My father cleans seeds: oats, barley, soybeans, wheat, clover- this is a list that comes to me from my memory of working with him. Cleaning seeds means to separate the grain from the chaff, to take the raw harvest from the field and prepare it for sale to farmers. In the space where he cleans the seeds, ‘the mill’, the harvest is sorted and bagged. The bags of seeds are then transferred to ‘the shop’, where they are arranged (classified) and stored based on the type of seed and customer’s order.
When I was a child my father taught me how to recognize the different seeds. He has a glass-topped wooden box in which types and varieties of seeds are sorted into separate compartments. Using this box of seeds as a teaching tool he taught me to see the difference between oats and wheat, the difference between varieties of clover. I carry the image of these differences in my memory and can say that oats are longer, and wheat is more stout, or clover can appear as barely visible, perfectly round grains.
My father has a collection of seeds, and an archive. These two things he has separately. The collection of seeds is what waits for the farmer: bags of seeds lined up in categories. This is a collection for sale, for use, for consuming. This collection does not exist for the specific purpose of being related to memory. Of course, if you ask my father or I if the oats in that bag call forward a memory, we will say yes, and tell you a story. But that is not the purpose of the bag of oats, or the collection of bags of oats. The memory is surplus; the purpose is for the oats to be used.
An archive is a gathering together of signs with the intention for those signs to be related to memory. It is this intention, the relationship between the sign and the memory that differentiates the archive from the collection. The glass-topped box filled with seeds is an archive: it is a collection of signs representing the greater categories of oats, barley, soybeans, wheat, clover, that are there to create or later call to mind the memory of oats, barley, soybeans, wheat, clover. This box exists for no other purpose than for its relationship to memory, either in the creation of or the recalling of. These seeds are separated from their purpose of growing a plant, or feeding someone.
I have read the phrase ‘history begins with the gesture to put apart.’ The archive is this gesture, in both a conceptual and physical sense (as in the bodily act of placing an object apart). The seeds that my father keeps categorized at the shop have not been put apart. They are still a part of a process consistent with their use: within days, a farmer will pick up a bag and open it, empty it into a seeder and drive back and forth across a field, spreading the seeds. The seeds in the box will not be used in this way. They are not going to be taken out from the box, they have been put apart from the process of planting and growing in order for them to be used as a sign for the calling of memory.
This calling of memory is undocumented. Until today, I have not spoken about this box of seeds, but at this moment and with this gesture I make a document that says: these seeds bring to mind the oats that I put into bags the spring when I was 18, or the time I looked into my father’s hand (dirty from working) while he showed me the different varieties of clover, or the way the box reminds me of the collection of spices my mother had in the kitchen when I was a child (also in a glass-topped wooden box, the spices the same earthy colours as the seeds). The neglect to document memory in relation to an archive gives the archive its appearance of objectivity: the seeds represent seeds, mean seeds, call to mind seeds. But I know that this is not the case: it is a false objectivity. My question, with designing a system for archives, is how to bring forward the relationship between the gathering of signs and memory so that the objectivity of the representation (the sign) will be destabilized. I am doing this because I believe that this false objectivity has consequences for those things that do not fall within its scope, ways of being that are not recognized in an objective view.
The archive is a gathering together of signs (in the form of objects), but it would be a mistake for one to believe that it is the archive alone that makes meaning. ‘The meanings of objects are constructed from the position from which they are viewed.’(Eilean Cooper, 2000) The fact that objects are collected together in an archive does not change the position from which they are viewed. Thus, it is the viewer, and everything that calls to mind: gender, race, age, language, education level, and most importantly memory in relation to these things, which makes meaning.
The meaning of the archive is malleable precisely because it calls forward memory. The way that the Culturas de Archivo project, for example, deals with this malleability is to exhibit archive objects from government archives, etc. without any explicit context. There are labels with the objects that lead to a text about the object. What this does is to focus on the relationship between memory and the production of meaning through the absence of a proposed meaning. The way that I choose to put this malleability forward is to make available a surplus of proposed meanings, which were and are produced by the archive users.
