I am a terrible pack-rat; I don't know how to gauge the importance of particular objects so I keep everything with the expectation that someday, one object may find its purpose again. I can't essentialize, and I am envious of those who do.
It's ironic - or perhaps serendipitous? - that archiving is the prompt for this week's blog post. It is for me, anyway. Last night, I went to The Gertrude Stein Project at Studio Theatre. In the play, there are a few scenes that take place within an archive, where Leon Katz is looking through Stein's notebooks, the ones that will eventually take him to Alice B. Toklas.
If I had an archive of Edmonton, I would want it to be like Alice; a living archive full of human experience and memories. Leon Katz says in an interview about his interviews of Alice B. Toklas that she had an incredible memory.
My archive of Edmonton would be a room with many speakers, and from each speaker, a person walking through the archive could here the recorded memories of people who live in/have lived in Edmonton. I want to know what they remember, events they attended, places they went that perhaps do not exist anymore. Most importantly, I would want to know what Edmonton is all about to them, how they personify it.
The GSP is brilliant on archives, isn't it? the way they curtail knowledge but also enable certain kinds of things - a pattern, a dance, a set of rules that in and of themselves appear bizarre but nonetheless look really, problematically, beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of a collaborative and unconventional archive. Personally, my experience of this city wouldn't be as enjoyable without the constant stream of hints and stories from my friends, who have pointed me in the direction of places, festivals, and new groups which I certainly would not have stumbled upon on my own. Your living archive is a bit like that process of exploration (and subsequent self-growth) through community, and also points to Lippard's notion of memory being made up of our individual impressions and the perceptions of others, including those who were around before we even got here.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, great post!