty years matches the first three reasons; the PhD journal I have kept for four years is mainly for the middle two, but partly for the other two. I questioned my decision to have a section on Diaries, but after writing about memory, archives, and installations, I realised that diaries embody many of the same concerns and properties of these other areas: the preservation of the everyday, of ordinary life, and the transactions of that life, against the passing of time, and the loss of memory; the ability to transcend the limitations of time and space, by bringing varied time frames and places into a metaphoric heterotopia, and to communicate with potential others in future times and distant places; and as a part of, and representation of, the extended self. It therefore seemed apt to include this section as reinforcement of the main research areas, and to create further analogies for, and to increase the potential meanings of, the Geniza installation.
The everyday, by its very commonplaceness, seems unworthy of attention, but it can be seen as an expression of our extended self; it is, according to Maurice Blanchot, “what we are first of all, and most often: at work, at leisure, awake, asleep, in the street, in private existence. The everyday, then, is ourselves, ordinarily” (Blanchot 2008, p. 34). This quotidian existence, Michael Sheringham suggests, is often perceived negatively, as, “boring, habitual, mundane, uneventful, trivial, humdrum, repetitive, inauthentic, and unrewarding” (Sheringham 2006, p. 23), as well as “insignificant,” “uneventful,” and “overlooked” (p. 18). I would suggest that this applies only to the present, and that everyday actions of the past become possible sources of nostalgia, regret, or happiness, if they can be brought into the present. Artists and writers attempt this by finding what is worth highlighting in the everyday: Hans-Peter Feldmann claimed: “I am not interested in the high points of life. Only five minutes of every day are interesting. I want to show the rest, normal life” (in Tatay 2008, p. 121), and a main feature of George Perec’s writing is “to rescue the everyday from the neglect and oblivion to which it is customarily consigned” (Sheringham 2006, p. 1). The authentic, real objects in Song Dong’s Waste Not (2005), and the fictional ones in Ilya Kabakov’s The Man who Never Threw Anything Away (1988), embody the everyday life of the protagonists of their installations. Allen Ruppersberg, in a piece of writing called ‘Fifty helpful hints on the art of the everyday’, suggests that we: “Collect, accumulate, gather, preserve, examine, catalogue, read, look, study, research, change, organize, file, cross-reference, number, assemble, categorize, classify, and conserve the ephemeral” (2008, p. 56). Stephen Johnstone, writing on art and the everyday, notes:
Drawing on the vast reservoir of normally unnoticed, trivial and repetitive actions comprising the common ground of daily life, …the rise of the everyday in contemporary art is usually understood in terms of a desire to bring these uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility” (2008, p. 12).
Not everyone is an artist, though, and I am not suggesting that this is the only way to embody the everyday; the materialisation of these mundane aspects of daily life are available to all (at least the literate) through the format of the diary.
“The role of writing,” in this instant, that of the diary, “is to counter the fragility of our everyday space” (Sheringham 2006, p. 57). Just as the objects, ideas, and thoughts that make up our extended self change over time, so, too, does our everyday existence, and my life here in Dili, as I write this, is vastly different to the life I lived when I was in high school in Perth, or teaching English in Tokyo, or studying art in Sydney. What we do habitually, repetitively, seems like something we will remember forever, but we won’t. The diary, then, can be seen as a “carrier of the private, the everyday, the intriguing, the sordid, the sublime, the boring – in short, a chronicle of
204 everything” (Mallon 1984, p. 1), and also as a way “in which times and spaces are appropriated by human subjects and converted into physical traces, narratives and histories” (Sheringham 2008, p. 142). Author Lionel Shriver, looking back at her teenage diaries, was “infuriated” by what was not included:
I didn’t write entries with nearly the faithfulness that I remembered, and I recorded all the wrong things. I often omitted the date. I rarely described what happened: what people said, where I was, what awful incident had driven me despairingly to this notebook. No, what I mostly wrote down was feelings.
Sod the feelings! What was your life like? … Know what? Now I would love to know what I had for dinner. All those small, irretrievable details of the everyday would be invaluable to me now: word-for-word dialogue between classmates, the blow-by-blow of family altercations, my response to larger historical events such as the assassination of Martin Luther King (Shriver 2016, n.p.).
Even though I have been writing a daily diary for nearly thirty years now, I regret that I didn’t start earlier. Shriver’s teenage diaries don’t include everything she might like, but there is still something of her everyday teenage life, even if it is just how she was feeling.
To truly capture the totality of everyday life, one might almost have to write a diary continuously; Robert Shields kept a minutely detailed diary from 1972 to 1996, typing it up taking nearly four hours a day, ending up with allegedly over thirty-seven million words (Martin 2007, n.p.). His comprehensive diaries recorded “visits to the bathroom, the weight of the daily newspaper, and every piece of junk mail. Detritus like meat labels, grocery store receipts, and nose hairs, are also included” (“One damn page” 2004, n.p.). In an interview, Shields said, “The entire day is accounted for. I don’t leave anything out. It started in at midnight, and go [sic] through the next midnight. And every five minutes is accounted for” (in Burbank 2007, n.p.). Like the comprehensive everydayness of One Boy’s Day, Shields hoped that his detailed diaries would be useful as analysable data in the future: “Maybe by looking into someone’s life at that depth, every minute of every day, they’ll find out something about all people” (Martin 2007, n.p.). Although Shields’ diaries are embargoed until fifty years after his death, some entries have been made available. These entries record the minutiae of his everyday life:
Tuesday, December 19, 1995
8:25-9:15 I lay abed with Grace who was soon sound asleep. I couldn’t doze off. 9:15-9:20 Hear the waters roar along the shore. [A reference to urinating.] 9:20-9:25 I put out the decoy Tri-City Herald. I took a nitro. 9:25-9:35 I prepared 10 ounces of condensed Campbell tomato soup. 9:35-9:40 I pissed again. I emptied and rinsed out the chartreuse plastic urinal. 9:40-10:00 I ate the soup with three or four slices of whole wheat bread as I read the National Geographic magazine and watched an atrocious horror movie on TV. Aliens were torturing a man who was trapped in a gauze-like shroud engulfing him. 10:00-10:05 I washed the soup saucepan and kitchen utensils (“One damn page” 2004, n.p.).
These are the “microscopic events” (Sheringham 2006, p. 28) that Shields became obsessed with for nearly twenty-five years (Burbank 2007, n.p.), only stopping when he was unable to continue using his typewriters after a stroke (Martin 2007, n.p.). A description by artist Allan McCollum of the use of the everyday in art as “a love letter to the ephemeral and to memory, a valorization of the things that are destined to disappear” (in Johnstone 2008, p. 18) also serves to sum up the diaries of Robert Shields.
205 This preservation of the otherwise ephemeral is a motivator for many chroniclers, and is the main research focus of the Geniza installation. Diaries can be used to “collect the days” (Mallon 1984, p. 75), “[accumulate] the past” (Mallon 1984, p. 74), and “capture things before they are lost for good” (Orlow 2012, p. 204). Anaïs Nin wrote that her diary was “an effort against loss” (in Mallon 1984, p. 86); Virginia Woolf, when missing out on adding entries to her diary, claimed that the memories had “gone down the sink to oblivion” (in Mallon 1984, p. 34); and Lord Byron noted: “How quickly we lose the impression of what ceases to be before us” (in Zboray & Zboray 2009, p. 106). The diary offers a “concretization of the ephemera of experience” (Steinitz 1997, p. 49); the events of the everyday seem like they will last in the memory forever, and many unique and exciting things surely will be retained, but not if they are not recorded. As Jennifer Higgie writes, about the ideas she has while seeing an exhibition:
I don’t need to write the details of my thinking down, because these thoughts are so good they will never be forgotten. Oh, but they will. So much interpretation (read: art, life) is clouded and driven by the fallacies of memory, about the slippage between actuality and recollection [and we can end up with] slivers of meaning from the residue of an experience that has, inevitably, cracked and crumbled with time (2010, p. 103).
Many of the objects that I have woven for this research have lost some of their meanings because my memories of them have faded; they suffer from a lack of immediacy that diary-writing can provide. Recollecting after years or decades is clearly less reliable than doing so at the end of the day. In order to provide a more complete and complex representation of the extended self, then, the recording of memories should be done as close to their origins as possible.
By acting as materialised memory and experience, diaries (as a heterotopic pseudo- archive) enable not just an embodiment of the extended self, but a transference of that self through space and time; not just communicating with others, but conferring a form of immortality on the one writing the diary. Diaries are an expression of our human “desire to record, organize and preserve the details of our existence” (Sloman 2011, p. 11), and represent an “exteriorization of memory onto objects” that act as “traces of the past or the material real that help buttress a claim to personal authenticity and a sense of self that endures over time” (Hillis 2006, p. 170). This is the “self made textual” (Steinitz 1997, p. 44), or “the flesh made word” (Mallon 1984, p. xvii), using “tiny egotistical time capsules” (Mallon 1984, p. 269), to “build a memory out of paper” (LeJeune & Lodewick 2001, p. 107). If the self is embodied in these writings, then an “individual life narrative, a chronicle of personality, summarized in writings, scraps, mementoes” (Bradley 1999, p. 109) can be transmitted to another by “extending the temporal and spatial range of communication” (Foote 1990, p. 378). If the diary survives into the future, then so will the writer: “Someone will be reading and you’ll be talking. And if you’re talking, it means you’re alive” (Mallon 1984, p. xvii); diaries, then, “[provide] a bridge across time, implicitly encompassing past, present, and future, in the writing and, especially, the reading of its pages” (Steinitz 1997, p. 53). This heterochrony is a reflection of the heterotopic nature of the diary; not only does it “[juxtapose and combine] many spaces in one site” (Topinka 2010, p. 54), but also many time periods; a recounting of the day’s events may involve a recollection of another event years past, in another country, and the writing of years of diaries necessarily involves an accumulation of time, usually in chronological order. The “private fingering of ordinary experience” (Mallon 1984, p. xiii), then, can “conquer time across generations” (Cook 2006, p. 172); it is with the same sense of finding ways of preserving the minutiae of my life – which would otherwise be lost – as a representation of (parts of) my extended self for future viewers and readers that I am conducting this research.
206 207
Appendix 2 – Projets
208
At the time that I was researching the works of George Perec, early in my PhD programme, I attempted a number of writing projects that Perec had himself initiated, as a way of capturing the narratives of items I was not weaving for my installation, or for creating a record of the activities of daily life. From my dissertation:
As I have sought to capture details of those things which are being discarded, I have realised how much detail potentially accumulates around the objects in our lives, and just how little I could recall of those details. Emulating Perecian projets – “an appropriate general term for the types of activity through which he and other explorers make themselves… what Certeau calls practitioners of the everyday” (Sheringham 2006, p. 387) – I have not only started writing down details of items I have purchased in the past two years, but also jotted down details of those items which I have discarded, and chosen not to weave for the installation; I have kept time-use diaries to provide (for whom?) details of the everydayness of my life at various times; written a history of the objects on my own desk, and taken photographs of all the items in my bathroom (emulating Sol LeWitt’s Autobiography, 1980), all of which I have included in Appendix 2.
This appendix includes, as well as the projets mentioned above, the narrative of a visit to a psychiatrist when I first moved to Sydney in the late 1990s (Perec wrote of his own visit to a psychiatrist), a list of items that were no longer in my possession and their narratives, and a transcription of the writing on a pile of papers from the late 1980s, which I wove for this research, and the diary entry in which I explain the process. All of the projets included here were completed in the first two or three years of this research.
I am also including a history of my research from 2013 to 2015, which was written not as an experimental projet, but as a review presentation text. I chose selections from my PhD Diary to illustrate not just the history of the research to date, but to emphasise the idea that I was collecting and presenting the discarded aspects of my research journey, an idea which led to the section on discarded research in this dissertation. This was the original, unedited compilation; to have read this out would have taken ten times the amount of time I was given, so it was savagely cut back.
209 The History of the Objects on my Desk
Sunday, October 25, 2015
This is obviously a Perecian exercise. An exact copy of the one where he wrote about the objects on his work table. He did urge others to try the same exercise, though.
I’ll begin with the desk itself. I bought it when I came to Sydney in 1995 at a second- hand furniture place somewhere in Surry Hills. In the last two places I lived in Japan I used a low table, a kotatsu, for writing my diary or letters, or doing artwork. In the first apartment I had in Funabashi there was a metal desk which was very similar to this one (which is wooden, but the general configuration). Before I left Perth I had two desks, one in each of the rooms I used in our house. One was a fold-out lid type desk with drawers underneath, and shelves on top. A child’s desk, really. The other was similar to this, but I don’t remember where it came form or where it went to. This desk is fairly plain, with three drawers on the right side. It has laminated wood panels. It’s probably chipboard underneath. It’s plain, but sturdy, and quite big at 90x150cm. I have used it in 4 different apartments in Sydney, and soon I’ll be putting it in storage when I go to live in Timor-Leste.
Propped up at the back of the desk is a corkboard. Pinned to the corkboard is a photo of a corkboard I had in Japan (with photos and postcards pinned to it). It’s not the same corkboard. I don’t know what happened to that one, but clearly they’re not the same. Maybe I got this one at IKEA at some point. Chunks of cork have fallen out, so it’s quite old. In the middle is a calendar. I made my own generic calendar with just squares and days of the week, and each month I fill in the dates. I use this system when I have jobs that have different days or times, like when I was a carer, or a waiter. Now I do tutoring, and it’s mostly regular (four hours a day, three days a week), but sometimes students change classes, or I fill in for other people, so I have to record the times so that I can fill in my timesheet. I also do occasional work like supervision, or marking, so need to know when those dates and times are. There are 4 months to a page, and when they are complete I put them in my diary.
Also on the corkboard, in the top left hand corner, is a passport photo of Andrew and me. We used to occasionally get photobooth photos when we went shopping. It was a habit that I picked up when I lived in Japan (the photo of the corkboard from Japan has a number of photos of me, alone and with friends). Next to that photo is a badge of Mother Meera, an alleged incarnation of the divine mother who lives (or at least lived) in Germany, near Frankfurt-am-Main, and whom I visited in 1995. I read about her in a book about a guy with AIDS who was on a spiritual journey (Mark Somebody). He went there and felt powerful emotions, and thought she was wildly spiritual. I was planning to go to Europe to see some art events (Venice Biennale, Munster Sculpture Project, Documenta), and I would be in the area, so why not visit. I hired a car to drive from Frankfurt. I went to darshan on two nights. People would go in and sit in this house (the people who had come from further away got the better seats), wait quietly, then she would come in and sit down. People queued up to sit in front of her. When you get before her you gazed into her eyes for a short time (she was allegedly doing something, or seeing something in you), then you bow your head, and she put her hands over you and sorted out your energies, or something. I didn’t feel a thing. Does that mean I’m not receptive, or does it mean it’s bullshit? The badge is supposed to keep you safe from harm, and I’m not dead yet, so maybe it’s working.
Below that is a quote from somewhere: “Life may not be adorned with brilliant trophies but it is extremely easy and tranquil.” I have written it on a scrap of paper. On the other side of the paper is information about UNSW staff conditions and workplace
210 agreements, something I picked up when I worked in the UNSW Library, but used for scrap when I left. Under the piece of paper is a laminated card with a picture of St Nino, the Christ child. “O Divine child, guide us as we walk along the path to righteousness.” Maybe I picked this up in the Philippines on a stopover in Manila. I once collected a number of religious items. I’m not sure if it was ironically or not. And does the baby Jesus exist simultaneously with the adult Jesus, and the risen-from-the- dead-and-ascended-to-heaven Jesus? And with God the Father? It makes no sense to be preying to the baby Jesus. None.
Below Jesus, and also partly covered by the scrap paper, is a jigsaw puzzle I got at Spiral, an art venue in Tokyo, on the occasion of an exhibition about the human condition. You picked up the frame of the puzzle at the entrance, and then the individual pieces as you walked around the show. The picture is an artwork of a bronze statue of a man, heated, with water coming out of a hose onto his (heated) head, which then turned to steam. Is it Alighiero y Boetti (spelling?). The exhibition title, in English, is Of the Human Condition: Hope and Despair at the End of the Century. From 1994, when I was still living in Tokyo. This sat in a box for a long time, but it made its way onto the corkboard for want of anything else to do with it. It is pinned to the board by a Canadian flag pin, given to me by one of two Canadian colleagues I had when I worked in Funabashi. One was a rabid Canadian, whose identity seemed to mostly be that she wasn’t American. If the pin came from the other, more sensible colleague, then it may have been ironically. Another pin holding it down is from the Nikko Hotel chain. I worked as a porter at the Hotel Nikko Darling Harbour from 1995 to about 1998. A plain push pin is the third pin holding it in place.
Next to the jigsaw puzzle, and obscuring it, is another quote written on a scrap of paper. This one reads: Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. Chapter House Dune” This is a Bene Gesserit saying according to Frank Herbert. This and the other scrap were inside a visual art diary for a long time, perhaps to be used in painting projects, but at some point, I think when I was culling and choosing items to take to the studio to weave, these made their way to the board to be inspiring? Underneath is another scrap with “Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.” Think of Little Red Riding Hood… Removing those scraps I discovered another pin holding up the jigsaw puzzle – a cowboy boot with Calgary written on it. This was definitely from the more sensible Canadian colleague. We all took little things to give to people as presents when we went to Japan, then found we still had some when we left, so gave them away willy- nilly.
Also underneath the two scraps of paper is a promotional calendar from Kudos Gallery, with details of my exhibition Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain, from June 2007. It has brown stained and decayed paper with stitching on it as the image. This was a retrospective exhibition of sorts, with a lot of sculptural works from about 8 years which featured burnt objects, decayed, or otherwise worn and used looking art works. It is held to the board with an asparagus pin. A vegetarian friend in Japan had given me a set of vegetable pins. The tomato is holding the calendar in place, and there is also celery, corn and carrot. The exhibition calendar is below the work calendar, and mostly obscured by the quotes on paper.
The top right hand corner has the aforementioned picture from my corkboard in Japan. It has 23 pictures of me, with or without other people. There are five Andy Warhol- related postcards (3 have Warhol in photographs, one is of an eagle in one of his artworks, and one of Judy Garland). There is also a still photo from A Star is Born with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand kissing, and a postcard of the poster for Querelle. I think almost all of these have disappeared, except for the photos which have been glued into various diary volumes.
