1. Choose a date. I chose to have my archiving Open House during the day while my daughter was at daycare. I held the Open House between 9:00 and 17:00.
2. Invite people. I made invitations and sent them by email to about 30 people including students, artists, writers, curators, professors and activists that I know personally. I used Paint to make the invitations and I have a hotmail account that I used to send them. Tip: It’s not usually appreciated to broadcast email addresses so to keep them private put your own email address in the ‘To:’ section and put all of the addresses of your invitees in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) section.
3. Make a support for the Play of Archiving to take place. I decided to make a little text explaining the archiving Open House and the Play of Archiving. Then I made booklets where players could write a profile of themselves and could leave a trace of the Play of Archiving in connection with the archive item. I used Paint to make the booklets and the text.
4. Prepare the environment for the Play of Archiving to take place. I set up media stations in my house. The stations were: minidisk station, audio CD station, Video station, text station. The archive materials that I made available at these stations were minidisks, audio CD’s, VHS and DV tapes, books, posters, folders, and texts which I selected from Constant’s Digitales archives. Most of the material was from Digitales 2004, however some of the material was from earlier years. I also made a snack station – this really worked to bring people together to chat.
5. Make the snacks. I made veggies, hommus and tsziki, and also cookies the night before the Open House after my daughter was in bed. You can find recipes for these foods ( or other snacks) at www.vegweb.com.
6. Welcome your guests. I had the text, the booklets and some pens ready for the guests at the front door. It’s also nice to introduce your guests to each other so that they feel comfortable.
7. Let your guests play. I didn’t participate in the Play of Archiving myself, instead I was busy making sure everyone had enough coffee, and knew where to find things, etc.
8. Document the event. I took digital stills with my Alfa ephoto307, which I uploaded to my computer during the day. I also took colour slides: I used my pentax 35mm cameras with Fuji 400 slide film and my digital light meter to read the light.
8. Ask your guests for feedback. I spoke with people about the archiving Open House.
9. Thank your guests for coming. I sent out emails the next day to thank the guests who came and to ask them if I could use the pictures I took of them as documentation.