The Records Room, an Interpretive Archive (after Personal Historical Society)
ELSEWHERE
May 2018. Installation documentation. Instructions for archival process, cyanotypes, photographs, museum collection objects sourced from found room.
The Records Room is a functional installation that commemorates the tradition of collecting and organizing through Elsewhere’s past, present, and future. This “archive” transformed a repository room to house tangible records and archival materials.
In the Room, the politics of memory are examined by engaging with the space— an act of arrangement or curation becomes a performance that influences the room’s narrative. This installation encapsulates a special collection of objects that will continue to be used and re-incorporated into new projects in perpetuity, being both an end product and a storage space for raw materials.
The “archive“ is the heart of the project, but is complemented by new works produced in response by the artist: photographs, rubbings, prints, documents, and assemblages. In processing, (re)defining, and navigating the found, existing collection, a map and visual language emerged connecting the museum’s living archive to more technical, archival terms and methods.
Read the: Records Room Book - a finding aid and context for the collection
Piles
The room which now houses The Records Room was filled with years of piles of Elsewhere ephemera on top of the original records, documents, ephemera, and personal effects of the Gray Family, Carolina Sales Inc., and the various other related business records (Realfit Shoe, Cinca, etc.). In excavating the room, a series of still life photographs of the piles of uncovered and removes things emerged. One of the remarkable aspects of the Elsewhere Residency is the wealth of divergent threads of studio practice which become possible while pursuing the “initial” goal.