211 Below that is a photocopy of something I found in a booklet I got in a workshop for some work training. It asks: “Do you have Abrasive Tendencies?” and lists symptoms such as “Are you often critical to others?” “Do you have a strong need to be in control?” “Are you quick to rise to the attack…?” and so on. I answered yes to all of them! It’s why I try to avoid people as much as possible. Finally, below that is something cut out of a magazine, which also once used to be in a visual art diary as possible source for an artwork that never came about. It asks, “What did you take with you when your village was burning?”
In front of the corkboard is a wooden box I acquired when I worked in UNSW Library. It would have once been used for index cards of some sort. I have always used it for keeping scraps of notes. Inside are some phone numbers, novel titles to one day read, old passwords, some blank index cards I’ll probably never write on, bank account details. On top of the box is a small stuffed Tasmanian Devil that a colleague brought back from a trip to Tasmania. He later moved there with his wife. There is also an IKEA clock. I have a clock in every room of the house.
To the right of the box and the corkboard is a collection of receptacles filled with pens and markers and other stationery items. I love pens, and use different coloured pens for my diary entries each night. I bought many in Sydney, but also stocked up when I was in Singapore, and Bangkok. They’re mostly Uni-Ball Signo brand pens. Three of the pen holders are ceramic vessels I made in a class in my BFA days. Two are standard cups, but one is like a Japanese tea bowl. The other container is a black plastic holder I bought in Japan. There are over 50 pens here, plus another full pencil case in a drawer.
To the right of them is a dictionary I bought at a secondhand store in Japan in the early 1990s. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. I still prefer to look a word up in the dictionary if I’m at my desk rather than looking online. Next to that is an atlas that I received as a present (the only one that I’m aware of ever having received) from my (paternal) grandmother. She lived in Kalgoorlie, so we never saw her much. She owned a bookstore. Apparently. I never went. This is from the ‘70s and still has East and West Germany, and the USSR, and other such obsolete places. I like it because it also has flags from each country, plus lists of place names and features.
[I’ve been writing for ages, and am getting a bit tired. The trouble with this sort of thing is that I want to get it out of the way in one go, but if I do then the entries at the end become much shorter and less detailed. I’ll come back to it later.]
Monday, October 26, 2015
Next to the atlas is a black plastic document container which I also bought in Japan. I keep the year’s documents in it which I bundle up when I do my tax returns, and store for the five years required for tax purposes. There is also a small ring binder/notebook in it which I used to use for my tax receipts. I used to have a lot of art-related tax invoices and I would glue them all in sections. I was much more organised, but I also put a lot more effort into my art career. It got me nowhere, so I’ve pretty much given up! In the right hand corner of the desk is a three-tier tray, also black plastic, also bought in Japan. It is hidden under a Japanese textile which was a table cloth for the kotatsu I mentioned earlier. In other apartments I haven’t covered this up, but this place is very polluted, and I was hoping to keep the papers inside relatively clean. This has assorted documents in it – real estate agent stuff (for the apartment I live in, and the one I own which is being rented out); superannuation and life insurance documents; lined paper; an address book; stamps; two wills, one which has replaced the other; other assorted
212 random things that I put there when I don’t know what else to do with them. On top of the textile sit two takeaway menus from restaurants in the area, one a Malaysian place, and the other Chinese noodles and dumplings. Underneath the shelves (which are elevated with little feet) I keep photocopied things which I am using for scrap paper; I write on the blank pages, and I use the paper when I glue things into my diary to prevent glue getting on anything else.
On the far side of the desk, in the left hand corner, next to the corkboard, is a three- drawer paper box… thing. Chest of drawers? This also came from Japan. I think you buy them as a kit and construct them. I’m not sure as I got this from a friend who was leaving Japan. A lot of things I acquired came from staying longer than other people. Most people just abandon things, or try to sell them before they leave the country. As I had been in Japan for six years I had enough things I wanted to keep that I had them shipped to Australia. I think this came from Jane, who was from a Danish sister city to the one I lived in. She was also an English teacher, which seems odd to me, being Danish. I keep my passport in one of the drawers, plus a collection of all the photo IDs I have had over the years, since about 1988. I also have some receipts for artworks I have bought over the years, in case I need to know provenance of them. And in the bottom drawer I keep pens that aren’t in high use, or some useless ones like yellow pens that are difficult to read unless you have black paper.
In front of the drawers is a pile of books. All the other things I have mentioned are permanent fixtures of the desk. This pile of books has constantly changed over the past couple of years. They all have Post-It notes sticking out of them. They are books related to my PhD study which I have read, but which I still need to type up notes and quotes from. This will be the last pile of such books as I have reached the end of my reading phase, and once I go to Timor-Leste I will be writing up my thesis.
Next to the drawers, and in front of the corkboard is where my iPad sits when it is on my desk. It sits on top of its leather case. It obviously gets taken to other rooms and out of the house so doesn’t always sit there. At the moment it is sitting on top of a Business Activity Statement, the first for this year. It was due at the end of October, but when I did my taxes last week I had the accountant cancel my registration. My art business activities have become so minimal that there was no need to bother with the BAS four times a year. Lying near the BAS is a blue chapstick. I haven’t used it for ages, but it still has some lip balm inside it. I bought another one which I keep in my pocket, but this one wasn’t finished, so it ended up here. Perhaps I should throw it out.
In front of the wooden box and the pen containers is a selection of pens, markers and a highlighter. These are pens I use for writing notes, and many of them are pens that I don’t like using for my diary (fluorescent colours, for example), or that I have been using to write in the index of my diary. I also have a collection of notes written on scraps of paper for things like upcoming appointments, or phone numbers. There is also an old Lotto ticket that I’m pretty sure didn’t win anything, but I haven’t got around to officially checking at an agent. There is also a metal rule that I use when I need to cut things with a knife, or, more often, to hold books open as I type up notes.
In the front left corner is a pile of photocopies related to HSC English texts that my tutoring students are currently studying. I have students from different schools, and they all have different texts. Some I read if I am interested enough (this year I read Mrs. Dalloway, An Artist of the Floating World, The Hours, Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, plus, for other years, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Death of a Salesman. Some of these I was re-reading), but others I just read the précis and notes. In the opposite corner is a notebook in which I write notes related to my PhD, plus Post-It notes that I have used at least once, but which I will use again. There is also a copy of Dennis Cooper’s The Tenderness of the Wolves which I read last night and which I will add to
213 the list of books I have read in my current diary. I will then take it to the studio to shred and weave. I also usually keep the laptop I am writing this on in the front right hand corner when not in use.
Meeting with a Therapist
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Since I have time to kill before I go [to Timor-Leste], I have been planning to emulate a Perecian ‘projet’. Well, he wrote about going to a therapist, but he didn’t really write about what he said with the therapist. Anyway, as an experimental piece of writing about memory, I thought I would write about the time I went to a psychiatrist. For two sessions… I start with the memories I have of the sessions now, follow with my diary entries of the time, and finish with the transcript of the original recording. This is the first part: Meeting with Dr. Durham
The only reason that I know his name, or even remember the sessions, is because it’s written on the cover of the cassette tape. Would I have even remembered ever going if I hadn’t found the tape? It was after I had just returned to Australia from Japan. I left Japan because I was wondering where my life was going. I enjoyed the lifestyle I had there, but it was a dead-end teaching job with little challenge. A friend was living in Sydney and working for QANTAS, so I applied to become a flight attendant. I had some interviews, and I got to a group interview stage, but I never got a job. Luckily, because I’m sure I would have hated it. I could hardly stand being a waiter, let alone a waiter in the air, trapped with those people for hours and hours! I was really only
214 seduced by the idea of travelling places. Even that was a fantasy because although I love being in different places, I hate the travel involved in getting there.
Anyway, these were the sorts of work-related issues I was thinking about. I have always had a vexed relationship with work. Actually, it’s not work that I don’t like – heaven knows I’ve done way more on my PhD than I should have, or could have got away with – but I don’t like the social relationships involved in work. I like doing things, and being busy, but not having someone bossing me around and telling me what to do and how to do it. So I think social relations in regard to work was the main theme of the therapy sessions I had. I wasn’t so disabled by my issues to seek out professional mental health help; it was more that I had somehow heard that psychiatry was bulk- billed on Medicare, so I thought I would avail myself of some free therapy, having heard so much about it from cultural products like books and movies.
I have no memory of how I approached a doctor for a referral. Presumably the referring doctor gave me the name of Dr. Durham because I don’t even remember where his rooms were. I have a vague memory that he was old. No memory of the surroundings, or even what suburb. The only things I remember are him telling me in the second session that there was nothing wrong with me that required psychiatric help (that’s not to say he didn’t recommend some kind of psychological therapy – I’ll have to check the tapes; all it meant was that I had no underlying medical condition that required Medicare-funded psychiatric therapy), and a vague memory of me complaining about social platitudes. I guess I said I hated the kinds of false-sounding concerns that people have, or the social niceties that we go through in daily life.
I don’t remember how I explained my visit. Was it about work that I thought I was having problems, or was it social relations? Randomly the other day I was looking through a diary and read an entry that mentioned Dr. Durham, so presumably it was soon after the meetings. I wrote that he had said that if you work hard, people will notice and reward you for your efforts. I guess I had said something about working hard and being ignored because reward comes from social connections, not effort. I still believe that, which is my excuse for failing at an art career! I assume, then, that getting along with people was a large part of our talks.
Okay, that’s the background, and all that I can remember of the visits. I’ll now look in my diary of the time. Of course, a failure of my diary is that if I wanted to find out this info, I have no way of locating his name, or mention of therapy in an index. Unless I have a date to go on, I would have to search a couple of years’ worth of diaries to try to locate the entry. I do keep a brief index at the beginning of each volume with the important or unusual events from each day, so I wouldn’t need to read every entry, but it would still take a long while. I don’t even remember the year, but it was soon after I moved to Sydney, so 1995 or 1996.
Diary Entries
Actually it was 1995 and 1996 – December and January respectively. The index at the front for 6/12/95 reads ‘To medical clinic’, and the next day says, ‘Phoned Dr Durham’, so I guessed the first entry would have something about a referral.
Wednesday, December 6 [1995]
“Today I made 2 efforts to change my life. I phoned a psychiatrist! Read the last journal for reasons why. To get a Medicare rebate one needs a referral from a GP. The particular psychiatrist I called charges $170 an hour!!!!!! How can she possibly justify charging that much!?! The rebate is ~$109, so there’d still be $60 an hour to pay! …
215 [Tangentially -] Do I really want to join Qantas? Not really. I’d like the job, it’d be easy and fun, but not challenging, and not really what I want to do.”
Thursday, December 7
“I also phoned the psychiatrist and made an appointment – Dec 18 at 3:00. He only charges ~$128 an hour, and since Medicare covers ~$109, there’d only be $20 a session to pay. If s/one can’t afford that, he’ll just bulk bill! He sounds like a nice doctor!”
Monday, December 18
“I’ve decided that Coasting is going to be the title of the first volume of my memoirs! That’s what I’ve been doing all my life. It doesn’t look like it’s going to end soon! The word came to me during my chat w/- Dr. Durham. My first session of therapy. It wasn’t very therapeutic! We just talked about me for ~50 minutes. He asked questions and made notes (and pretended? to be interested). We covered work today. I guess it’ll be family next time. I mentioned my plans to be a flight attendant. He thought I might be too intelligent and not find it fulfilling. Damned right I’m intelligent!! Maybe that’s why I was rejected – the interviewers could see I’m far too intelligent to stay long! [More likely because I was too gay…] I also expressed dismay at the sort of people who get into positions of power. He said that if s/one is so good at his/her job, then they don’t have to engage in those kinds of practices [? Some segue missing from my thoughts here. Which practices?] Yes, but what am I good at? Nothing seems really to be worth the effort! These are issues to be worked out in coming appointments. The next one is Jan. 3. I phoned up later and made another one for January 9, because I hate having to wait 2 weeks! I had my tape recorder with me, but I left it in my bag. It was turned on, but I felt funny asking to have it on the desk. Oh, we sat at his desk. Like an interview, really. Or chatting to the principal. He’s really quite old, and I was a little disappointed at first. I was hoping it would be someone young and hip. He seems nice enough. The best part of it all is that he just bulk-billed Medicare, so I didn’t have to pay a cent!! I could go for years! Or at least until I get bored! I’m certainly not making a secret of it – I’ve told James, Ross and Charles, and mentioned it in a number of the letters I’ve been sending out. I might even use the material for some sort of art project. … Am I fooling myself to think I have a chance of a career in some creative field? (I mentioned writing, fine arts and fashion to Dr. Durham today).”
Wednesday, January 3 [1996]
“I then headed off for my therapy session. The fuck-up that I expected occurred. I knew I should’ve checked, but I was hoping for once s/one didn’t fuck up. It’s true, people do ruin everything! After I made my last appointment w/- the doctor (for today) I phoned up and made another one for next week. The woman there assumed I wanted to cancel today’s and go next week instead. I, however, wanted both! So today I went in, and sho’nuff I wasn’t booked in! She got me to wait because the doctor was due in. He phoned in and we re-scheduled for tomorrow. He had suggested to her that I be fit in between patients. As if! I want my full session, thank you very much! I went across to Ariel’s…” [I included the last sentence because I haven’t recorded where the doctor’s rooms were. Presumably on Oxford St, near the Verona Cinema.]
Thursday, January 4
“…and then went to the doctor’s offices in Verona St. [It’s funny that I was berating myself for not having recorded address details, and then I mention them in the next entry…] My appointment was for 5:00, but I didn’t go in until 5:30. I ate my dinner while I waited. The session only lasted ~45 minutes. We talked about work again. We also talked about those platitudes and social niceties that people use often, but which I tried
216 to avoid. In the end, the doctor dumped me!! It’s because it’s a medical practice, and most people are there for depression. … So, I have an appointment to see him again in a month. I guess he’s going to be no help! What do I try now? I just looked in the Yellow Pages, and there are dozens of hypnotherapists. I’ll do some phoning around tomorrow. Maybe.” [I did end up going to a hypnotherapist, for at least one session, but maybe more. I think we worked on interviews and confidence?]
It’s interesting that the only things that I still had a memory of before reading the diary where things that I had written in the diary. Is that because they were the things that were most memorable, or did I only remember them because I had written them in the diary? Why were they the only things I bothered to write down? Was that all I could recall only a few hours after the sessions? There is no mention in any of the brief index entries at the front of the diary for the next month mentioning Dr. Durham, or any cancelled appointments. There may be a brief mention somewhere, but I don’t have time to read a whole month’s worth of entries. I’ll save the tape transcription for another day as that will presumably take ages.
Cassette Recording
The cassette bears the title ‘With Dr. Durham 18/12/95 4/1/96’. As mentioned above, the tape recorder was in my bag, so there are audibility issues with the recording, especially the doctor’s voice.
18/12/95
[Sound of recorder being turned on, presumably surreptitiously]
D: …what the problem is… [Indistinct]
R: I think I had an existential crisis. [Indistinct] Well, It’s something that I’ve been thinking of for a while, but I’ve been living in Japan for 6 years, so I didn’t have anywhere to go, didn’t know anyone. And I just want to … become aware of umm, motives and reasons for the things I do and patterns that I have. I keep a diary so most of what I’ve done in the last, like, seven years I’m fairly conscious of, but before that I can’t remember a lot, and I kind of wonder why I do things, and…
D: How long have you been in Sydney now?
R: About two months. I just moved here.
D: You’ve been here before, have you?
R: I’ve never lived here. I’m from Perth
D: So you’re in Sydney two months, from Japan.
R: I lived there for 6½ years.
D: In your time in Japan did you keep up your contacts with people in Australia?
R: Yes, I have friends in Sydney, some I knew from Perth, some from Japan. And friends I have in Perth still. A lot of them have moved away, and some people don’t like writing very much, so…
217 D: Did you make return visits?
R: I did. I lived there maybe a year and a half, came back for a two-week holiday, another year and a half, two-week holiday. I stayed for four years, moved back to Perth and finished my degree. I was there for 8 months with my sister, and then went back to Japan for another 2½ years. And then moved here. Partly…, well, I say it’s because Sydney’s a large city, and I lived in Tokyo for so long that going back to Perth was hard, but part of it’s because my family is there, and I do like being away from them. I lived with my mother until I went to Japan, but I prefer being… I prefer having an excuse not to see them, and living a long way away is an excuse for that, so…
D: What were you doing in Japan?
R: I taught English. I majored in Japanese, my degree is in Asian Studies, so I wanted to go and learn more Japanese. I went, first of all, on a programme to teach English at junior high schools, and I stayed teaching English the whole time.
D: What made you decide to come back?
R: I had vague... not a longing to return to Australia… but I wasn’t… I was stagnating. I was enjoying what I was doing, I enjoyed the lifestyle, but it wasn’t going to change. Well, maybe I wasn’t going to let it change. I was quite comfortable to live there and just do that for however long I was going to stay there. I didn’t really have any plans to come back, but I had a friend who’s a flight attendant, and he said QANTAS was hiring, and another friend was going to do that, and I thought I wouldn’t mind doing that, since I haven’t found my vocation. That would be an interesting job. So I came back to do that. I wasn’t successful, so I’m going to apply again…
D: You didn’t get taken on?
R: I got to the final interview…
D: I suppose there are many more applicants…
R: So, I can apply again in six months. Then I thought, well… I was quite confident I would get in, so I went back to Japan, burnt my bridges. I’m doing a job now where I’m doing twice as much work for half the money. I don’t really regret it. I like living here, so far. I haven’t been here that long. I do feel that it is something new, a new chapter. It’s a little bit different, something different. I’m kind of going through this thing at the moment where I’m looking for new things to do. I’m hoping to do some volunteer work next year.
D: What work do you do now?
R: I’m working as a porter. A hotel porter. At Hotel Nikko. It’s okay, but I’m only casual.
D: Are you fluent in Japanese?
R: Yes, quite good.
D: That must be an asset…
R: Well, it is. This is the thing, my mother’s always saying to me, you can get a job at a company translating… But that’s not the kind of job I want to do. Of course, if you said, What is the kind of job you want to do? … I know what I don’t want to do, I’m just not sure what…
218 [Talk about work in the hotel, career opportunities. Working in concierge area, reception.]
