I use the word ‘venues’ to refer to the Open House and Digitales Archives website because they are places in which the Play of Archiving can take place. The Venues are not ‘works’. The Digitales Archives website is the prototype Venue that I propose for the digital archive material. The Open House is what I propose as a prototype Venue for the physical Digitales archive materials. I opened my home for the Play of Archiving as an act of hospitality. Hospitality for me is a feminist act. It is making space for the other. Opening my home was an invitation to an intimacy with the guests by opening my private space.
If the meaning of an archive object is made from the position from which it is viewed (read: person, and all that implicates including education level, nationality, gender, race, etc.) then it made sense to me to make these multiple positions and meanings visible through the Venues. This is why each person who participates in the Play of Archiving must fill out a player profile – a record of such things as age, gender, languages spoken, education level, nationality, etc. This profile is not there to give a context for the archive item. The profile acts as a context for the sharing that will take place during the Play of Archiving. The Play of Archiving is not done to propose a meaning for an archive item but to reveal the meanings produced and the sharing that took place by people in relation to an archive item. The position from which the archive is viewed is particularly emphasised with the website, with which the archive is accessed only through people’s ‘homepages’.