Proposing meaning and producing meaning is not the same thing. Meanings can be proposed by a museum (or other exhibiting body - curators, institutions, etc.) but it is the viewer, the public, the individual who produces meaning as they encounter an object. There is no way to control what meaning will be produced by an object, or a collection of objects. Understanding this distinction is important for understanding this project because what I am trying to do is rethink the production of meaning as it relates to memory and the archive. The way that I am doing this is to keep the residue of an encounter with an object, a trace of the production of meaning, directly with the object. Museum exhibitions are a gathering together of archive objects in order to propose meanings but the residue of the meanings that are produced by the public are not kept in a direct and legible way with the object, in the archive. After an exhibition, there is no way to access the produced meanings (as opposed to the proposed meanings) through the object itself.
My digital camera is full- I have taken the maximum images for the amount of storage space I have in the camera. Thirty-two images wait to be downloaded to my computer. These are images of my daughter or my partner. I have several folders on my computer, which contain similar images taken in similar circumstances at different points in time. These folders contain a private archive of images of my daily life, images that I have gathered together with the expectation that they will some day be looked at.
The images that are waiting to be downloaded from my digital camera are not (yet) an archive. The moment of recording, as in making an image, is only a part of the process of creating an archive. It is the production of documentation. I see documentation as a ‘putting-apart-mid-gesture’, a gesture that can be thought of in a physical sense like the movement of my finger as it presses down on the record button. (As an aside, like MK said what I am mostly putting apart at the moment of recording is my presence in the moment of the event as it happens. I am no longer wholly present for the event as it happens, but rather involved in the production of an image, a recording, of that moment). When I use the term documentation, I use it to highlight the distinction between the archive and putting-apart-mid-gesture. In order for documentation to become an archive it needs to be available in a place for one to relate it to memory. That is what I will do when I download the images to a folder on my computer. I cannot browse the images on my digital camera without downloading them ( although some cameras offer this feature, and I would argue that they create an archive precisely because of one’s ability to look at the images), thus the images on my digital camera remain an archive-in-process.
When I download the images from my digital camera and place them into a folder on my computer, it is with the expectation that at some future point these images will be looked at. This expectation coupled with the gesture of archiving can be thought of in terms of something that Jacques Derrida speaks of in Archive Fever.
Derrida states ‘As much as and more than a thing of the past, before such a thing, the archive should call into question the coming of the future.’ An archive represents in a physical way this expectation, into the future: the promise of representing the present, as the past, in the future.
It is because of this promise that one can think about the archive as a generative space. Generative means the act of generating, producing. The archive, as a promise yet to be fulfilled, is thus something that is in process. It is not something that is static or preserved. By being in process it is open to re-meaning and re-interpretation. It is something in the act of becoming.
There is a specific passage in Jacques Derrida’s book Archive Fever which reads: ‘It is thus, in this domiciliation, this house arrest, that archives take place.’ Derrida states this after speaking about the place of residence of the archive in a physical sense and the power that the place of residence indicates - the power of the one who keeps the place of residence of the archives to interpret the archives. What I thought about while reading this passage was the residence of the archive in relation to hospitality. I began to see an idea that has not wholly formed but that I want to develop further.
The images that came to mind when I read this sentence were of an archive in a room, in a building. I saw the building from the street outside - there were people inside who were arranging folders. This was the archive’s home. These people had access to the archive, and they held the possibility of giving me access to it as well. They were the hosts and hostesses of the archive’s house. I imagined the archive taking place: people looking at the archive and recalling events and experiences, other people making the archive by taking objects out of daily use and inserting them into the archive.
‘It is thus, in this domiciliation, this house arrest, that archives take place.’ This was only one sentence in the book, and I took it as a beginning idea. I would like to focus on this sentence and what it provoked. I was interested in thinking about what could be the possible relationship between an archive and it’s place of residence, and hospitality. Hospitality means to welcome, to make comfortable, to make one feel ‘at home’. Hospitality requires a place (home, residence, space), a host or hostess who is in the position to give access to the place, and an ‘other’ who is welcomed into that place. Hospitality is shown by an action (or gesture) by the host or hostess which is received by the other.
The words ‘the place of residence of the archive’ do not indicate for me solely a building or a room, for example. These things I consider venues. A venue is a space in which something takes place. The place of residence of the archive also indicates the residence of the knowledge of the archive - the point from which meaning can be proposed. It is this point that Derrida speaks about as having power, which I believe gains this power from being able to propose the meaning of the archive while at the same time, and because of, having complete access to the venue of the archive.
The sentence also made me recall Irina Aristarkhova, and the writing and work that she has done about hospitality in relation to the feminine. Aristarkhova speaks about hospitality as making space for the other. I believe that hospitality can be used in this way as a feminist strategy. This means not only making a physical space for the other, but by making a space from which the other can speak. Thus hospitality in relation to an archive could mean making a space from which the other can speak within the place of residence of the archive. I do not think of this idea as something that I have solved. This idea indicates the direction of my research.