R: I don’t know if I want… I don’t know what I want. Part of getting into QANTAS was that you need a language for that, and I’ve got Japanese. And I’ve thought of being a teacher, a Japanese teacher, but I don’t think I want to be a high school teacher in Australia.
D: I suppose …[indistinct] advantage compared with a Japanese teacher…
[Talk about native Japanese native speaker vs. non-native speaker as high school teachers; issues of discipline, fitting into the school. I suggested being Australian would be more of an advantage at high school, but at university it would be the opposite.]
D: Alright, you finished your degree…
R: In 1992.
D: [Indistinct]
R: [Indistinct] I don’t want to work in an office or something. I have this problem in that I like customer service, but I don’t really like people. I guess what I like about customer service work is that you have contact with people but not for very long. If they’re disagreeable, you don’t have to see them for very long, so that’s something that I like.
I am interested… I’m hoping to start a diploma… a certificate of fine arts next year… at TAFE… Sydney Technical College [NAS]. I’m hoping to do something in that… That’s not an employment option for the next ten years. I need a little more work on it.
Part of the problem is that anything I do want to do… I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, end of millennium thing… nothing really seems worth it. Maybe I’m just lazy; that’s a possibility. I have friends who are ballroom dancers and they worked all the time, put lots of work in and were very disciplined, and they became world champions. And that was good; it paid off. I can’t see anything being rewarding enough to put in that effort or work. This is a common problem, I think. There are certain things I want to do, and I know require x number of years of this particular course, or doing this training… Any kind of position you start off in… you have to put in the years – you have to but I don’t see why you have to – before you get the rewards. I just don’t understand that. Especially when I see people in positions… supposedly some kind of advanced position, or high position, well, I don’t really think much of this person, or his or her talents and abilities... why are they doing this? I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just sour grapes, because it’s something I haven’t got…
D: You’ve been teaching children or adults?
R: Both. A lot of junior high schools, and adults.
D: What kind of level of success would you say you had? Was it very rewarding? Did you get a lot of Japanese kids who improved…?
R: Nooo… I was an assistant English teacher, working at junior high school. The last couple of junior high schools I worked at there were maybe… 4 or 5 classes in each year. I would see them once a week, twice a week maybe, for fifty minutes. What kind of… So part of the programme was to have the teachers come into contact with foreign… native English speakers, hopefully to improve their initiative, but also to give them more ideas in the classroom to improve their techniques. They don’t really need all these native English speakers, there are thousands of them around the country now. To teach the language you don’t have to be fluent. You have to know certain
219 methods, and getting the students talking, speaking in certain ways. As long as you know what you’re teaching.
When I was learning French in high school, I didn’t know at the time, but my French teacher was doing his BA in French and he was a couple of years ahead of us. So I think technique is more important than fluency. I know native Japanese speakers who are dreadful teachers, boring, students aren’t interested…
[More talk about teaching students, and techniques of Japanese teachers in schools. Doctor suggesting it wasn’t rewarding.]
R: It was fun, they just weren’t getting a lot out of it.
D: You weren’t turning out people who were fluent.
R: The ones who were were the ones who were going to night, to after-school, and their parents were paying someone else.
D: What about the adults?
R: Again I was a little frustrated sometimes. I taught … the last one I worked at was company classes. I would go to a company… Some of them were there because they wanted to, they wanted to learn English, others had to because of their job. That was … good. Some of them did well. I would give homework and they wouldn’t do it; they were busy. They were working 40… 60 hours a week or something.
D: [Something long and rambling and indistinct] So the work itself must have been a bit… unrewarding…
R: It was. I wasn’t getting a lot out of it. I enjoyed the lifestyle I had, but it wasn’t going anywhere. For a lot of the students they learned in junior high school and high school, and what I was doing with the adults was stopping them from … backsliding, trying to keep up a level, rather than teaching them something, giving them practice, opportunities to speak English.
D: …teaching English to Japanese people here…
[Talking about being a teacher in Australia. Dr D. seems to think it would be more rewarding. I don’t really see students becoming fluent as rewarding for me. He’s making assumptions]
D: Alright, I suppose that would be rewarding. [Indistinct] Whether that would be your life’s work…
R: What would?
D: You didn’t get taken on by QANTAS. What do you think would be your disadvantage there?
R: They asked me one question about motivation, and as far as I understand, it was about a daily motivation, how do you get through the workday. That’s how they explained it further. Sometimes I don’t feel like going to work, but when I get to work I’m ‘on’, because that’s the job I’m doing. I think the man mentioned, well you become a flight attendant for the next five years, and not moving up because there’s a seniority system, how would you cope with that? He didn’t really give me a chance to answer. Oh, they think I’m totally goalless, some flighty thing… They don’t mind gay people obviously, they think they’re good flight attendants, but they don’t like too flamboyant, I was explaining some particular thing, I was telling a story and waving my hands
220 around, I noticed a woman looking at my hands, and I thought, oh god, and I kept my hands down. I don’t know if that counted against me. I wrote back and asked if I could get feedback from the interview, but they didn’t say why.
D: I think the questions they ask… [indistinct, but about job interviews and the questions they ask]
R: I’d already been told by a woman who was also living with the friends I was staying with, she was the head of the flight attendants at Ansett, so she was giving me all these questions that they used to ask at Ansett, and they asked the exact same questions. A friend I had in Japan who interviews said it’s not so much whether the answer is true or not, but how well can you answer a particular question, and how sincere you can sound while you’re spouting this bullshit, which they probably know is bullshit, but they want to see how well you can do it.
D: [Indistinct.] You may have let yourself down by being a little bit too frank, but…
R: That’s another thing about careers that I think of. My problem with the whole idea of having a career, moving up, and getting a job as a manager, you have to play this game to get ahead.
D: There are some careers where you don’t have to…
R: Which ones are they? Garbage collectors?
D: No, in the hotel…
R: No, that’s terrible. It’s bad there… politics… who likes you, who’s in a position of power to promote you, do they like you, you have the same politics as they do, or the same viewpoint as hotel management, or you’re friends. All that bullshit you have to put up with…
D: Okay… That’s like that whatever you do…
R: I know, that’s my problem. That’s why I don’t want to get into anything.
D: [Indistinct]
R: I know. One of my friends, a lecturer from Perth, he recently got an assistant professorship, and we were talking about the head of school, and the politics and backstabbing that goes on. That’s why I hate people…
D: Possible to [indistinct]… without being trampled underfoot.
R: How? Anyone I see in positions of power or responsibility, it’s always like they’ve sold their soul. It seems okay to do that when you are in that position, it’s okay to be nice, but to get there you have to be backstabbing everyone in your way. That’s how it seems to me.
D: There are two ways. …that way, or, to be so good at your job technically that the normal things don’t apply to you. There are people who don’t have anything to do with backstabbing or politics… no-one would think of doing anything to them because they are so obviously good at their job. [Indistinct] If you can do that you don’t have to worry about politics.
R: What job am I going to find that I like it so much…
221 D: [Indistinct. Questioning whether I would enjoy being a flight attendant as I’m “smarter than the average…”]
R: This is what I heard. It’s not that I’m lazy, but I like the lifestyle, then I would have a lot of time off, and I could pursue these other interests that I have. Two conflicting things of having time to do the things I want to do, and having a career that I’d like to do.
D: Tell me about your recreational interests.
R: I’m interested in art. That’s something that’s recently become activated. Well, no, I was into writing for a while, that was my last phase, now I’m starting to get interested in painting again. And photography. I’m a very cyclical person, so it was a writing phase for a while, now I’m getting back into painting again.
D: You paint, what sort of painting?
R: At this stage I want to go to this course. My visions are more… advanced than my actual skill to attain the visions that I have. I work a lot with existing media. I want to develop more drawing skills. I work a lot with text, a lot of flat images because I don’t know techniques for bringing up dimension. A lot of collage effect, not necessarily a straight collage, very postmodern, very 90s. I just joined the MCA, became a member, so I can go there a lot. I read a lot, I like reading.
D: What sorts of things do you read?
R: I read all sorts of stuff. One of the reasons I decide to pursue… to see a psychiatrist. I just finished reading, it’s actually a terrible book. What’s his name? M. Scott Peck. People of the Lie. Do you know that book? Do you know him? He wrote The Road Less Travelled. So this book was called People of the Lie: Something to Heal Evil, Approach to Human Evil, or something like that. I didn’t think it was very well written. A lot of case histories of patients of his, he’s a psychiatrist. Patients… these people were evil, but I didn’t agree with him. A lot of religion. He’s unashamedly, he pointed out in the beginning, after a long search of different religions, he’s come out as a Christian. He believes in God and Jesus, blah, blah. That was enough to turn me off him for a start. He was influenced by Christianity and the devil and good and evil and all that kind of thing, but it did make me think about a number of things. Actually one thing he said which applied to me, I didn’t that I’m evil or anything, but I could be, but evil people don’t think they’re evil, although they’re lying to themselves… What was it that struck me? Will… unsublimated will. Not sublimated to a higher cause, whether it’s God, or some value like love, or family, leads to evil. It was about selfishness as well. I thought, well, what’s wrong with that? That describes me to a ‘T’. Not willing to submit to anything.
D: [Indistinct… philosophy… he’s done his homework… Credential… Before you say what should be the case, there is what is the case…]
R: He did mention that a lot of psychiatrists don’t see it, talking more in terms of mental illness. But in his experience, and what he has read, and studies, he sees it more in terms of evil rather than just some biological problem, or mental illness. There are some cases where it’s obviously a case of mental illness, and some type of schizophrenia that he talked about, but he’s saying that these people were clearly not in that case, from what he’s seeing it’s a totally different case. I didn’t buy it myself, but anyway, so that’s one thing I’ve been reading.
222 I read something by Larry Kramer. He’s an AIDS activist, he also wrote screenplays, and whatever. One of his essays he mentioned evil and mentioned this book which was in my bookcase, so I thought I’d read that. Also Fromme wrote about evil.
D: Well, he was a psychoanalyst, and no-one goes for that anymore.
R: And Hannah Arendt her studies about the Holocaust. He mentioned all these things, and it was interesting. There are lots of things I want to read, but there are only so many hours in a lifetime.
D: You have plenty of time to read.
R: I’m sure I do. I don’t have a TV so I don’t spend a lot of time sitting in front of the TV for hours on end. I’m working casually, about 30-36 hours a week, so I have time. Even if I didn’t I would still be reading a lot. I like to read.
R: I had a liver function test the other day, and a kidney function test. I was a bit [indistinct] because I’m vegetarian, so the doctor said…
D: You’re vegetarian? Very strict?
R: I once was, in an attempt of convincing myself I had control over my life. I was macrobiotic for a while, I was very strict. Oh god, I was insane, like a Jesus freak or something. I had theories about religion and diet, I thought they were about control. I didn’t have sugar, I still don’t have much sugar, no eggs, fish, milk, no dairy. I cooked a lot. [More talk about what specifically I eat.] I do it for health, not for any ethical considerations, not concern about killing animals.
[Doctor concerned about me not eating fish. Missing out on vitamin B12, for example]
[The doctor often seemed to be struggling to find things to talk about, given I clearly didn’t have any major problems.]
D: So your general health? You feel well? Sleeping well?
R: Oh, I drop off… I work shift work, as well, so a lot of the time I have to work from 4:30 in the morning, have to get to bed at 8:00. A lot of people talk about, the other people who work there, say they go to bed at 8:00, and can’t sleep until 11:00. I used to have a lot of trouble – and this might have been psychosomatic – when I eat sugar, and I don’t have any caffeine, I don’t eat chocolate, or drink coffee or tea, so when I do eat chocolate, the next day I have more trouble getting up. It affects my sleep patterns. I think when I have a lot of sugar, so could be the caffeine or the theobromine in the chocolate, that affects me more. I don’t have any caffeine, so I don’t have any sleep problems.
D: Now, I suppose what you’re telling me is an existential problem, not a medical one.
R: Is there a cure? *laughter*
D: By definition not. [Something about being a medical doctor, medical/health issues affecting people] I think I probably should see you again, and talk about this… look after yourself… intrigues and, but you have to be good at something… [harking back to our earlier workplace conversation]
R: That’s the trouble again, finding out what my…
D: What were your best subjects at school?
223 R: Unfortunately in the last couple of years of school I didn’t really have… my marks dropped quite dramatically, from the top of the class, to down the bottom.
D: For a fairly obvious reason?
R: Because I didn’t study. Comes back to the laziness. Part of the problem was I chose subjects which were the supposedly, good student subjects, intellectual subjects, the maths, two maths subjects, physics and chemistry, that my sister had done, or was doing, and the bright students did those, but they’re not really my thing. I don’t see myself as a maths person. I did Literature and History. So if I had the chance again I would certainly choose different subjects. Part of it was I really wasn’t interested in them, partly that I had other things to do than study. Reading a lot, and whatever. I didn’t really do well in any of them. Fortunately I did well enough because they were the harder subjects, they skew the results a bit, so I ended up with good results to get into university. And what I did there, I did history and literature units, languages. I enjoyed those. It wasn’t until my last semester, after I’d been in Japan for four years that I really worked a lot harder. The first couple of years I was cruising a lot. That seems to be my state in life up to now – cruising. After I’d been in Japan I came back and I studied a lot more, did a lot more work.
D: Asian Studies you did. [Indistinct] In a way you have a conflicting attitude, you say you don’t want to be in one of these professions where you have to fight [indistinct] but you don’t seem to care if you don’t…
R: That is exactly my problem…
D: …preserve your innocence… being so good at something that a path would be clear for you people would want you to… take promotion because they would want the work to be done well.
R: Things that I am interested in… If someone said, What is your ideal job, what would you do? Something creative, I am interested in writing, art, fashion. There is a lot of work to develop skills, and there is a lot of competition. But then I think, and maybe I think I don’t deserve it, consciously or not, I think, okay, yes I could do this and, I see other people and I think I can do better than that, but I think is it worthwhile? There are so many people doing that, especially writing, what can I write, yes, I can write things that people find interesting, but what hasn’t been written already? What else can I write? There are millions of books published…
D: Successful writers discover [indistinct] carefully what hasn’t been done... hard to get into. You only have a readership [indistinct]…
R: And a lot of readership wants things that are very familiar with anyway.
D: But if you want to be a serious writer [indistinct] well then you have to [indistinct]
R: I’m already doing that. I’m used to that.
D: [indistinct] That shouldn’t stop you from doing them.
R: I have trouble with actually attempting things, maybe because I do think, oh well, maybe I won’t succeed, or fear of success?
D: [indistinct] Make another appointment and [indistinct] What did your father do?
R: Before he dropped out and became a bum? He worked in a bank. My whole family worked in a bank. The Commonwealth Bank. So now he… I don’t know what he does. Unemployed. On Disability, or something. I don’t talk to him very much. There’s a bit of
224 hostility, but I’m not sure why. I’ve come over the years to dislike him, but I’m not sure why. Because I’ve disliked him for so long, it’s hard to go back on an opinion… My mother I kind of think I may not like, but I feel guilty about not liking her. I don’t not like her but… I’m not sure. So I don’t have any career to aspire to in my family. Both my sisters work in banks at the moment. My mother works in an office.
4/1/95
[I must have asked if I could put the tape on the desk because the firsts words are:]
R: …it’s just, you know, for posterity.
D: How are things going?
R: Quite well. I guess. I’ve been thinking about what you were saying about work. Just, a couple of things happened at work, and one way of advancing in an organisation is that you’re so good at your job that you don’t have to worry about all the other little things that go on. But I think in some cases, particularly at the hotel where I’m working, a lot of it is like a popularity contest. One guy said he spoke to the chief concierge about his future at the hotel, and he said, the message was you’re not going to advance any further, and if you want a reference for another job somewhere, I’ll give you one. I’m not sure why – he’s good at his job, as good as any of the others there. From what I can tell, he’s quite effeminate, and to advance… the people who are bell captains already are butch sorts, so that may be the main reason why he doesn’t advance at all.
D: That would presumably be a bit of local culture, peculiar to that particular hotel.
R: I guess it depends on whatever field you’re in.
D: Yes, but even the different hotels…
R: That’s true; one I used to work in, I think they were all gay; the general manager was gay.
D: That’s what I mean by it might be purely local… And of course it may not be that at all; the boss has determined that he just doesn’t have the brains, perhaps, to be in that position.
R: Actually, he was saying, and I don’t think it was sour grapes at all, about one of the bell captains, the only reason he’s a bell captain is because of his size, he’s big and broad, so he looks like someone who should be in authority. And from his performance, compared to the other bell captains, I think it must be something other than just his performance which has got him there.
My position is rather shaky. I had a shift on the valet… valet parking, but I was so bad at parking they took me off, so he suggested I have driving lessons. Well, parking lessons.
I wonder about people’s sincerity sometimes, especially in management positions. He was saying to me, we need to work on this; we’re not just going to get rid of you because of this. In the interview I saw something there, you have something to contribute. I wonder when people say this whether they’re being sincere, or whether they’re just saying it to try and … make you feel comfortable or something.
D: Sincerity, in a sense of meaning what you say, literally, isn’t always a good thing. Where there is a convention to say certain sorts of things, then the words are said without any intention to deceive, and with an understanding that the person is not
225 deceived. I’m saying this because it’s the usual thing to say, and it might, taken literally sound a lot better than what is really intended. Supposedly you’re at a dinner party, and it’s a disaster. Someone gets drunk, and there’s unseemly… and so on. So, it’s a disastrous evening; when you’re leaving, you still say to the hostess, don’t you, thank you, I had a lovely time. Now, she knows it’s not true, you’re not deceiving her, you are merely reassuring her, as the convention…
R: Platitudes…
D: No, it’s not platitudes. Hardly anything we say is empty of meaning, it nearly always has a meaning, if not what the words mean literally; it has a conventional meaning, to convey something. Don’t be too worried about the disaster, I’ll come again. If you were completely frank, and as you were leaving said thank you very much, but I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy myself, she would get the message that it must have been much worse than it was, because she would expect the conventional, not to be taken literally, courtesy, if she doesn’t get that then it must have been even worse than I thought.
R: I would never do that anyway. It depends on who the person is. If you were a friend I would say that, God! That was a complete disaster. I can’t bring myself to say those things, if I don’t believe it. I would say, thank you, thank you for inviting me or something, I wouldn’t say it was a wonderful time, if I didn’t enjoy it.
