The archive is based on cultural expectation – cultural constructs affect the archive. It proposes objectivity, an external unmediated truth created for its own sake, but is always open to interpretation. Merely by virtue of being inherently selective it is necessarily subjective; it is in itself evidence of its own processes of selectivity and ordering.
It is not an inviolable truth, as it begins as something given away, and is a representation of specific acts. But beyond any intervention it exists in the state of its first becoming an archive, provided archival cataloguing practice has been applied. Every archive exists as a representation of the archetypical archive, a construct which exists before and after every archive, and which has been used, and will continue to be used, as a fiction and as a fictional device.
It is a latent tool whose potential lies in what it reveals and allows.
The aims of the project centre on the sharing of ideas, collaborative working practice, curiosity for other artists’ working practices, and working through research, thinking and realization practices that challenge our own individual practices. Group discussions have revealed new ways of thinking as well as parallel approaches, different concepts of archives, and the possibility of collaborative work that includes a non-proprietary approach. The strong and generous dynamic of the group meetings over the period of a year should be taken into the residency and what it produces.
The first step is an exhibition, which may comprise installations, stand-alone works, collaboratively-produced sets of works, live art, music, sound, and performance. A basic catalogue may be produced, in advance of a more developed publication.
Podcast discussions, debates and interviews are an ongoing process, which has already started. Later proposed steps comprise a publication, a conference, workshops and live events. A group would need to be in place to curate a publication; further funding would be required.
Having come near to the end of individual artists’ presentations of their work, the group meetings have started to include discussions about the proceedings for the period leading up to the residency and the presentation in September 2022.
These discussions include ideas of curation, updates on the progress of collaborative projects, and the relationship between individual and collaborative work; it is accepted that new ways of thinking will continue to emerge from the sharing of ideas.
Two key suggestions are that a) the model of the mindmap allows everyone to have an idea of how thoughts and activities are progressing; to this end we are investigating the use of MIRO for online mindmapping.
And b) the idea that on a monthly basis the original subject groupings could lay before the whole group a question for consideration and discussion. A non-proprietary approach (see the Karen Eliot) has been mentioned as applicable to thinking about deconstructing the inviolable truth aspect of the archive; other models would be useful.
The six groups (1. Literature & literary imagination / 2. Time / 3. Botanic & Nature / 4. Historical archives / 5. Accumulation & physical presence of the document / 6. Variations & others) are attached below; it is envisaged that artists will be moving their affiliations across more than one group.
The residency is the opportunity for us to meet in person, after meeting online during a period of history which has institutionalized online interaction. Therefore it will happen in a context of relearning, in which the residency will be a place for ongoing collaborative discussions, teambuilding, skill-sharing and discussions on later activities. Discussions will be continuing through January – June 2022 regarding the making of work, specifically the making of work before, during and after the residency. The residency will allow for implementation tests, and scenography of installation and curation, assigning of tasks for the production of the exhibition and initial catalogue, and the communication of process as part of the exhibition.
Given that there are a multitude of approaches here, any one methodology is bound to have very blurred edges and potential contradictions; a more appropriate approach might be to offer a methodology that embraces a range of approaches as they are applicable to the proposed exhibition and further manifestations.
Archives may comprise formal collection of officially sanctioned items as well as looser collections of important and less important documentation (the birth certificate and the bus ticket) which invite subjective curation. The eclectic nature of the body of all archives offers a model for methodologies that include fictionalization from the archive, the archive that is fiction, and the archive that fictionalizes itself by absorbing lies as well as truths. In terms of work created this proposes a range of reactions to the initial question of the relationship between archive and fiction: the creation of individual works by individual artists, collaborative work comprising individual works by named artists, unattributed works, collaborative works by unnamed artists, disowned work, and possibly including deselected work.
Given that there is a meeting between contrasting views, for example between the idea of individual works by individual artists and the idea of collaborative works by non-attributed artists, the working methodology should include an overt presentation of the thinking processes involved; this can be seen as reflecting the dual nature of the archive as being both about the subjective creation of an identity binding a group of items and about the proposed objectivity of the cultural model of the archive.
By virtue of being presented as the work of a group who have been working together for a year, the exhibited work will propose an identifiable archive; the indexical aspect of this archive creates the group, the group that has created the archive, a fact created from a range of fictions (perhaps). If it is offered as an experimental project, the boundaries of the project should be identified, in
terms of providing essential information to supporting institutions. The collaborative, hybrid and interdisciplinary aspects of the project should be seen as one of its strengths.
The setting up of a curation group has been proposed as an initial stage. This group may change monthly so that everyone is involved, but may lead to an established curation group. The essential point is that for this group to be moderating and mediating rather than directing, input is required from all participants. MIRO as a mindmapping programme has been proposed as a tool for this, though artists may not be excited by the idea of working with yet another programme.