I have a book about Louise Bourgeois. It was made after a retrospective of her work at the CAPC in Bordeaux. This book contains drawings, excerpts from her diaries, letters, and interviews with Louise Bourgeois. When I came upon this book it amazed me because it was the first book that gave me an insight into the way an artist works, and the way their work is a part of their life and how that influences an art process and the finished work. The letters, the drawings, the interviews, and the diary entries all helped me to form an idea of the way Louise Bourgeois made her work in the context of her life and how her life was lived in the context of being an artist.
I do not want to talk about whether or not Louise Bourgeois is a feminist, or whether or not her work can be seen as feminist. That is not why I am calling attention to the book about her. What I am interested in is what this book represents. I see this book as a presentation tool for an archive of traces left by Louise Bourgeois. It communicates the living and working conditions of Louise Bourgeois. It also represents three forms in which women in particular have left traces of their experiences ( Interpreting Women’s Lives, p.4). These are: oral history, made visible in the book by the discussions and interviews that are transcribed there; letter writing; and diary entries. These traces are autobiographical, meaning that they are written by a women about her own life. I see email, online chat groups, and webblogs as present mutations of letters, oral history transmission, and diaries.
What I think is interesting about these traces is not just the information that gets passed on (the text, for example) but also the process of passing on the information. I propose that these ways of passing on information create a kind of intimacy, because they directly implicate the 'other', thus their memories, their experiences, in the transmission of the information. Letter writing and oral histories suggest an exchange or dialogue between people. Diaries, on the other hand, are written privately and are personally intimate; to read another's diary echos this intimacy. Intimacy necessitates vulnerability; a mutual vulnerability and trust which is part of the process of meeting or making space for the other. Making a space for the other to speak ( rather than speaking for the other) is for me a feminist act. Thus intimacy, as a process, is where I see the connection between oral histories, letter writing, diaries, and feminism.
In the 1960’s women in North America came together in a politicized way to talk about their lives. They called this activity ‘consciousness-raising’, and is an example of women sharing oral histories. Women coming together to speak in a politicized way was not a new activity, one obvious example being the suffragette gatherings in North America in the late 19th and early 20th century. However, the suffragette meetings had a different ‘goal’ than the consciousness-raising groups. Suffragettes were working towards getting the right to vote for women. Consciousness-raising groups were a place where women came together to speak about their day-to-day lives, and if there was a ‘goal’ other than the act of sharing experiences, it was for women to see their lives from a different perspective. This act of sharing is what I see as a process of intimacy in conscousness-raising groups.
My sister and I made a quilt for my daughter for her first Christmas. A quilt is a type of blanket made from pieces of fabric sewn together. This quilt is a patchwork of different fabrics which were chosen by my sister. The quilt is called a rag quilt because it is sewn in such a way that all of the edges of the fabric pieces will fray with use and over time. The pattern is squares of fabric with alternating hearts and stars sewn on top. Each square of fabric is printed with a different pattern of images. Each square of fabric was chosen by my sister specifically for this quilt for my daughter. Some of the fabrics were chosen because the images in the pattern refer to Canadian culture: the hockey player, or ice skate images for example. Other fabrics were chosen because they are pieces cut from larger fabrics that my family uses - from clothing or the piece that matches a part of my nephews quilt, for example. The quilt is functional - it keeps my daughter warm and is also used as a play mat in our living room. The quilt was made collaboratively - my sister and I both took part in the process of making it. and this quilt is an archive: the patterns, the fabric, the quilt itself all bring together signs which represent our family, our culture, and our memories.
I see quilting as an example of women producing archives. Quilts are made by sewing pieces of fabric together in a specific pattern. The pattern is the only part of creating a quilt which is static. One may choose the type of fabric, the colour, the size of the pieces. Historically, quilting has served as a gathering place for women, for example the quilting bees where women came together to attach the finished quilt to a filling and backing.( old mist. 78). Quilts were also a useful object: they kept people warm when they sleep. At the same time, quilts were also a gathering together of signs to be related to memory, in a directly physical way: ‘personal, political and social meanings were sewn into these quilts in abstract forms by means of colour and symbolic composition. Quilt-makers evolved an abstract language to signify and communicate their joys and sorrows, their personal and social histories.’(parker and pollock, 77)
Quilts then have a dual purpose - they are functional, they are still part of a daily use, but they are also an object that is made with the intent to be related to memory. The quilt that my sister and I made keeps my daughter warm, shows symbols of her culture and represents to her the closeness, or intimacy of my sister and I because of its collaborative making.