D: You don’t have to lay it on too thick. If you try to be too scrupulously truthful, you run the risk of conveying, or misleading people because there are certain expressions in common use which don’t mean exactly what they say and aren’t taken to mean what they say; they are taken as courtesies, of the conventional kind. For there to be an occasion to omit the courtesies can be really bad. Similarly people in management positions are told that they should show approval and so on to members of staff where they possibly can. In other words where it isn’t… where they don’t deserve a rocket, but they get a congratulatory phrase, not a fulsome one perhaps, but one which shows they are still in the running. So it’s not really insincere, it’s the use of a conventional system, token statements, and you depart from it at your peril. If you use the language entirely free of conventional, what you call platitudes, which really are conventional…
R: Niceties…
D: Then you are likely to give offence when you don’t need to. And also mislead people.
R: What happens if you were the host and it was a complete disaster, and someone said I had a lovely time, you know it was a disaster…
D: It depends how well I knew them. I mean if it were a very old friend, I would probably not expect him to say anything. Better luck next time, or something like that. If it were someone I met for the first time, I really wouldn’t wish them to counsel me…
R: …on how to conduct a successful party…
D: Right, I’d expect them to simply make some courteous remark, and that would be that. I wouldn’t be deceived. And I wouldn’t think they were being insincere. I would think they were just being polite. That’s exactly what they should be at that level of familiarity. In this job you say you think your position is a little bit shaky…
R: Oh, I don’t think it is. I get disillusioned at every turn. [Explaining how the bags are delivered to the rooms in the hotel.] Another porter was on the phone to one of the bell captains, and he came out and said, Rodney, can you take this trolley up – you know, full of bags – and I’m going to time you, but Han told me not to tell you that I was timing
226 you, because he’s heard that you’re slow delivering your trolleys. Then I thought, a) someone is saying that I’m slow with the trolleys, but the fact that someone has been saying that to other porters, and to the bell captains, oh, Rodney is really slow, or whatever they’ve said, and so instantly I was looking at everyone else to see, maybe I’m slow, okay I was, I kind of go at a leisurely pace, because there’s no real reason to rush, but I know people deliver the bags, sit and watch the TV a bit, or go down to the cafeteria for ten minutes, then come down and say can I go on my break, then go again. Little transgressions like this and instantly listing in my mind other people’s performances, and thinking is it me? Am I really that slow? Or is it a personality thing? Getting paranoid. I instantly felt on the attack, being attacked. It made me feel uncomfortable. And the fact that it was secret, we’re timing him, but we don’t want him to know that he’s being timed.
D: [Indistinct]
R: Oh, he’s nice. He’s one of the ones I think… there are people who like me and people who don’t like me.
D: Let me understand the slowness of the trolley better.
[Describing loading bags on the trolleys from buses, guests not there. Leaving bags in the room for when guests arrive. Porters go up and distribute bags by letting themselves into rooms. R thinking about times of other people, and describing different approaches to the work – some people deliver the bags quickly then go downstairs and chat with their friends.]
D: The manager may also be secretly timing them. As staff are engaged in casual and social chit chat.
R: That’s in a corridor downstairs, and the bell captains are upstairs. They usually don’t know what’s going on, unless they’re being informed.
D: I find it difficult to imagine why you would be conspicuously slow. You say you proceed at a leisurely pace, but I don’t imagine the speed of the trolley is critical in this matter.
[More boring talk about this trolley business! Unloading time more than pushing time. R talking about techniques that people have for streamlining the business.]
D: There is another thing to be said about this matter of timing. It may not be really an aggressive step as you suppose because under modern conditions of employment, if people were to be sacked, the manager has to have a record, starting way back, so in a way, almost everybody who is taken on new has to have performance documented, by the staff, in case they want to sack him later. Because he makes just one blunder after six months, you can’t sack him for that; he hasn’t been warned, so they have to insure themselves against the possibility that someone will turn out badly by having enough on him to sack him if that turns out to be necessary. It doesn’t mean they’re going to use it all, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I might get worried when they start giving you actual warnings. If we haven’t got it on record that you’ve been warned, then forget it, it wouldn’t get past the industrial tribunal. Were you thinking perhaps of making a career in the hotel industry?
R: No, I’m not, but that doesn’t mean I want to be fired.
D: [Indistinct]
227 R: I seem to have a good rapport with the chief concierge, although I don’t particularly like him that much. I thought in the beginning that he didn’t like me. Actually it’s another case of conventional phrases that people use for social cohesion; I came into the locker room one day just before he was starting, and I said, Oh, Jim, hi. I just saw… and I was going to ask him a question, and he said, yes I’m fine thankyou how are you. I said, excuse me? He said, I’m fine, thank you; I thought you might just want to hello, or something like that. It was just bizarre; I thought I have to say, Hello, Jim, how are you today? every time I saw him. It instantly set me on edge. I thought he’s in a bad mood, or he doesn’t like me or something. Then he did that some other time. Then last week, I was at the bell desk, he came up, didn’t greet me, so I said, I’m fine thank you. How are you, Jim? He laughed, thought it was funny. I don’t know if it’s his personality, if he likes to be faux-friendly.
D: I think you may be just a bit over-attentive to nuances of other people. I don’t mean to draw conclusions. Seriously, have you thought some more about what you are going to do?
R: I am quite set on this Qantas thing because of the time it would give me, free time to do the things I want to do. I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned with work anyway; I’d rather just have a job where I can have free time to do the things I enjoy doing, and a job I enjoy…
D: When you’re young it doesn’t seem to matter what job you do, to get money and have leisure time, but as you get older I think you could do better than being a flight attendant, I’m not saying it’s not a good thing to do, but I don’t know that there’s much promotion beyond that…
D: [Indistinct]
R: It’s all hierarchy, a seniority system, you get in, it might take seven years to become senior…
D: And the prospect of travelling to lots of different countries is obviously attractive, but they tell me you soon get sick of it. As it happens there is a Japanese doctor, and I asked her about the prospects of someone with your background teaching English to local Japanese people, and she said very good, that there would be plenty of…
R: I was looking at the language section of the yellow pages for me to study Japanese, and there quite a lot of English teaching places.
D: I’m sure there are, but I think even on your own, private tutoring… As to improving your Japanese I doubt there are very many people in Sydney who [indistinct]. If you want to speak better Japanese could be by mixing with Japanese people…
R: I don’t have enough experience with other cultures, but obviously there are a lot of people from other cultures learning English here, but a lot of Japanese who do come here, for a lot of them it’s like a holiday, and they are not as serious about studying as they were in Japan. More so in Japan, from what I’ve heard from other people – I have a friend who teaches Danish in Denmark - the Japanese have a lot invested in appearances. So, yes, I’m in Australia studying English, it doesn’t matter how much English I learn, the fact is I’m in Australia learning English.
D: That would apply more to those who came here actually to do a course, and who might be rather [indistinct], I’m thinking of people resident here, wives, say, of Japanese executives who are posted here, who are isolated from contact with other English-speaking people, I mean there husband is not going to practice with them… She knows other Japanese wives, but doesn’t get any English. And people who may
228 be here for a long time, may be more mature, and more motivated. I don’t just mean only wives, Japanese men who are posted here whose English… [Indistinct] Whether you want to make a lifetime out of it is beside the question, but if you persevere with your Japanese studies, you may find your way into some administrative or service job or something.
[Turns into a career advice session, rather than dealing with the clearly expressed antisocial and misanthropic tendencies I clearly have. Why am I like that?]
[More talk about the hotel I worked in, about the Japanese people in senior positions, but not having many Japanese speakers on staff. About the Nikko Hotel Potts Point which changed names, later became apartments.]
D: I think there are plenty of niches for people with your qualifications. Now, as this is a medical environment here, I have to consider whether your problem really is a medical one. I don’t really think it is. I mean, you don’t think there’s anything really wrong with you, do you. You have a few rough edges. You’re a little bit sharp-tongued and impulsive, perhaps…
R: Is that not a medical condition? Tourette’s Syndrome?
[Long pause. Doctor writing something?]
D: What sort of people do you know here in Sydney?
R: Most of the friends I have are people I know I knew from elsewhere. The three people I see or speak to quite regularly, one I knew from Japan, one I knew from Perth, and one I met here in Sydney, and a couple of other people that… another person from Japan, one from Perth. They’re the people I know. I don’t really feel like I’m missing out on people.
R: So, what’s our future? What’s our future together, doctor?
D: Well, I honestly don’t think I…
R: We don’t have one. I’m being rejected by you! *laughs*
[Doctor quiet as he writes something, a referral to another doctor]
Items that have gone from my life, but which don’t appear in any other diary, list, or inventory
Coming up with items to add to this list was difficult because the mnemonic trigger of most objects has disappeared, so the ability to keep them in memory has no anchor. These are all items from my childhood, which is otherwise little represented in Geniza. They are items which I owned, but which have been lost, disposed of, or died.
1. A Toy Camera
I have only a vague recollection of this item. It may have been a water-shooting camera, I don’t remember where it came from, or how long I had it; all I remember is how it was lost. I was walking in our neighbourhood, in Morley, Perth. I may have been heading to the local shops, which were up the main street, and along another road (children travelled on their own much more when I was a child!). I think I was maybe ten years old? Eleven? I had some vague anxiety about proverbial “older boys,” but whether they were real or not, I can’t say at this time. I don’t have any memories of
229 being bullied or harassed, and this is the only incident I have a memory of where they were a potential threat (perhaps I saw them along the street I was to travel?). I was worried that these real or imagined boys were going to steal my camera, so I decided to bury it in the sand under a telephone/electricity pole, thinking that I would dig it up on my way home from the shop. I recall that at some later point (the same day? Another day?) I remembered that I had buried the camera, but forgotten to dig it up again, so I went back to the pole on the corner, but there was no sign of the camera.
2. Pet Canary
This is the item mentioned above which died. It was a family pet, and not mine in particular. I think it was, unimaginatively, called Tweety Bird. I don’t know how long canaries live, and I can’t say how long we had it. I think the cage sat in the laundry most of the time. For some reason, the cage, with the canary in it, was placed on top of a fridge which was in the garage. The garage was really just a large storage shed, with lots of boxes which were fun to rummage through; I think this is where my love of rummaging through archives, or at least boxes or files of possessions, was born. At some later point, after the canary was put in the garage, it was found (by me?) to be dead. It may have been the heat, or it may have been the fact that no-one had filled up its water bowl, but it was irrevocably dead.
3. Piece of Leather/Vinyl
This may be the earliest of these memories. When I was in grade 2 of primary school (perhaps at the end of the year, but I would have been six years old) my teacher (Mrs. Pierce?) was getting rid of some things (from her desk?). I chose a square/rectangle of brown leather or vinyl, folded in half; I thought it could perhaps be made into a pencil case. This is my earliest memory of acquiring an object “because it might come in handy one day”! I never made it into a pencil case, but I did own it until the end of high school, or maybe even later. I don’t recall throwing it out, but I do remember having it when I lived in the suburb of Dianella with my mother and older sister, and my storage area was a linen closet in the hall! I would occasionally go through my treasures, looking at objects and thinking about them, and recalling incidents about them (which may be the genesis of this current research). I obviously at some point decided I would never use this piece of material, and probably just threw it in the garbage.
4. Silver Ingot
This is the only piece of jewellery I can remember from my childhood (there was a brief period in my twenties when I took to wearing brooches). I think I got this as a birthday present, but I don’t recall if it was something I asked for. It was a small silver ingot on a chain. I can’t say how long I owned it, but I know I was in high school, and I think it was probably a period of only a few months. It was year 8 or year 9; for sport we went sailing on the Swan River (my school was on the river, but we went to South Perth for this, not near our school). I couldn’t say if they were sailboats, or catamarans – it’s all rather hazy. The incident, as far as I recall, involved me getting changed to go in the water, and again, once we had finished. I think (who knows if this is accurate) that I took the chain and ingot off so as not to lose them. As with the camera incident, by the time I got out of the water I had forgotten about the ingot. I don’t know if it fell out of my clothes, or if it was stolen, but I didn’t even realise it was gone until later that day, or the following day. As a child was I overly worried about losing things, so I tried to prevent loss, but through poor memory and carelessness ended up losing them anyway?
230 5. David Essex T-shirt
David Essex, for those under forty-five, okay, fifty, was a British pop star from the 1970s (and ‘80s?) He was also an actor, appearing in (I think) the London original cast of Evita, as Che, and is the voice of the soldier in Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds. For the Countdown-watching youth of the 1970s, he was probably well known. He came to Perth for a concert, and I went with my two sisters. This was possibly in 1976, maybe 1977; I was still in primary school. We all had T-shirts made which had David Essex written across them in flock letters. I have a feeling that mine was dark blue lettering on a light blue shirt. I also remember that we were driven to the Entertainment Centre (was it even built then? Was it a different venue?) and dropped off by my mother; I went to a concert when I was ten or eleven years old with my two sisters, who were one year, and three years older than I was. That seems wildly irresponsible to me now! It was the ‘70s – things were more relaxed then! I have no memories of the T-shirt after that day, but presumably it would have failed to fit for long, and possibly got put in a charity clothes bin.
6. Sticky-tape “Strap”
This is a memory from year 8 or 9 in high school, so around 1980. I went to a Christian Brothers school, and those were the days when corporal punishment was still a thing. The brothers all had thick leather straps, and weren’t afraid to use them. I wonder what craftsman made these straps, for decades, unconcerned at the generations of boys whose hands (or bottoms) were touched by their handicraft. In the first couple of years of high school my cohort regularly got strapped on the hands (“six of the best”), often for minor infractions like talking. Because of some sort of masochistic boyhood bravado, we often made our own straps, which we would test other boys with, to see how much pain they (and we?) could stand. The most effective one I made was out of a half-used roll of sticky tape, squashed flat, and taped around with more tape. It made a thick plastic strap, which produced quite a sting on the hands, as we strapped each other with glee. Year 9 students, particularly boys, are quite perverse, so I imagine this didn’t last beyond that school year. The strap was probably consigned to the bin without a second glance.
7. Match-book and Coaster Collections
For some years as a child, perhaps into my teenage years, I collected (or at least received and owned) match-books and coasters. I’m not sure that I was particularly interested in either, and I think it was a parent-generated hobby, but I had them for about ten years. I think what they had in common was that you got them from bars, and other drinking establishments, which I think my father favoured. My recollection is that I would get “souvenirs” when they came back from holidays, or even if they went out for dinner with friends. I never really did anything with them, other than store them in boxes. I think as I got older I did claim some coasters when I would go to a bar with my parents, but more from habit than interest. I suspect I threw these out when I moved to Japan, if not before.
8. Our Magnificent Wildlife
This was a glossy book about animals in the wild that I owned for probably fifteen years. I remember an interesting article in it about zoos of the future, which would do away with cages, and have moats and pits to keep the animals enclosed, a prediction which came to pass. This was probably a birthday present (I was always bookish). I think I kept it until going to Japan, or maybe it got stored at my mother’s place with all my other stuff until I came back to Australia. It may have gone to Sydney with me, too. I think it probably ended up at a charity, or secondhand bookstore. The reason I
231 remember it specifically, given that I’ve owned hundreds of books over the years, is that I remember waking up when I was 6 or 7, and sitting with my mother crying (me, not my mother); she asked what the problem was, but I wouldn’t say. I was sad because I had read that tigers were going extinct, and I realised, even then, that that was a really stupid reason to be crying, so I kept it to myself!
232 Everything in my Bathroom
233
234
235 Thursday, September 25, 2014
I’m going to write up notes from a collection of papers stapled together from Japan days. Probably 1989, but undated. I’ve kept them for years, probably as an example of my wild imagination! Look how creative I am! Now I’m planning to shred them and weave them for my PhD archive [#227], but I thought they might be interesting to preserve. Look how creative I am! It’s the same impulse, but I’m just making it neater. Which rather takes away from the character of the documents, surely an important point in my PhD. Will a typed-up list reflect the same sort of identity? It shows how I create something with scraps of paper, move to tidy it up, then get rid of the whole thing! I should mention that this was a plan for a performance piece, or a performance evening, I guess. I’m not sure who the intended audience would be. This was clearly a Dada phase I was going through, although it actually predated, I think, major interest I had in Dada. Maybe it was just a nascent anarchistic, absurdist phase which didn’t go anywhere.
First there is a piece of newspaper glued to the paper. No referencing information. It reads:
Step 1 – The foreign trainee will be locked in a small room with a group of Japanese, who will fire off incessant and repetitive questions such as, “Where are you from? What is your shoe size? Can you use chopsticks?” Bear in mind that these people will all be graduates from various hell-training programs and so will be much more aggressive and louder than the average, shy Japanese. To instill greater toughness in the trainee, the room will be excessively overheated. It will be lighted with several hundred glaring fluorescent fixtures.
I think this is from a meeting of English teachers I went to while living in Japan, and each teacher had to write some tips or techniques for new teachers; this was obviously someone’s idea of a joke.
There is a very light sketch of what looks like a starfish shape and underneath it says “Stretchy black or white material, cocoon like.” This would be a costume I would wear. Or other performers.
“Me rolling around on stage inside the material. Other actors come on + off stage and read things, use chairs and walk around. Music/talking on tape in the background.”
“Shave my head.”
“Black clothes w/- a chunk of tulle attached [with a sketch of such a costume] (leave stage one by one and leave tulle on stage)” I wonder if my diary of the period could add info, if I could find the right section. It sounds very much like a Dada performance. I think the rolling around in this material was inspired by a woman I saw on the street in a garbage bag who slowly climbed out of it. I assume she was a street performer. Or an art student.
Page 2
“TTOTB (TOB)” I think this refers to The Theatre of the Bewildered! I think that was the title of the performance evening.
“Players come on stage one by one. Move around at will – walking, slipping, turning, rolling on floor. Voice over – The Voice of the Bewildered: ‘This is a piece without music or voice. Give your ears a rest. Let your eyes do the walking. Take in the varied movements of the human body – the suppleness, the fluidity, the stops and starts.
