I could never be an archivist, at least not in the conventional sense.
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.