I think that quilting represents a feminist possibility in creating a living archive. I say feminist because they come from a history of production by women and they often represent a collaborative activity which denotes a type of intimacy. They are a living archive because they are at once a useful object, but even in there use they at the same time have the equal purpose to be related to memory.
Earlier I spoke about the difference between the collection and the archive. I stated that the archive is a gathering together of signs with the specific intention for those signs to be related to memory. The collection, I stated, is different from the archive because the main purpose of the collection is to be used, and any memory related to the collection is surplus. With quilting, the function, or usefulness, is just as important as the gathering of signs to be related to memory. It is this blending of use, which suggest the body and all that brings to mind (gender, race, nationality, etc), and representation that makes the quilt a living archive. To take a quilt out of use is to render it solely an archive - solely a representation - no longer a quilt, it is the representation of a quilt ( minus the function) This meeting ground of use and sign is what believe is feminist, living archive, and it is what I focus on in my research work this year.
I began working with Constant in January 2003. Constant is: “a non-profit association, based and active in Brussels since 1997 in the fields of feminism, copywrite alternatives, and working through networks” who develop “an interest in radio, electronic music, video and database projects which move in the spaces of culture and the workplace.” I would add that Constant strives to bring people together around these fields and interests. The idea which permeates Constant is the idea of ‘openness’, in particular to diverse ways of working and to public involvement. The way I articulate this ‘openness’ is through the concept of open source, which is taken from software development and refers to software whose code is available for modification by the user. I use the term open source in reference to Constant in the sense of open code, an open form, but also open in terms of the content and participation.
Constant organizes specific events in Brussels, such as Digitales and Verbindingen/Jonctions. Digitales are cyberfeminist meeting days, and Verbindingen/Jonctions are meeting days based on a proposal of different themes and interests by Constant. These events happen annually, are temporary, and are characteristically transient in venue. Constant does not have a specific event space of their own which is open to the public on an ongoing basis. Instead, they find spaces to populate and use during events. Their day-to-day tasks, such as developing events and activities, working on the archives, and administration, are done from a working space which is shared with other individuals. The choice to work in these ways reflects flexibility and is relevant in the present cultural discourse because it puts into practice the idea of working as part of a network embedded in a particular socio-cultural context.
Constant’s activities are open to participation by the public. For example, the public can contribute and edit traces from events, which will be kept in Constant’s archives. The public can also contribute to specific projects such as webblogs, etc. Constant also has extensive archives which are published and available for the public online. These archives include sound, image, video and text files. I see the way Constant has approached these archives as an attempt to discover how one can create an open source archive, or how one can make their archive open source. Rather than being about preserving past events, I see Constant’s archives as more about a current involvement in order to open a dialogue. Their archives are an invitation for future exchanges to take place.
‘Records’, or traces, can be contributed by the public, who have the opportunity to use a minidisk recorder and a microphone and record an event. In this way Constant’s archives are part of the process or unfolding of the event, with the public taking an active role. The first work that I did with Constant was in connection with their archives. I volunteered to digitize and edit three lectures recorded during Digitales 2002, which are the annual cyberfeminist meeting days organized in part by Constant. I worked with these lectures, from transferring them from minidisks to the computer (digitizing), to editing them, and finally to putting the files in the public domain online. In this sense, I am an example of what I was speaking about earlier when I was speaking about the openness of Constant.
The involvement of the public in the gathering of traces is important not only for the content of the traces. By taking an active role in gathering traces of Constant’s activities, the public contributes to shaping the meaning of Constant itself. This collective shaping of meaning is what I mean when I say that the idea of open source permeates Constant’s activities. Additionally, since one can take away the knowledge of the technical process required to gather the traces; for example how to transfer a minidisk recording to a computer, or how to prepare something for publication, the skills one learns have the potential to be used outside of the context of Constant.
It was through working with these recordings that I had the idea to work with Constant’s archives doing a research project for Transmedia. I had already been working with digital and electronic art archives at an artist-run centre in Toronto, Canada. In that centre, I had been interested in how to effectively archive new media installations. Thus I was interested more in the content of the archive. However, with Constant I was more interested in the method of archiving, and particularly how I could think about a method of archiving that I felt was feminist, in other words a method of archiving appropriate for archiving the Digitales traces.