236 Marvel in this thing called life. Many people come to the theatre expecting a slice of life – something to brighten up their own dull existence. But life presented in the theatre is not real, it is fantasy of the worst kind. Whose life has a simple beginning middle or end? Life is more like a bad soap opera w/- its twists and turns, surprise occurrences, incestuous relations, love lost and gained, fortunes found and made and wasted, deceit, greed envy lust anger violence treachery sex…
“The philosophy of the Theatre of the Bewildered is to present life as it really is, w/- no meaning, no order, no laws, no constancy, no rhyme, no reason, no reward for virtue, no punishment for vice. Enjoyment is yours for the taking you only need recognise it, bask in it, wallow in absolute pleasure. Or don’t. See if we care. Exercise your right to protest. Walk out. Walk up on stage. Heckle from your seat. The only meaning is that which you bring. So sit back, give your eyes a rest, and let your eyes do the walking.” [I assume that was meant to read ‘ears do the walking’? Or give your ears a rest?]
“SILENCE. Players continue for 30 seconds or so, then leave one by one. (Movements can include all rolling across the stage at the same time.)”
Wow, this is my Futurist/Dadaist theatrical manifesto! Maybe I was reading about Happenings at the time. I can imagine German audiences in the 60s and 70s being subjected to this sort of thing.
Page 3
“Tape playing of music and voices from CDs or recorded from people on the street.” I thought our ears were getting a rest? I think these are ideas written down at different times and randomly stapled together.
“Players come on stage w/- chairs and sit down. Individually they stand up, move location or position and sit down again.”
“Lights on stage, silence until audience starts to get restless. One player screams, long and loud, then runs onto stage and collapses after a “ham death”. Wait a while longer, then repeat until all players are lying on stage.”
“All players come on stage, run around in a circle, do “jan-ken” [paper, rock, scissors]. the winner moves to the front and starts a monologue. The others continue to run around, do jan-ken again, player 2 comes to the front and starts a speech. Player 1 walks around the stage. Continue until all players are walking around saying his/her own speech. Performance ends when loud blast of music signals all players to collapse on stage.”
Page 4
THE VOICE OF THE BEWILDERED
SUGAR AND SPICE AND ALL THINGS NICE
LOST IN SPACE
Deadly Orchids Poisoned to Perfection.
THE QUALITY OR STATE OF BEING REAL
REAL PRESENCE
[I’ve no idea what any of these are. Possible titles? Lines to be read out?]
237 At the bottom of the page, after a gap: “Would you marry me if I weren’t a virgin?”
Page 5
“I think… no, I am positive, that you are the most unattractive man I have ever met in my entire life. In the short time we’ve been together you have demonstrated every loathsome characteristic of the male personality and even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, you’re morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humor and you smell. You’re not even interesting enough to make me sick.” This is a quote from The Witches of Eastwick. Cher’s character is talking to Darryl van Horn.
“Medieval morality.” A random quote… I’m not sure how these relate to the performance evening. Random sayings that the performers might say?
Page 6
“End up with all the chairs at the front of the stage w/- all the players talking. Main player (me) suddenly spasms and falls to the floor and jerks around, then is still. Then the other players walk into the audience continuing their monologues.”
“Have a pile of magazines on the stage which I can throw around or kick or something.”
“Curtain opens to black stage, tape starts, lights slowly come up to reveal “thing” on stage – me in a black garbage bag.” Aah! This is directly stolen from the street performer. There is a photograph in a volume of my journal.
Page 7
Oh, you speak French Th. Dolby
Fuck me God Madonna I have a reservation! What’re you gonna do? Ladies w/- an attitude
Slave to the Rhythm G. Jones
Paris, Texas
Liza w/- a Z Liza
Laurie Anderson
What did you say? Babs
What is love? Deee-lite
[I think this is a list of things to have on a tape to play, or influences of style.]
Page 8
[Blank]
Page 9
238 “I do crazy things to my mother at night.”
“Chairs clever enough to laugh increase exponentially.”
“Recording fate for future accountants yields negative expectations.”
“Replace the love I gave you with a new Frigidaire.”
[Surrealist catch phrases?]
Page 10
“Push when you can for you may not get another chance.”
“Don’t say it – it might have been said before.”
“Schoolgirl lust breeds problems for future generations.”
“The twin problems of lust and greed can only be conquered [?] w/- a lush bay window.”
“Big eyes burning bright Does nothing to relieve my plight.”
Page 11 + 12
“Love is like a frightened bird beating at the window panes of my mind.”
“Chocolate stains on my pants remind me of you.”
“Organ meats are a thing of the past.”
“Radioactive snails claw at my brain.”
“Hate eats at the enamel of my cabbage patch.”
“Gabardine gaiety reflects a troubled mind.”
“Stinking turnips make life so nice.”
“Top hats flying from a beaten tourist.”
“Singing relieves the burdens of rectal fuzz.”
“Tomorrow brings galactic handicraft haphazardly.”
The text is all written on scrap paper. It’s smaller than A4. Was it a particularly Japanese paper size? No, some of it was written on lined paper which I had in Perth because it has famous people’s dates of birth and death on it. ‘I’ and ‘J’ are here. How much time did I spend as a teenager copying this info out? And why? And what happened to the other letters of the alphabet?
For ‘I’ (back of page 1) I have:
Henrik Ibsen Mar 20, 1828 – May 23, 1906 St Ignatius of Loyola Dec 24, 1491 – Jul 31, 1556 Christopher Isherwood Aug 26, 1904 – [No death date – was he still alive? He died Jan 4, 1986] Ivan the Terrible – Mar 18, 1584
[Were these people I admired? Would like to have at a dinner party?]
239 ‘J’ (back of page 6):
Edward Jenner May 17, 1749 – Jan 26 1823 James I of Scotland [and not James I of England] – Feb 20, 1437 Henry James – Feb 28, 1916 [He was born Apr 15, 1843. Why did I not have that? Where is this info coming from!?] Carl Gustav Jung Jul 26, 1875 – Jun 6, 1961 Joan of Arc Jan 6, c 1412 – May 30, 1431 James Joyce Feb 2, 1882 – Jan 13, 1941 Janis Joplin Jan 19, 1943 – Oct 4, 1970 James I [of England this time!] Jun 19, 1566 – Mar 27, 1625 Al Jolson May 26, 1886 – Oct 23, 1950 Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) May 18, 1920 – Jesse James Sep 5, 1847 – Samuel Johnson Sep 18, 1709 – Dec 13, 1784 John [Presumably King John] Dec 24, 1167 – Oct 19, 1216 Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) Nov 25, 1881 Ben Jonson Jun 11, 1573 Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski Jul 6, 1923 – King Juan Carlos (Spain [it says]) Jan 5, 1938 –
This is a second hand-written document that I plan to shred. The writing style suggests that it was written in high school. It’s a summary of a story, a science fiction/fantasy story. I read a lot of that sort of thing at that time. It also seems derivative of a number of other works, a lot like the Harry Potter books are! This one has a lot of Star Wars in it, plus some X-Men and Dune. I also read a lot of superhero comics as a teenager. Notice also that it’s a précis, not an actual story! Punctuation and spelling as in the original:
Emperor (Name) a member of The Mind Wizards (The Society) in his youth and early years on the throne. Several of his top government officials where also members. Emp. saw “The Invisible Society” becoming corrupt, and using its power for evil. He exiled officials and persecuted society members. Military remained loyal to “Society”, unbeknownst to Emp. The upper echelons of society escaped pers. and plotted against Emp.
Several friends of Emperor also saw evil in society and helped to purge it. They established and trained the Imperial Guard with help of Emp. and remaining faithful society members. Three major leaders go to neighbouring kingdom and establish school for gifted youngsters possessing extraordinary mental, physical and magical powers.
Before leaving society, Emp. marries young girl trained by the Mara, the elite of the imperium schools. Gives birth to twins two years after splintering of the society.
5 yrs after splintering, exiles return turning the military against Emp. Imperial Guard flee with Empress and infant children from the slaughter. Emperor and gov. officials dead. Many had plotted with Emp. to pretend to ally themselves with society in secret, then help in coup, staying in favour to help twins.
Empress and children flee to special school. Children raised without their backgrounds being revealed and being trained in traditions of the Society and Mara.
On nearing death, Empress reveals to children their heritage and urges them to regain throne.
240 Twins employ help of a band of friends from the school to regain throne. All have special powers. Head of school reveals to them that Imperial Guard had been nurtured and strengthened over the years and was at their command.
Spies in court of new Imperium secure a position for Iladra as one of the society faithful (‘DARK CIRCLE’).
Allura and band of faithful seek aid from king “ “ (whose kingdom they are sheltered in and who is forced to pay homage to imperium). He agrees and places his personal guard and military at her disposal. Selects band to accompany faithful, including son of king. Military placed under command of “Head of S”
Former pupils of school and Mara within Imperium sought out and their aid enlisted in fight.
New Emperor seduces Sato, head of Mara to his cause and receives aid from her pupils. Thus Mara and Society both splinter and factions fight against each other.
Iladra has gained control of large portion of military.
Faithful march on capital with pupils of school, Mara, king “ “’s guard and 2 legions of Imperial Guard. [other groups that Allura has persuaded march also e.g. White Eagles]
“Head of S” marches with King’s military.
“Other Faithful” marches with remaining King’s guard and Imperial Guard.
Iladra uses his forces of military.
Dark Circle destroyed. Power from Imperial Sceptre nearly depleted. “NE” disappears as does Iladra (Confrontation between NE and Iladra). Sato uses remaining power in sceptre to escape. Allura marries king’s son, uniting kingdoms. Mara and school join. One guard. Military rebuilt. Remaining “evil society” destroyed for sure. Faithful given titles and general rounding off. Discovery that imperial orb missing END.
Wow. So many clichés! And so teenage with its strong sense of good and evil, and strong support for monarchy, yet with yearning for freedom from oppression. Terrible.
241 TIME-USE DIARY 1920 Checked emails, Sporcle 1937 Downstairs – toilet, TV on, sewing Saturday, October 26, 2013 weaving ends, writing labels 0945 Alarm off 2037 Made dinner – cheese on toast, 1015 Out of bed, teeth, toilet soup; ate dinner, TV
1022 Downstairs – open curtains, 2051 Setting up loom, weaving partially unload dishwasher 2227 On computer 1026 Start to make porridge 2337 Upstairs – Sporcle 1041 Reading at table (porridge 0004 Brush teeth, toilet cooking) 0013 Diary 1051 Eat breakfast 0027 Got into pyjamas, read in bed 1102 Continue reading 0106 Lights out 1119 Upstairs – teeth, got dressed [7 hours of PhD-related work] 1128 Toilet, close windows, shoes on Sunday, October 27 1133 Out to get paper, a few grocery items 0602 Woke up
1152 Home – change clothes 0900 Alarm
1157 Put load of washing on, empty 1000 Up, teeth, toilet dishwasher, do dishes 1006 Downstairs – B/fast 1238 Another load of laundry, folded last week’s washing, hung up washing 1024 Read paper
1250 Called Andrew – no answer 1105 Read on sofa, nap
1251 Writing labels for woven scrolls 1157 Shower, teeth, toilet, shave
1306 Andrew called back. 1240 Reading diary
1356 Hung up second load of laundry 1258 Study reading
1406 Ate cake, read newspaper 1457 Andrew called
1414 Wrote more labels 1535 Downstairs – lunch
1433 Upstairs – brushed teeth, toilet, 1555 Reading the paper watered garden 1618 Upstairs – teeth, toilet 1444 BAS Jul-Sep 1623 Reading (book then old diary) 1458 Study reading 1813 Toilet 1700 Downstairs to eat, read paper, toilet 1815 Downstairs – ate (toast and apple) 1734 Teeth 1834 Computer – EndNote entries 1739 Reading
242 1931 Other computer stuff 1610 Note taking
2015 Sewing, TV 1708 Out to get newspaper, icecream; read paper when I got home 2105 Weaving 1747 Note taking 2140 Dinner 1815 Called Andrew 2155 Weaving, TV 1907 Emails 2347 Computer, TV 1941 Downstairs – setting TV programs 0017 Upstairs for the week, dinner
0019 Diary 2005 Weaving, TV
0044 Looking at photos to put in diary 2147 Upstairs – bath
0057 Sporcle 0021 Paid bill, emails
0133 Teeth, toilet, change 0037 Diary
0148 Read in bed 0110 On computer, emails, Sporcle
0242 Lights out 0153 Read in bed
[8.5 hours] 0223 Lights out
Monday, October 28 [5 hours]
0735 Curtains open, music on Tuesday, October 29
0915 Alarm 0935 Alarm
1025 Up, teeth, toilet 1025 Up, teeth, toilet
1031 Downstairs 1031 Downstairs
1036 B/fast 1035 B/fast, reading paper, dishwasher on 1050 reading paper 1114 Upstairs – shower, toilet, teeth, 1129 Read on sofa shave, dress
1217 Upstairs – teeth, toilet, shower 1155 Water garden
1245 Folded laundry, put away 1200 Turning on computer, emails on 1305 On computer – PhD Journal, book iPad notes 1215 Note taking
1451 Read on bed 1315 Read on bed
1512 Note transcribing 1332 Study reading
1529 Downstairs 1434 Downstairs – lunch 1536 Lunch 1505 Upstairs – get ready for work
1604 Upstairs – teeth 1518 Sporcle (to kill time)
243 1527 Downstairs – put on shoes, leave 1533 Shopping, taxi home for work (bus, tutoring classes, bus home, food from Abdul’s) 1626 Home – put away groceries, read on sofa 1935 Home, got changed, downstairs 1708 Upstairs – fluffing around 1939 Dinner, TV 1718 Weaving 1953 Tried Andrew, no answer 1814 Tried Andrew 1954 Computer, TV 1815 Toilet, preparing and eating 2020 Ate dessert dinner
2027 Weaving 1915 Weaving
2116 Andrew called 1959 Andrew called
2146 Weaving, TV 2050 Ate dessert
0018 Computer 2103 Weaving, TV
0103 Upstairs – teeth, toilet 2150 TV
0114 Diary 2210 Upstairs – teeth, toilet
0148 Got ready for bed 2221 Organising stuff, sticking things in my diary 0151 Read in bed 2300 Writing diary 0218 Lights out 2342 On computer [5.25] 0040 Bed to read Wednesday, October 30 0111 Lights out 0835 Alarm [5.5 hours] 0856 Out of bed, teeth, toilet Thursday, October 31 0901 Downstairs – b/fast 0710 Alarm 0923 Shower, teeth, toilet, dressed 0720 Up, teeth, toilet 1000 Got ready to leave 0736 Downstairs – b/fast 1006 Left house 0754 Upstairs – Shower, teeth, toilet, 1043 Arrived COFA dress
1100 Thesis Writing Workshop 0828 Walk to COFA
1300 Photocopying, printing 0900 Textiles Class
1432 Left COFA, got gelato, to Services 1200 Packing up NSW 1220 Leave studio; Library; walk home; 1459 Services NSW get changed
1517 Left Services NSW, bus to 1307 Lie down Broadway
244 1353 Downstairs – lunch 1729 Gym, yoga
1430 Reading stuff for tutoring classes, 1855 Leave gym looking for lesson ideas 1915 Home; email, text people 1457 Dessert, toilet, teeth, get ready 1926 Downstairs 1524 Off to Squiggles 1936 Andrew called 1941 Arrived home; changed, toilet 2032 Cooked dinner 1958 Called Andrew 2155 Ate dinner 2101 Dinner 2220 Fluffing around. putting food 2117 On computer away, computer
2224 Upstairs – toilet, teeth, emails, 2325 Upstairs – email, Sporcle Sporcle, fluffing around 2345 Diary 2308 Diary 0033 Teeth, toilet, change for bed, 2336 Read in bed reading in bed
0035 Lights out 0141 Lights out
[0 hours] [1/2 hour]
Friday, November 1 Saturday, November 2
0840 Alarm 0920 Alarm
0932 Out of bed, shower 1010 Read in bed
1003 Get ready 1119 Up, teeth, toilet
1011 Leave home for medical clinic 1124 Downstairs – b/fast (fasting blood test) 1201 Shower, change 1045 B/fast at IKU 1238 Out to get paper, few groceries 1106 Head to Service NSW 1315 Home, unpack groceries 1129 Service NSW 1322 Read on sofa 1136 Leave, bus for Annandale 1338 Andrew called 1200 Garden centre; bus/taxi home; gardening 1432 Reading
1435 Shower 1445 Computer – presentation ideas
1456 Lunch 1642 Computer miscellaneous things
1518 Brush teeth, get changed 1729 Cooking, eating dinner
1524 Shoes on, left for COFA; Library, 1837 Weaving, TV photographed weavings, cropped photos 2139 Upstairs – bath
1711 Left COFA; to gym
245 0019 Adding up PhD-related time for 2215 Empty dishwasher, toilet, toast, past week [31.75 hours] TV
0028 Writing diary 2253 Upstairs
0113 To bed to read 2257 Back downstairs to weave (I found some wool to continue weaving), 0154 Lights out TV
[5 hours] 0118 Back upstairs
Sunday, November 3 0146 Watching Times of Harvey Milk on YouTube (I had been watching Milk 0915 Alarm downstairs)
1015 Up, teeth, toilet 0159 Teeth, change
1023 Downstairs – dishwasher on 0211 Bed to read
1032 Cook porridge 0235 Lights out
1101 B/fast, reading paper [9 hours]
1131 Weaving Monday, November 4
1220 Teeth, toilet, change clothes, 0830 Alarm water garden 0925 Up, teeth, toilet 1238 Punching holes in PhD Journal for October 0931 Downstairs – b/fast, read paper
1244 Downstairs – turn on computer 1004 Upstairs – shower, dressed, packed bag 1248 EndNote additions 1055 Shoes, left for COFA 1352 Lie on floor 1119 Arrive COFA 1409 Lunch, reading paper 1140 Leave COFA, post office 1511 Teeth, toilet 1210 Home, mail [opening, looking at?] 1519 Work on presentation 1225 Squiggles preparation 1640 Took photos of diaries 1255 Study reading 1651 Upstairs – study reading (including ~15-30 minutes lying on 1448 Downstairs – lunch bed/napping) 1515 Got dressed, teeth 1905 Downstairs – computer, iTunes stuff 1525 Left for Squiggles
1958 Weaving, TV 1829 Home
2044 Dinner 1832 Weaving
2115 Weaving 1918 Read paper, dinner
2145 iTunes 2022 Computer
2203 Weaving 2027 Confirmation presentation images 246 2140 iTunes, miscellaneous 0835 Off to COFA – presentation; another session; lunch with April; 2228 Upstairs – bath another session
0020 Diary 1825 Home – toilet, change
0051 Fluffing around on iPad 1832 Called Helen
0113 Toilet, read in bed 1843 Downstairs – snacks
0157 Lights out 1900 Weaving
[4 hours] 2056 Dinner
Tuesday, November 5 2145 weaving
0800 Alarm 2228 Upstairs – email, Sporcle
0810 Out of bed, teeth, toilet 2308 Diary
0815 B/fast, shower, dress 0013 Teeth, toilet
0906 Get ready to leave 0021 Read in bed
0910 Leave for COFA; presentations; 0049 Lights out keynote address; chatting with people Thursday, November 7 1334 Home – change, toilet, downstairs to the garden 0820 Alarm
1354 Lunch 0840 Teeth, toilet
1439 Teeth, toilet 0848 Downstairs – b/fast
1451 Lie down 0907 Teeth, shower, dress
1520 Get ready 0948 Leave for COFA; student assessments 1530 To Squiggles 1217 Home – change, water garden 1915 Home, dinner, read paper 1227 Lie down 2000 Computer, P/Point presentation 1319 Call library, emails 2122 Computer miscellaneous 1332 Downstairs – computer 2205 Upstairs – diary 1410 Lunch, reading 2306 Teeth, ready for bed 1506 iTunes [4 hours] 1511 Teeth, change Wednesday, November 6 1528 Left house – Squiggles; Maya for 0730 Alarm dinner
0740 Out of bed, teeth, toilet 2117 Home – change, toilet, ate gulab jamun 0746 B/fast 2128 Weaving 0802 Shower, teeth, dress
247 0140 Upstairs 1051 Downstairs – b/fast, read paper
0145 Diary 1127 Shower, change
0236 Teeth, change 1202 Downstairs – shopping list, shoes on 0248 Into bed to read (fell asleep while reading) 1207 Out to do shopping
[4 hours] 1232 Home – change, put away groceries Friday, November 8 1236 On computer 0935 Call from COFA 1307 Read on sofa 0940 Up, teeth, toilet 1355 Weaving 0948 B/fast, shower 1434 Lunch 1113 Left house 1506 Upstairs – teeth, toilet, fluffing 1146 Bus to COFA; check looms, around emails, dealing with textile assessments, to Library 1520 Study reading
1344 To EQ, lunch, 1600 Nap
1445 Met Elizabeth for movie; bus 1625 Study reading home 1658 Cut toenails 1731 Home 1701 Study reading + old diaries about 1735 Called Andrew Jean
1840 Downstairs – put on laundry, did 1943 Water garden, toilet dishes 1950 Downstairs - computer 1917 Email, dressed 2010 Prepare dinner 1925 Hung up washing 2027 Dinner, TV 1937 Out to get dinner 2038 Weaving + sewing 2002 Home – dinner 2345 Computer 2019 Weaving 0030 Upstairs – teeth, toilet, Sporcle 2130 Tea, computer 0113 Diary (writing, choosing photos, 2230 Upstairs – get ready then bath gluing photos, etc.)
0146 Read in bed (fell asleep while 0210 Change, read in bed reading) 0254 Lights out [1.5 hours] [6.5 hours] Saturday, November 9 Sunday, November 10 1000 Alarm 0900 Alarm 1040 Up, teeth, toilet
248 1000 Up, teeth, toilet 1251 On bus to Broadway; shopping, taxi home 1006 Downstairs 1357 Home – unpack groceries 1008 B/fast, read paper 1410 Lunch, read paper 1052 Teeth, toilet, shower 1503 Teeth, change 1128 Dressed, shoes 1510 Spoke to Andrew 1136 Leave for COFA 1525 Get ready 1210 Arrive in studio – student assessments 1531 Off to Squiggles
1543 Lunch, toilet 2032 Home – change, changed light bulb; dinner, read paper 1600 Student assessments 2120 TV, sewing 1941 Left COFA 2326 Diary 2014 Home – change, toilet, downstairs 0029 Teeth, toilet, change, computer 2017 Computer – textile assessment stuff 0053 Read in bed
2029 Spoke to Andrew 0125 Lights out
2057 Dinner [2 hours]
2130 Computer – textile assessment Tuesday, November 12 stuff; iTunes 0830 Alarm 1116 Upstairs – diary 0940 Up, teeth, toilet 0012 Sporcle 0949 Downstairs – make porridge, put 0040 Teeth, toilet, change garbage out, put laundry on
0053 To bed to read 1036 Eat b/fast, read paper
0131 Lights out 1112 Fold last washing, hang up washing [0 hours] 1131 Shower, toilet, teeth Monday, November 11 1205 Email to Textile class 0845 Alarm 1238 Study reading 0935 Up, teeth, toilet 1312 Dress, get ready 0941 Email 1325 Left home 0958 Downstairs – b/fast 1327 Bus to city, IKU to buy lunch 1014 Shower, dress 1347 Bus to Paddington, to dentist, ate 1049 Off to doctor; to COFA; spoke to lunch Liz; moved student work 1518 Bus to Taylor Sq, read in newsagent 249 1547 To Squiggles 1917 Downstairs – snack
1933 Home – change, water garden, 1931 Computer, iTunes make bed 2016 Cook dinner 1954 Downstairs – dinner, TV 2054 Eat dinner 2043 Sewing 2111 Textiles assessments 2207 Dessert 2242 iTunes, YouTube, putting food 2218 Sewing away, washing pan
2356 TV 2324 Upstairs – Sporcle
0024 Upstairs – teeth, toilet, emails, 2341 Diary Sporcle 0013 Teeth, toilet, change 0113 Diary 0030 In bed to read 0228 Bed 0130 Lights out [2.75 hours] [4 hours] Wednesday, November 13 Thursday, November 14 0930 Alarm 0830 Alarm 0950 Up, teeth, toilet 0950 Up, teeth, toilet 0956 Downstairs – b/fast, paper, empty dishwasher 0956 Downstairs – b/fast, read paper
1025 Upstairs – teeth, toilet, shower 1027 Shower, toilet, teeth, dressed
1105 Emails 1104 Textiles assessments
1120 Shoes on, left for city; haircut, 1252 Snack, water garden yoga 1258 Preparing to and winding warp 1326 Home – toilet change 1437 Downstairs – lunch, read paper 1330 Study reading, PhD journal 1506 Teeth, change, fluffing around 1453 Sporcle 1532 Left for Squiggles 1503 Downstairs – lunch 1936 Home – computer to submit 1536 Upstairs – teeth, toilet timesheet, change, toilet
1542 Reading 1945 Dinner
1546 Andrew called 2005 Called Andrew
1550 Reading 2046 Computer, iTunes
1703 Looking for pictures 2117 Fill up water bottles
1737 Reading 2125 Upstairs – bath
1835 Computer 0018 Cup of tea
250 0025 Diary 0248 Lights out
0052 Sporcle [5.5 hours]
0126 To bed to read Saturday, November 16
0210 Lights out ? Chatted with Andrew
[1.5 hours] 0921 Up, teeth, toilet
Friday, November 15 0926 Downstairs – b/fast, paper, chatting with Andrew 0900 Alarm 1050 Upstairs - teeth, toilet, shower, 0950 Up, teeth, toilet change
1000 B/fast, vacuuming 1130 Chatting with Andrew
1046 Shredded paper, tidying up 1143 Study reading
1109 Put laundry away, emails, 1338 Downstairs with Andrew, B12 injection 1137 Put on dishwasher 1406 Reading 1145 Shower, teeth, toilet, clean bathroom, dress 1507 Downstairs – lunch
1220 Got ready 1542 Threading reed on loom
1228 Leave home, drop off drycleaning, 1551 Upstairs – winding warp bus to city, yoga 1613 Downstairs to make cocktails 1411 Left gym, to Westfield, lunch 1649 Get ready to go out 1434 To bus stop 1710 Left for COFA with Andrew, 1440 Bus to COFA, chatted moved loom; bus to Liam and Eve’s, dinner; to Robert Bosi’s, taxi home with 1515 Arrive studio, winding warp, Donna setting up loom; printing, spoke to Liz, moving student work 2330 Home, shower, teeth, toilet, change 1820 Left COFA 0001 Winding warp 1842 Home, took garbage downstairs 0108 Bed to read 1851 Changed clothes, downstairs 0142 Lights out 1900 Snack [4.5 hours] 1910 Called Andrew Sunday, November 17 1941 Cooked dinner, ate, TV ? Chatted with Andrew, read in bed, 2105 Setting up loom teeth, toilet
0010 Upstairs – Sporcle 1039 Downstairs – b/fast, reading 0032 Diary paper
0116 Read in bed 1131 Shower
251 1201 Cut fingernails, check emails, 1511 reading Sporcle 1645 Transcribing time-use diary 1232 Chat with Andrew, cup of tea 1725 Andrew home, chatting, got 1239 Threading loom dressed
1343 iTunes 1736 Transcribing t-u diary
1421 Setting up loom 1752 Toilet, got ready
1448 Lunch 1756 Downstairs
1510 Weaving, TV 1804 Left for dinner with Bob
1831 Get ready 2125 Home – changed, toilet
1845 Out for walk 2129 Weaving, TV
1934 Home – cooked dinner, TV (some 2331 Upstairs – Sporcle weaving) 2337 Diary 2121 Eat dinner 0020 Computer 2134 Weaving 0049 Teeth, change, read in bed, fell 2253 TV asleep reading
2332 Upstairs - teeth, toilet [6.5 hours]
2341 Diary Tuesday, November 19
0050 Sporcle, iTunes, toilet 0850 Alarm
0119 Into bed to read 0940 Chatted with Andrew
0156 Lights out 0950 Read in bed
[6.5 hours] 1032 Up, teeth, toilet, chatted with Andrew Monday, November 18 1042 Downstairs – b/fast 0820 Alarm 1108 Upstairs 1000 Up, teeth, toilet 1110 Teeth, toilet, shower, shave 1008 Downstairs – b/fast 1148 Water garden 1040 Wash dishes 1156 Study, notes from books 1110 Upstairs – computer, shower, teeth, toilet, dress 1258 Read on bed
1204 Sporcle 1323 Andrew home; lesson planning for tutoring classes 1224 Study reading 1350 Typing notes 1427 Downstairs for lunch 1440 Downstairs – lunch, read paper 1502 Upstairs - teeth, toilet 1524 Teeth, toilet, dress
252 1532 Off to Squiggles 2300 Upstairs - teeth, toilet, iTunes, Sporcle 1936 Home – change, toilet 2336 Diary 1938 Downstairs – dinner 0007 Computer 2002 Weaving 0043 Read in bed 2115 Dessert 0202 Lights out 2128 Weaving [1.5 hours] 2217 Get ready for bath Thursday, November 21 2232 Bath 0900 Alarm 0100 Diary 1010 Up, teeth, toilet, email 0124 Computer 1019 Downstairs – b/fast, read 0142 Bed to read newspaper
[4 hours] 1120 Read on sofa
Wednesday, November 20 1223 Snack
0900 Alarm 1234 Upstairs - teeth, toilet, shower, dress 1000 Up, teeth, toilet 1315 Left home – to COFA (library 1006 Downstairs – b/fast, teeth, toilet photocopying 30 mins., winding warp 1038 Weeding/gardening 30 mins.); Squiggles
1242 Called Donna 1834 Home, change, toilet
1250 Upstairs – shower, water garden, 1847 Computer, iTunes, dinner spoke to Andrew 2111 Weaving (+iTunes)
1326 Type up notes, PhD journal, 2352 Computer backup 0047 Upstairs – Sporcle 1443 Downstairs – lunch, newspaper 0108 Diary 1512 Teeth, get dressed 0153 Teeth, toilet, change 1517 Out to do errands, groceries, drycleaning 0207 Bed to read
1556 Home – unpacked groceries 0258 Lights out
1559 Tried to turn computer on – [3 hours] frozen; fluffed around Friday, November 22 1630 Left house, to Newtown with Andrew, drink with Donna, dinner 0800ish Up to say goodbye to Andrew
2038 Home – iTunes 0930 Alarm
2157 TV 1100 Up, teeth, toilet
253 1106 Downstairs – b/fast 1458 Reading article, PhD journal
1150 Upstairs - teeth, toilet, shower, 1636 Study reading dress, get ready to go out 1657 Transcribing stuff 1247 Left for COFA 1733 Downstairs – lunch, teeth, toilet 1325 Arrive COFA – winding warp, weaving, chatted with Liz 1812 Study reading
1457 Lunch, toilet 1917 Called Andrew
1510 Weaving 1922 Transcribing text msgs, downloading Facebook data 1646 Pack up, toilet 2005 Get changed 1658 Left studio; bus to gym/yoga 2015 Off to Broadway 1930 Home – change, emails, put laundry on, Sporcle 2125 Home – change, unpack groceries 1957 Downstairs – dinner, another load of washing on 2133 Dinner
2023 Weaving 2141 Weaving
2100 Hanging up washing 2315 Computer
2115 Weaving 2346 Weaving
2225 Upstairs – getting ready for bath 0049 Computer
2243 Bath 0112 Upstairs - teeth, toilet
0100 Sporcle 0122 Diary
0112 Diary 0153 Sporcle, Seek jobs
0205 To bed to read 0210 Bed to read
0247 Lights out 0256 Lights out [8.5 hours]
[4.5 hours]
Saturday, November 23
0930 Alarm
1110 Up, teeth, toilet
1117 Downstairs – b/fast, reading New Yorker
1245 Shower, etc.
1317 Turn on computer, get ready
1328 Study reading
1418 Transcribe t-u diary
254 TIME-USE DIARY 1057 Shower, get ready 1140 Off to COFA Tuesday, September 1, 2015 1214 Arrived studio, unpacked stuff 0930 Alarm 1218 To library; printing, photocopying, 1015 Out of bed, teeth, toilet, open chatting windows 1324 In studio, winding a warp 1023 Breakfast, read paper 1519 Meeting with Sam 1100 Close windows, dishes 1602 Lunch 1134 Toilet, teeth 1623 Winding warp, putting away 1140 Study reading weavings, weaving 1420 Notes, article search, check 1802 Off to gym; pilates emails 1953 Back to studio; weaving, sorting 1430 Lunch shreds 1455 Shower, teeth, toilet, dress 2119 Packing up 1532 Off to work 2125 Left studio, bus home 2023 Home, changed, toilet, checked 2148 Home; changed, toilet, unpacking, email, turn on TV TV on 2027 Dinner, TV 2153 Snack, TV 2047 Weaving 2211 Weaving 2256 Called Andrew [At dinner] 2325 Computer 2258 Weaving 0027 To study, write diary 2348 Computer 0138 Get ready for bed 0032 Diary 0150 Into bed, reading 0105 Getting ready for bed 0221 Lights out 0125 Reading in bed [6.5 hours] 0155 Lights out
[6 hours of PhD-related work] Thursday, September 3
0930 Alarm, snoozing Wednesday, September 2 1018 Out of bed; teeth, toilet, open 0900 Alarm, snoozing windows
1019 Out of bed; open windows, teeth, 1026 Breakfast, paper toilet, check email 1104 Teeth, toilet, emails 1030 Breakfast, paper 1132 Study reading
255 1352 Hanging up washing 1614 To Library
1404 Emails, sorting PhD papers 1618 Arrive studio; weaving
1429 Lunch, paper 1641 Off to city, gym for yoga (walking and bus) 1454 Shower, dress, get ready 1850 Left gym, to Chinatown for dinner 1528 Left for work; P.O. Box, walk to work; work 4 hours, walk back, stopped 1935 Walked back to COFA; ran into in to Petaling St for food Jason, chatted
2028 Home, got changed 2009 Back in studio, weaving
2032 Dinner, TV 2153 FaceTime with Andrew; cutting up T-shirt while chatting 2058 Weaving, TV 2306 Packing up 2138 FaceTime with Andrew; finishing ends of weavings while chatting 2318 Left studio; bus home
2153 Weaving 2343 Home; teeth, toilet, get ready for bath 2345 Computer 0011 Diary 0030 Diary 0037 Make bed 0059 Getting ready for bed 0053 Bath, reading 0124 Into bed; reading 0310 Internet, writing narrative about 0201 Lights out book
[5 hours] 0333 Into bed, reading
0352 Lights out
Friday, September 4 [5 hours]
0930 Alarm, snoozing
1024 Out of bed, teeth, toilet, open Saturday, September 5 windows, take sheets off bed 1000 Alarm, snoozing 1037 Breakfast, paper, crossword 1100 Reading in bed, napping 1118 Teeth, toilet, close windows 1227 Teeth, toilet, open windows, 1128 Study, note taking recharge phone credit
1334 Emails, computer stuff 1231 Breakfast, read paper
1359 Lunch, newspaper 1307 Close windows, teeth, toilet, put out rubbish 1432 Shower, get ready 1315 Study, PhD Journal 1515 Off to UNSW Main Campus; Printing, photocopying, returning books 1415 Procrastinatory break
1602 Shuttle bus to COFA 1458 Study
256 1703 FaceTimed Andrew 2325 Computer
1710 Got changed 2344 Into study, write diary
1720 Left house; to Law Library, 0057 Get ready for bed Everise, IGA 0121 To bed to read 1827 Home, changed, toilet 0210 Lights out; tossing and turning, 1837 Notes to PhD Journal thinking about my thesis
1852 TV, computer, snack 0255 Toilet, notes
1933 Dressing a loom, TV 0302 Lights out; asleep about 0330
2343 Computer [6 hours]
0013 Diary
0115 Get ready for bed Monday, September 7
0125 Got into bed, reading 0900 Alarm
0219 Lights out 1000 Alarm, snoozing
[7.25 hours] 1120 Out of bed, toilet, teeth, open windows
1130 Breakfast, read paper Sunday, September 6 1218 Teeth, toilet, closed windows, 0930 Alarm, snoozing folded laundry, opened mail
1047 Out of bed, open windows, teeth, 1240 Study toilet 1427 Lunch 1057 Breakfast, reading 1452 Shower, dressed 2340 Close windows, do dishes 1530 Left for work 1213 Donna called 2038 Home, changed, toilet, TV on 1401 Shower, changed, folded laundry 2044 Dinner, TV, computer 1441 Read Courtney’s story 2110 Weaving 1507 Study 2356 Computer 1607 Lunch 0021 Into study, diary 1701 Study 0103 Get ready for bed 1858 Toilet, computer 0116 Into bed to read 1911 Snack 0202 Lights out 1920 Cooking [4.5 hours] 2003 Computer, TV
2023 Dressing a loom, weaving
257 Review Presentation June 2015
(Excerpts from PhD journal)
October 9, 2012 (PhD proposal)
This PhD aims to bring together a number of strands of my practice, specifically ideas about groups and individuals, how they interact and how one affects the other, and an interest in death and social meanings around death and dying. The main focus of the PhD will be the production of woven panels made from human hair that will be abstracted versions of shrouds. The thesis will discuss societies that use (or used) shrouds in the preparation of the dead for burial or cremation, and examine the meaning(s) that those shrouds embody for the societies that use them, particularly those that somehow manifest that society’s ideas about groups and individuals.