Digitales is several meeting days where people come together to talk about women and technology. They include conferences, workshops, forums, and art presentations. Digitales days are organized by Constant, in partnership with the ADA network. This means that the archives of Digitales do not only belong to Constant, but also to the ADA network as well. For example, Digitales days take place at Interface 3, a training centre for women using computers which is part of the ADA network. Thus the archive material belongs to Constant and Interface 3 (and the rest of the organisations in the ADA network). Previously there were no guidelines as to how the Digitales archives would be distributed between these organisations, but as of this year the decision has been made that the archives will be ‘open source’, meaning that the raw material will be digitized and made available on a server for each organisation to make their own archive out of it.
Constant has their own ‘physical’archives of Digitales (2001, 2002, 2004) which includes minidisks, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, DV tapes, texts, magazines, journals, CD’s. They also have digital archives, which means audio, video and still image files, text files, and emails. The digital archives are available to the public online, but there is no system at the present time for the public to have access the physical material.
The content of the archives of Digitales are feminist, because it is a feminist event. I also think that the way of collecting the content is feminist, because the process of collecting is open to anyone at Digitales who wants to participate. However, the method of archiving the traces, i.e.: the method of gathering the traces together, was something that I felt was open to research.
For most of the year (2003 - 2004) I worked as a mother at home. My daughter was born last June 15th, so I did not work at all between June and October. From October until March I worked at home so that I could look after my daughter at the same time. I was not able to get child care until March because I am not a legal resident of Belgium. Child care had a significant impact on my process because it gave me the time to concentrate on my work. As I am here 'illegally' I spend a lot of time in social services, or at the commune (city hall), or at the police station, and I think that because of this I see a different Brussels than most of my peers.
Since I am an illegal resident I am not able to work and am also not eligible for Belgian grants for artists. So I make my work at home with as little expenses as possible. This means that I work in spaces and with materials that are free and available. This is one of the reasons why I chose to work with Constant. Constant offered me the materials to work with: their archives. At the same time, they offered me a contact with the arts community in Brussels, something that I was interested in because I am a foreigner and so I do not know the arts community here. My practice is portable: there is no physical object, and this makes sense with my living situation because when I move there is nothing to transport. I want to be ready to adapt to a new space, or a new location with my work. I believe that I am not alone in this way of working and living, and that this is a way of living and working for many artists. I would not choose to work differently. I think it is important for several reasons that I do not make objects, that my materials are already existing and part of a context separate from my work, and that my practice is portable.
My typical day at the moment goes like this: I get up and get my daughter to the daycare, then I come home and work at writing and developing ideas in the morning. In the afternoon I go to the Constant office where I am working on the material collected from Digitales 2004. My research process has not been just about developing a way of archiving material. I am directly involved with the Constant team in gathering the material for the archives - taking photos, making recordings, writing and translating texts. Also, I help to transfer the material to accessible formats: for example digitizing audio recordings, editing, and putting finished files on the web.
I am interested in making work that is part of a daily use. In this sense, I think the research project that I have done this year is at the border between art and design. I am also interested in making work that is embedded in a social, or working context. This context is where I make contact with a public ( rather than an audience). This way of working implies a different time scale. These things mean that my work this year is not intended for an exhibition or gallery setting. I am also not interested in what I refer to as the ‘master discourse’- a way of conceiving of a work of art as original, and the artist as singular creative genius.[1] I think that this way of thinking about art and artists is outdated, not to mention decisively not feminist, and does not reflect current art practices and works. For this reason the work that I have done this year is covered by a creative commons share-alike license. This means that anyone can use any part of the work that I have published on the website as long as they give me credit, don’t use it for commercial purposes, and cover any new work that they do using my work with a share-alike license as well.
[1]With regard to the term artist: ‘The modern definition is the culmination of a long process of economic, social and ideological transformations by which the word ‘artist’ ceased to mean a kind of workman and came to signify a special kind of person with a whole set of distinctive characteristics: artists came to be though of as strange, different, exotic, imaginative, eccentric, creative, unconventional, alone. A mixture of supposed genetic factors and social roles distinguish the artist from the mass of ordinary mortals, creating new myths, those of prophet and above all the genius, the new social personae, the Bohemian and the pioneer.’(parker and pollock, 82)