March 12, 2013
First meeting with supervisors
Shrouds as Manifestations of Social Understandings About Groups and Individuals at the Point of Death
Working from general topic to more detailed series of research questions. Come up with four driving questions (key questions, predicting questions) from the research proposal. What questions are emerging from the proposal? What do I really want to know? What is the best method to find out?
How do funerary textiles reflect social understandings of group and individual identity formation?
Can an artwork about funerary textiles tell us about an individual’s life?
Do uses of funeral textiles reflect differences in social construction of the self?
Aim: to create an artwork that explores notions of individual identity in contrast to social identity that can transcend the individual’s death
March 19, 2013
Meeting 2
Use of word “textiles” doesn’t necessarily need to be used in the research question.
KEYWORDS – Identity – Social – Shroud
Three weeks into my PhD and I don’t really feel that I know what I’m doing yet. The research proposal is just a proposal to get you in to the program. Now I need to come up with a research question, based on a narrow topic around my proposal (shrouds/death/identity/society). Seems bewilderingly large.
March 22, 2013.
My ideas are changing daily. Yesterday I was looking at the death notices page of the Herald and thinking if there was some project in them. They give a capsule of the dead person’s life, name, age, relationships. It situates the person in the world. Are they defined by the living? Could I develop a system for weaving cloth (shrouds, palls?) where the details of the person are encoded in the cloth? So characteristics like age, gender, sexual orientation, no. of children, place of residence, etc. would each have a separate design element which combine to make a portrait of the person.
258 Sunday March 24, 2013
I’m thinking now of a combination of a few strands I’ve been thinking about – analysis of death notices in mainstream and niche newspapers during the AIDS crisis from the late 80s to the late 90s(?). Can we learn anything from who was or was not included? How did gay papers differ from mainstream papers? … Death notices as analogous with shrouds – concealing and revealing, provided by the living, identity shaped by society, etc. Tease this out some more…
Wednesday March 27, 2013
I’m feeling lost. Again! It could partly be because of the PhD Writing a Research Proposal class yesterday, with some of the people applying for ethics approval, and others with overseas trips planned for June. I’m still flapping around trying to find a question, and, as things are going, a topic! So, how about my other ideas? Newspaper death notices, and the AIDS Quilt?
You are not Forgotten: Death Notices and the AIDS Quilt in the Age of AIDS
Both formats offered a chance for the living to remember the dead, to show that they existed, and to proclaim their identity to the world.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
I feel like I’m back to square one – I met with [my supervisors] yesterday, and my AIDS Quilt ideas didn’t get much traction. I’m still not narrowing down enough apparently. … What I’m thinking today is that maybe I’ve been concentrating on shrouds too much. [Supervisor A] keeps pressing that the art will come from the research, but I’m interested in shrouds because I wanted to make something that was shroud-like, so maybe that shouldn’t even be part of the equation. Death, identity and society are my keywords, then, and a textile project could come out of whatever the research is, rather than trying to focus it on shrouds from the beginning. Maybe this is why I’m getting stuck? Trying to tie the art to the research too early.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Traces… I’m reading about the traces that people leave in the lives of others after they’ve died. I touched on this a bit in my MFA. Is that what I’m interested in – the parts of ourselves that live on. A form of immortality. That was part of the interest in memorials, particularly of named people, and of the clothing of people. Bits of us that continue after death.
You Can’t Take It With You – the sentiment I’m looking at? Exploring issues of identity and status through possessions after death…
Personal narrative - Narrative of the panels of the quilt. Can possessions tell a narrative? The narrative of the person’s identity.
I seem to be working around similar ideas that I worked with in my MFA. Maybe that idea of the desire for immortality/remembrance found its way into memorials, but now I’m looking at strategies that people can actually embrace? Being remembered. A common desire? We want to feel we won’t disappear from the earth, that our loved ones will remember us. But what happens when they die?
Monday, April 22, 2013
I have developed a new direction! I think it’s based on the same concerns – death, identity, the self, memory – but getting away from shrouds
Traces of peoples’ lives
259 What remains after death
Diaries, manuscripts, oral histories, personal papers, archives
The ephemeral made more lasting through art
Jean Garling 1897 – 1998 – what remains of her life? State Library collections. Memories of people who knew her. Not a biography of her, but a catalogue of the traces that remain 15 years after her death. Case study. I have a dress of hers from the 60s. That could be the connection to clothing. Powerhouse didn’t think any of her clothes were significant and worth preserving.
This is my [revised] Research Proposal:
What Traces Remain?
My research will consist of two main components. The first will examine ways that we create our identities and sense of self from the possessions we own, the relationships we have with others, our beliefs and attitudes, and our place in society, amongst others.
The second part of my project will investigate strategies of ‘identity preservation’ after death; that is, ways that the identity and sense of extended self that we have created (or had created for us) in life continues to exist after the death of the body. This will include attempts by people before their death to influence or control their image after death.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Traces of Life and the Postdeath Extended Self: Identity Preservation or Creation?
The aim of this research is to explore the connections between the idea of the self, and the objects we collect/possess/consume, and in particular the way that these objects inform identity after the death of the owner.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
I finally (it’s only been two months) seem to have come up with a research project (if not specific research questions yet). It’s going to be focused around the Jean Garling Collection in the State Library of NSW as described [above]. I may or may not be looking at what I’m calling an “extended archive” – the things that exist about her outside that collection; things like the library’s own records about her becoming a Governor Benefactor, what the bequest has been used for, when the Jean Garling Room was named, etc. Also, things like her will, funeral and memorial service arrangements, death certificate which may not be anywhere in the library.
Monday, May 20, 2013
I think I’m narrowing down my concerns – possessions creating an identity, and what remains after death, but looking at it from outside the self, so that I can look at Jean Garling’s archive without having to know what she thought about herself/her ‘self’. Then my concern becomes not about what I think of my ‘self’, but what identity I want to preserve for others to ‘read’.
So, my new combined concept is: The postdeath disembodied extended self. Maybe my title could be “Archives as postdeath disembodied extended self: Identity creation and preservation.”
260 Thursday, May 23, 2013
The archive … tells the life of an organization, the history, the changes. So does the archive of a person’s papers. It shows us how that person was at successive points in history. We get a narrative biography of a life. It tells us about a life lived across time, rather than the identity that a living person feels at any given moment.
Monday, May 27, 2013
The life as explored and represented in the archives can be viewed diachronically, the archive as an object can be viewed synchronically.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Stuff and Things seem to be keywords for a lot of these material culture books I’ve been finding. I think they’re suitably vague in English to accommodate all the items that may become sediment in an archive. Diaries are embodiments of ideas and activities and experiences, but are in themselves things, as well as articles written, programs collected, etc.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Archiving the Extended Self – another title idea.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Archive as a juncture between past and present. It becomes an eternal present (if it is a closed archive, no longer being added to)
Archive as monument and document, simultaneously. My artwork, created from my archive, is a memorial as well as an archive. Archive as memorial.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Archives as a means of creating a meaningful narrative of a life. I thought it was identity. So, is narrative creating identity? We create our identities through narrative, and extend that into death. So where does the idea of the extended self come in? Is the narrative one creates part of the extended self? We create our identity by creating a narrative built around the extended self, which we preserve in an archive after death… How’s that?
Monday, July 1, 2013
Preserving the Extended Self: Of Diaries, Art, and Archives. Another possible title. The last entry for June was about whether I was looking at archives or the extended self. Good question. I think I haven’t got my final details yet, but the important thing is the extended self and how it can be exteriorised/disembodied, and then preserved after death.
We use narrative to make sense of our own lives, and to give us a sense of the continuity of our own self. But we also use narrative to give a sense of ourselves to others. We use ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ to do this – the accoutrements of our extended selves. We can therefore read these things as part of a narrative to interpret them and understand the life represented.
Interweaving narratives… weaving as metaphor. My archive is woven of destroyed “documents” woven together. Is there something here? “The fabric of my life”
261 Saturday, August 31, 2013
I’m interested specifically, especially in the case of the archive, in the sedimentation of the Extended Self that has been created by the self in question, rather than a curator or archivist who collects and collates material to give a representation of the person. It’s a self-selected set of representations of the Extended Self. This presumably gives a more realistic sense of self as felt by the person in question. THIS is my Extended Self, rather than other manifestations which may exist and which may give contradictory readings of the self.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Even if one attempts to preserve a self-selected interpretation of one’s Extended Self, future, or even current, researchers may interpret those representations in a different way. So one can preserve the solidified manifestations, but meanings are more difficult. One could write detailed diaries or autobiographical musings. Is that the only strategy that can work? Or is that open to interpretation? “What did he really mean?”
PhD Journal October 2013
I want a metaphor of the Self that reflects the addition of new materials and beliefs, and the shedding of old ones in a constant process of change. There is no ‘core’ self that stays true over time. Character and personality may stay the same, but the self as a whole doesn’t. Archiving of the what I have been calling the Extended Self then can show a change over time that the lived self may not even be aware of. The Archived Self – those aspects of the self that have a physical material presence which can be preserved. Thoughts, then, are generally fleeting, and are part of the Extended Self, but unless they are written down or spoken aloud and recorded, they pass and leave no trace of the self.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Can I make a distinction between the lived, transient, ephemeral life, and the permanent archived life? Although the archived self is not necessarily permanent. The self can solidify into representations that are later discarded. So the archive may be different at any one time. What is necessary for the reading I want, and maybe this is the archival strategy that is of most importance, is a trans-historical archive that represents different stages of life, different opinions, actions, tastes. As the self changes, so do the representations in the archive(s). So the archived self across time transcends the ephemeral and presents a more complex self.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Working with the idea of an independent narrativability of objects, independent of the lived self. So a vase on a shelf may have a story that the subject might tell about an overseas trip and the place it was bought, or being a gift from someone, but that info is lost if the person doesn’t record it somewhere. Clothing may have some narrative abilities because of stains and wear patterns, but they could be interpreted in different ways. I guess this is where McLuhan’s idea of hot and cold mediums comes in handy. Words have much more ability to give information, especially written words.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
I’m not really sure what I’m doing. One idea I had was Narratives of the Archived Self. I guess it’s not that I’m completely unsure what I’m doing, it’s just that I don’t have that ‘hook’ I’m looking for. And how to connect Jean’s archive to my artwork. What’s the point?
262 Archives and Narrative Formation of the Self
Archives as Rhizomatic Narratives of the Self
Stories demand outcomes – success or failure, overcoming obstacles, hero cycles, happy ever after and tragic narratives, but life isn’t like that, which is probably why we want certainty and finitude (?) in our narratives – because life isn’t like that. So would an archive reveal a lack of narrative thrust, or has it been shaped/interpreted to fit a pattern of an existing narrative (How I triumphed over adversity)?
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Not looking at archives as creating a sense of identity, but as what aspects of identity survive in material form as the lived life changes and evolves.
Archives as self-construction (constructing the self, or a personal construction of the archive?)
The archive as a representation of the self. A collage of the self, or a collage of representations of the self.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Duff and Harris write about the use of narrative in creating archival descriptors, and the narratives that descriptors create. They use the context of the records to create ways for people to enter and understand the records. With Jean’s archive, there are multiple narratives. There is the one created or suggested by the records themselves, the one that the Library privileges through the information it attaches to the archive, the one that I have created and recorded in my diary, and the on or ones created or posited by Jean herself, which exists now in only fragmentary form.
So, if this is how I approach Jean’s archive, I do it as an example and as a cautionary tale in creating my own archive, using the lessons learned from a study of the archive and the creation of the archive in presenting a representation of myself.
Saturday, November 30
Have I suggested the idea of the archive as a collage? I know I’ve thought about it… And my final installation while being an archive is also a collage of different elements of my life. Many things are collages, really. One thing I read months ago was about newspapers being like collages. Art exhibitions are, too. Diaries?
If looking at archive as an example of a collage aesthetic, and if the final installation is a collage, why can’t the written component? Or are all written components already collage, given the combination of methodology, with literature review, study, analysis, etc.? Biographical narrative as collage. The collage could be my overarching metaphor.
Could/should the form of the written component somehow emulate an archive, or various archival forms, like a diary? Compare Dracula’s use of diaries, letters, newspaper reports, etc., to present the narrative. – In fact that’s probably not a bad analogy. The novel gives the appearance of being fact, disguising its construction by the author. Basically I’ve been thinking about ways of avoiding writing a pseudo- positivist text. I want something more creative, something that matches the creativity of the art work.
If something, some aspect of the self, or an action, solidifies as an archived representation, then it retains an accuracy and authority and authenticity that the memory can never have. Memories change with each remembering, and feelings and attitudes to people can change, so later feelings about a particular person can cloud earlier opinions.
263 Wednesday, December 4, 2013
How might artists use archival strategies to create new artworks that narrativize biography?
The aim is to focus on one person’s experience in archival sedimentation to explore the potential of archival narrativization in both artistic and archival/information fields.
My stumbling block is connecting Jean’s archive with my created archive. I see the connection as being me, and an exploration of my part in her archive and its sedimentation. But am I looking at her archive only as an illustration of how it is done? What does that have to do with creating an archive?
Saturday, December 7, 2013
I have a lot of notes that I’ve been taking over the past couple of days and jotting on bits of paper that I need to bring together. I think things are starting to come together. My current idea is ‘Archival Sedimentation and Auto/Biographical Narrative.’ That way I can write about the construction of Jean’s archive but also have details of her life narrative, plus what is missing, as well as discussing my own narrative and archival construction. I’ve also thought that the title for my installation can be ‘Genizah’ (or Geniza, an alternative spelling) which, of course, is a storage area for Jewish documents, particularly religious ones, awaiting proper burial, usually (often?) in a synagogue.
Examine the relationship between archival sedimentation and auto-biographical narrative(s). Theorising archival practices and auto/biographical narrative. Archival strategies in contemporary art practice.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Two Characters in Search of an Archive: Archival Sedimentation and Auto/Biographical Narrative – That sounds like a PhD title! Or how about Two Characters in Search of an Archive: Archival Sedimentation and Auto/Biographical Narrative in the Archives of Jean Garling and Rodney Love. More focused…
Saturday, April 19, 2014
The editing of an archive changes the narrative – is this the main point of my research? Seeing what those changes are. That can encompass what IS there, as well as what isn’t because the editing can be additive or subtractive (is that a word). I guess that’s encapsulated in the idea of archival sedimentation, although that seems like a purely additive process. More reading needed in that area.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
The life narrative is in flux, and when a researcher studies a narrative of a subject it is a frozen snapshot of a life at that time. The archive, on the other hand, has a series of frozen moments of a life that is no longer (except for the archive of a still-living person…)
Saturday, May 17, 2014
[Academic F] suggested the idea of making the archive as a methodology.
Yesterday I thought that if I’m researching the creation of an archive, then maybe I don’t need Jean Garling’s collection. The creation of my art work is the catalyst for the
264 investigative process. An idea I had was that I’m creating an “Archive of Discarded Narratives”
Monday, May 19, 2014
So, what are some of my options? I like the idea of the discarded narrative. Or maybe the forgotten narrative? Both? Narratives that no longer fit into the main identity narrative of the subject. Archives constitute the subject. Material culture theorists suggest that that is what things do. Narrative theorists suggest that is what narratives do. Perhaps I’m looking at the archive of narratives that no longer are necessary for the creation of the self. The archive of things and narratives shapes and is shaped by the self, but along the way – archiving as identity performance – some things and narratives and things are abandoned or forgotten. What does an archive of those things have to offer? Is it an alternative reading of identity? A shadow self? A representation of the self synchronically and diachronically.
Thursday, May 22
I think the narrative aspect is important. So art practice is an archive of narratives, of the materials, the methods, and the artist, just as an actual archive is a collection of narratives. So it’s not just a collection of sketches and paint swatches showing the decisions made along the way, but the narrative process that the artist underwent, undertook? The stories the artist tells, both to himself and to his audience (gender deliberate…), collected together.
I guess it’s not just artwork, but research as archive of narratives. The field notes, the data, the analyses, how the researcher interprets them, what filters they see them through. They’re all narratives that sediment into the archive. I think the three keywords are Archive, Narrative, and Sedimentation. The research is about making explicit this editing process, what is collected or created, what is edited and discarded, what is highlighted and what is buried in the background.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Artist as archivist, researcher as archivist, and archivist as narrator…
There is archiving as a practice, and the archive as a material object (a collection). I am creating an artwork that not only is a metaphor for an archive, as all artworks act as embodiments of process and autobiographical decisions (?), but as an actual archive. An artwork as an archive that comprises not only implicitly the decisions that have gone into making it, but documentation of and analysis of said documents. Another archive is created that functions as a record of the creation of an artistic archive, and acts as a record of artistic and archival processes, methods, and narratives.
Tuesday May 27, 2014
I’m still trying to get my head around what I’m doing.
Investigating the archive as the nexus between material culture, auto/biographical narrative and personal identity.
“The art installation Geniza was created to show how archival practice in contemporary art could be used to examine relationships between material culture, auto/biographical narrative, personal identity and archival practice.”
Thursday, June 5, 2014
The research explores how aesthetic work comes from, exists in, and is shaped by the spaces of the archive which is the nexus of personal identity, autobiographical
265 narrative and material culture. Artworks are an embodiment of that triangular relationship, and an investigation of archival theory, archival processes and archiving as a performative act can make that connection visible, examinable and analysable.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Archives as an objectification of knowledge, or at least information. The archive as an objectification of the dialectic of identity, narrative and material culture… It’s not just a collection of material culture, either. Those materials have been ordered and stored and catalogued or amended or customized in certain ways, in relation to the other two nodes of the triad, that make it an archive, rather than just material culture.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
I just had a thought while reading a book about subjectivity. What I am doing with this project is attempting to make conscious the processes that people engage in when creating the material culture field around them; how they decide what to acquire or discard, what narratives they tell to themselves or others about those objects, and about the sort of person they see themselves as being.
Does looking at the discarded add more to the idea of the self than examining that which remains? Maybe the decision of what to keep is more natural because it is unexamined. I like it therefore I keep it. But to discard something suggests that it no longer fits, and one must examine that and ask if it no longer fits, and should it be discarded. That sentence would not be a good quote… Is something no longer fitting the vision one has of oneself?
I’m creating an archive by destroying an archive. The materials are discarded, but the weavings are a new archive, and the process of creating that is my research, while simultaneously recording how an archive is created by noting how it is disassembled.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
I think I might have the angle I’ve been looking for, to tie everything together. The triad I’ve been looking at applies to everything, people, objects, etc. For example, a shirt has material properties, being made of cotton, having colour, etc. It has a narrative about the materials, where they came from, where it was manufactured, where it was sold, etc. And it has an identity as a shirt, as a particular type of shirt, for particular occasions, etc. If we look at the person who owns that shirt, the triad applies to them, with the shirt becoming the material, embodying its own triad. The narrative is why the person bought it, when, where, what they’ve done in it, etc. The identity comes from how the person constructs their identity through that shirt, as a Goth, for example, or some other social group. The archive, then has its own triad made up of the different elements that have a physical presence, like letters or diaries, or whatever. The narrative is how the archive was constructed, how it sedimented (with, of course all the individual elements having their own narratives), how it has been preserved. Its identity comes from how it is used, or why it was preserved, or in what kind of institution, or the person who created or curated it. What my research is doing, through using the archiving process as a methodology, is to examine this formation, and to identify the elements of the triad and how together they shape the archive. In my case, the particular archive I’m creating is a collection of woven artworks. Part of the identity then is that it is an installation, which implies certain aesthetic principles that would not normally apply to an archive. The narrative includes the reasons for creating this particular artwork/archive, as well as the creation process itself, the reasons for it being weavings/textiles, the reason for it being an archive at all. Partly that will be my own narrative, with the idea that perhaps I’m moving from an identity as an artist to that of an archivist.
266 Monday, August 18, 2014
Without the information that I am providing about material objects, their narratives and identity (or the identity of the owner of that object), the items in an archive would not necessarily mean the same thing to researchers in the future. Narratives are lost, identity open to interpretation. This is the problem archaeologists face when they discover some decontextualised material object. They attempt to reconstruct the other arms of the triad. But the meanings of the present intrude onto the object and affect the meanings to be made about it.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
I also thought yesterday of possible ways of catagorising the archive. Some taxonomies… They could be based on the triad – Form (as I seem to be calling it now), Narrative, and Identity. These could also be chapter headings.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
“Controlled destruction” - a term from Pierre Nora. What archivists used to do, but now they’re taught to keep everything.
One has certain things and there is an ebb and flow of items in one’s collection over the years, but there is a sense of continuity of self, even though as the material changes, so does the narrative and the various identities that one has. Maybe ‘self’ is what my triad is describing, that continuous but changing self.
I was thinking about exactly what it is I’m researching. Yes, archiving as methodology, and my dialectical triad, but what am I investigating? I think the answer could be the way that an archive can act as an autobiography. ‘Archive as Autobiography.’ ‘How does the creation of an archive mirror the creation of an autobiography?’ ‘How can the creation of an archive stand in lieu of the writing of an autobiography?’
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Does adding a narrative to the object, as I am doing with my archive, limit the meanings available to viewers/researchers? Is that what I want? Is that part of my Identity that I am seeking to be the controller of? If a biographer searches in an archive, how much of his or her own meaning is applied to a particular object? This is an issue around research in general, and why there is emphasis on the reflexive researcher. One needs to be aware of one’s own choices and interpretations, the personal influences on decision-making. Even positivistic science researchers make choices and have personal biases which they pretend they don’t.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
[Referring] to my own identity. It’s part of the explanation or justification for the form of my art and written component of my PhD. Why I’m creating an archive, but why it will probably change its form over the next two years. I’ve noticed inconsistencies in recording information for my documentation forms. It’s about a system evolving as it is developed. The part about archivists is that they would already have a system in place when acquiring/receiving an archive, and they would catalogue/categorise the items in relation to that system. I’m creating the archive and the system at the same time, so if I change the system, do I go back and retrospectively change everything that has gone before? The weavings before #X, for example, don’t have the same amount of information as the later ones.
“Form of the archive – rolled up, hidden, inaccessible – mirroring my identity. Wanting to be on display, but hidden. Concealing/revealing.” There’s a tension between those two actions. Maybe there should be a distinction between the work and the person – I want my work to be on display, but not me. It seems odd, then, that I would be making
267 an autobiographical work and writing so much about myself in the written part of the thesis! What seems to be revealing something might actually be concealing it in a forest of minutiae.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
“In Boltanski’s possessions series, the pieces stand in for their owners; the audience interprets them. We don’t know what the owner thought of the items, or what their stories are.” I guess this gets back to the point I made before, about audiences doing the interpreting rather than the researcher, but I guess I’m adding that the more data the audience has the more informed the decisions can be. Researchers and historians regularly ‘mine’ the archive and make interpretations of the materials they find, but how accurate are those interpretations? The point of my research is to show that adding further dimensions (to the usual Form that an archive might contain) enables richer and more accurate, more ‘valid’, interpretations.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
My research is about the control that the subject exerts over his own story/archive.
That seems to lead onto the next note: “Because signs are multivalent, audiences perceive different meanings in objects/documents etc. To impose an autobiographical reading, then, requires the elucidation of the 3 parts of the triad.” I’m calling for the control of the flow of information. I will tell you what this means about me. I was thinking about biographers, and not sure if I wrote notes down anywhere, but biographers search an archive for information, then go to other sources to match information, or fill in gaps. That can contaminate the ‘truth’ because of other people’s biases and opinions, and indeed the researcher putting his or her own interpretation onto an event. I keep thinking of ‘Rosebud’ in Citizen Kane and how the knowledge of what it signifies is lost. If Kane had written about it then it wouldn’t have been lost. Why was the sled burnt anyway?
I’m not sure if I’ve made this point before, but my interest is in ‘Archiving as Autobiography’ rather than ‘Archives as Autobiography’. Once the archive is outside the control of the creator-archivist it ceases to be autobiographically controllable.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Something I thought about the arrangement of the installation was that it should probably be around categories of identity. Descriptions of Form are easy, and that’s how archives are usually arranged. That’s fine, and easy, and ordinary. Narratively would be a little more difficult, and requires the input of the autoarchivist (is that a term I just made up? I have had issues about what to call a creator-archivist) to explain items and elucidate their origins and histories. It’s not impossible for a curator-archivist to do that, though, or a researcher, based on the contents of the archive. Making connections between nodes of data. For Identity to be autobiographically decided, though, and not have a researcher’s ideas predominate, requires linguistic explanation (and psychological probing). This part is probably the least documented part of my triad so far. It’s easy to describe material, and tell a story about it, but it is much more difficult to decide what kind of person one really is, and whether or not one wishes to declare that to the world. One aspect of my identity is hatred of being told what to do, of having conditions and regulations imposed on me. It’s a reason for doing a PhD – to avoid being in the real world and having awful managers dictate to me. However, even here I have to fight against having the institution’s timetables and ways of working imposed on me. Becoming a researcher seems to be about forcing particular mindsets on people, making them work in particular ways. This is how you do research; this is what a researcher is and does. If you want to fit into the academic world, then you have to mould yourself to the standards of that world. But what if you don’t want to be a part of that world? How can you forge an individual research path? Especially as an artist
268 which involves a lot of subjective decisions. Does one’s artistic output become ‘research’ purely in an academic milieu? How does one resist that? Can one resist that and still be awarded a doctorate?
Monday, November 10, 2014
“Recognition that the archive as autobiography is a contingent thing, that it changes, is in flux. It’s a flowing narrative of the self, not complete until death.” This came from reading about narrative and autobiography as closed, completed forms. When an author writes either, s/he has an idea in mind, which gets written down, and the reader has a sense of completeness. An autobiography tells the reader how the author got to be who s/he is now. My autobiographical archive, though, is in media res. One creates it as the life is being lived. It can have no completeness until the death of the creator. The autoarchivist can always take out items from the archive if s/he wants to change the Narrative of the archive/life.
“Epistolary novel as a guide. All writing in my thesis would be dated, showing the chronology and narrative of when it was written. Identity and Form is the final look of the piece.”
“All PhD written theses give the illusion (if one is being generous; deceptive if one is not) of having sprung fully formed from the minds of their creators, rather than being stitched together, like Frankenstein’s creature, from bits and pieces of other writings.”
“In this way, the structure, the Form, of the written thesis resembles an archive, and the creation of an archive. It is written and assembled diachronically, at different times and in different moods, but read synchronically by the reader.”
“Creating an archive and especially an autobiographical archive, is a way of controlling the world, of being the one who makes decisions. It is perhaps an attempt to defy the powerlessness of actual life, the loss of control one has in the face of stronger social forces…” This is a strong aspect of my Identity, I think. I feel very much that powerlessness in the workplace, or when one is compelled to do something against one’s wishes. It’s why I have become insular, trying to avoid situations where I may be reminded of my social impotence.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
“The archive I am creating is produced over a short period of time. How would it evolve over time? That would involve changes to its Narrative and Form, but how would this change its Identity?” I must have been reading something about time to produce this many notes on the same subject! The note above was about the things that the autoarchivist might write about the items in the archive over time. I guess this one is about how the actual archive might change. Would I no longer weave things? Would I leave out the tags? Would I add something I can’t even imagine at this stage? As my life changes, so would the aspects of the triad. Categories certainly would change, which might influence how it was catalogued and stored. There’s also the aspect of how the archive is and how the archivist writes about it.
“In creating one’s own singularity in the archive, one resists the theorising of the researcher. Something about research questions. Resisting them. Obviating the need for them. One is not a theory waiting to be defined. One is and has a singularity that resists interpretation.” This must have been written late at night! Lots of ideas floating around in my head, poorly defined and explained!
“Does taking photographs of materials before I cut them up for weaving make the archive more autobiographical, or less? By allowing people to see what the materials are, they may come to their own conclusions, but the point of an autobiography is to impose my meanings, my readings.” Such a control freak! Is that the point of an
269 autobiography? Or is it just to give one’s own view? Does that then override any other view? Yes, put your own interpretation onto events, but not eliminating any other readings. The point of my triad is that it gives the autoarchivist ways of disseminating one’s own interpretation to allow others a more informed view, not necessarily the only view.
“What is my ‘research identity’? I seem to be opposed to the dominant discourses of the university. Is this just a reflection of my knee-jerk antiauthoritarian nature? Or that I don’t like being told what to do?” Not sure how I feel about this now. Funny how things seem interesting and important at the time. Which is why I want to have my written component as a collection of writing from different time periods. How do ideas change over time? And how much does this reflect my attitude to life? Am I afraid of my identity being subsumed into some other identity that is defined by someone else?
This past week saw the postgrad seminar series at COFA (I’m going to resist calling it a conference). I went to three sessions, mainly of people I know, but also to see what other people have done and are doing, and how the panels treat them, and what is expected of them. Not that there’s any consistency between the panels or the people on them. I thought I would do my next presentation as a storytelling session. I had this idea earlier in the year, thinking I would tell a narrative about Jean, but then I dropped her. It would be a narrative of the development of the research. I thought that would fit in well with last year’s talk which was about material aspects of a potential archive, then I developed the idea of the narrative, and then I added Identity onto that, so the following year I could do a talk that deals with some aspect of identity, and the identity of the archive as it has developed, my identity… Something like that.
The narrative would be excerpts from these journal pages, as well as the weaving one, I guess. I imagine it would be like Dave Allen or Ronnie Corbett. Sit down comedians rather than stand up… The entries I’ve made here show the introduction of new concept and shows how I developed my thinking over the course of the what, 19 months so far. Based on the idea of epistolary novels, this research journal was discovered in a trunk in an attic…
“Archive as an alternative to a linear autobiography. Rhizomatic narratives.” I haven’t mentioned rhizomes for a while. This was to emphasise that I’m not creating an autobiography per se (the phrase of the day), but an autobiographical archive, one that enables the creator to tell about his life in an unconventional way. The Narrative and Identity claims could be included in a traditional autobiography, but by creating an archive, one has the ability to incorporate materials and documents that by their materiality add another layer to the meanings one can convey about the self.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
“The research process is analogous to the creation of an archive. When is something complete? When is it full? Is ‘the end’ just an arbitrary end point?” This is about knowing when to stop.
“Increasing the singularity of archival records and archives through a tripartite model of Form, Narrative and Identity.”
Its major contribution is the use of a triadic conceptual model to increase the autobiographical content of personal records by adding contextual metadata, aiding in memory retention by the curator-archivist as well as providing biographical information for future researchers.
Friday, December 26, 2014
“Archives can be seen as fulfilling public memory role. The creation of an autobiographical archive may fulfil the same purpose, for private memory, and if the
270 person is ‘significant’ enough, can be added to the public record.” One might ask who the autobiographical archive is for. Would any researcher ever want to look at my life? Is it likely a biographer will be poking around in my archives? First and foremost I would suggest that the autobiographical archive is for the creator-archivist. Presumably if they are interested enough in creating archives, and making them autobiographical, then they will want to revisit those archive at some point in the future. It is about carrying information into the future, information about oneself, one’s opinions, beliefs, tastes, interests, etc. Even though we may have a sense of identity continuing over time, we change a lot through the course of our lives. Much biographical information is shed along the way, but this FNI model allows people to retain more of a sense of themselves over time, like an autobiography… That sentence would need a lot of work to make the subject(s) clear! A similar note: “My ‘records’ or ‘documents’ have “continuing value” for me, from an autobiographical standpoint.”
Sunday, February 8, 2015
“Genizah: An Exploration of Autobiographical Archives” A title I thought of. It’s funny that last year I kept coming up with possible titles, but haven’t really thought of any since the rethink in June or July. I liked the one about two characters in search of an archive.
“Partial, fragmentary and contingent.” I keep reading variations of this idea about archives. Archives only ever cover part of a life, that part contains only fragments and (possibly) representative samples, and what is or isn’t there often has depended on chance events and randomness to end up the way it has.
“Are the ideas of Form, Narrative and Identity adequately explored/explained in the installation?” If the artwork is half the thesis, will the ideas be sufficiently represented by the final installation, or will the explanation be in the written component, and the artwork an inadequate appendage? Maybe each tag doesn’t provide F, N and I, but they collectively become a self-portrait.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it before, but exploring the similarities between my Identity – easily bored, interested in hybridity, refusing to follow the standard route – and my art practice.” And the connection to the written component. Wide interests, lack of commitment to one idea or practice or career, lack of desire/ability to advance in one area…
“The overarching master metaphor is that a life is like an archive.” Or is memory like an archive? Or both? Need to explore this further…
“My archive is an unfolding, changing autobiography. An autobiography written at this point could be very different from one written at that point in my life.” Narrative and Identity at any one point in a life will lead to a Form that is different to other times in life. The archive allows the ability to have multiple viewpoints. My memory of an event now may differ from that same memory in ten years’ time, but the archive can accommodate both views with ease. If anything they create a more nuanced autobiographical representation.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
“Over time, my archive would evolve in probably random ways. I often forget to record certain information. What I deem important one year might be forgotten the next. Thus the Form of the archive constantly changes, reflecting subtle changes to the self.” The bounded nature of this research is something I have to mention; i.e., that it has a limited time span, and therefore restrictions on what I can include as well as restrictions to its evolution. My diary follows changes similar to those described above – I introduced the index; I used to include correspondence but that disappeared presumably when email took over; I added details of books read; I started recording
271 PhD books read, but gave that up; I’ve reintroduced mail in a way, but only including bills.
“Trivial or ephemeral items as documents turned into records with autobiographical metadata, placed into an archive to act as memorialisation of singularity.” I just keep throwing the same words up in the air hoping they’ll land in an interesting and enlightening way.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
“Including autobiographical elements, and writing my own narratives and identity claims allows me to impose my own meanings upon the objects in the archive. Weaving them and displaying them as art, though, makes them accessible to the meanings imposed on them by viewers.” So the archive is autobiographical, but the art is communal and multivalent?
Saturday, April 25, 2015
I’ve encountered the phrase ‘What Ever Happened to…” over the past month or so. The film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was on TV, and I’ve recorded it. On RuPaul’s Drag Race a judge said about a queen walking down the runway, “Now we know what happened to Baby Jane.” A few episodes later a challenge was based around ‘What Ever Happened to Merle Ginsberg?” Then a week ago I started reading a novel, The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman, by Aldo Busi. A character asks, “What Ever Happened to Giorgina Washington?” I have thought, based on all these sightings, that “What Ever Happened to Rodney Love?” might be a possible title for my thesis. With a subtitle like “Autobiographical Archives in Art” or “Art and Autobiographical Archives.” I do have a note on my desk with “Genizah: Creating and Analysing Autobiographical Singularity in Archives” as a possible title. Not as snappy as the other one.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
I had to submit details for the upcoming PG “conference”. My details:
Title: ‘What Ever Happened to Rodney Love? Narrative Aspects of Autobiographical Singularity in Archives’
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Appendix 3 – Inventories
274 When I was researching the work of Christian Boltanski for this dissertation, I read a lot about his Inventories, and was already trying to reconcile the approach I was taking with my research, and the large amount of material I was and would continue to dispose of that I was not able to include in the installation. Just before my move to Timor-Leste in February 2016, I made lists of items that I was disposing of in an attempt to save the memories and narratives of those items (as in the first two inventories included here, one with photographs), or, in the end, just the titles of books, or descriptions of things, including a final inventory from 2020/21, listing even more books I’ve discarded at the end of my PhD journey. They are included here as possible alternative approaches to keeping records and documenting the disposal process, but mainly as lists of items that did not end up in the installation Geniza. I took screenshots of the inventories, so formatting is a little different from other appendices.
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