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- Convenors:
-
Elizabeth Hallam
(University of Oxford)
Chris Dorsett (University of Oxford)
Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths)
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Short Abstract:
This speculative Lab invites participants to creatively engage with two questions: 1. how does the outside (or environments outside of architectures) operate as an archive? 2. what kinds of research methods can we develop to productively explore the outside as archive? Max. number of participants 15, please sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1iY8YuNsg6BJATBB2ESmb-Kk5C1jXd7mz5MxOesXS5vE/viewform?edit_requested=true
Long Abstract:
This speculative Lab invites participants to creatively engage with two questions: (1) how does the outside (or environments outside of architectures) operate as an archive? And (2) what kinds of research methods can we develop to productively explore the outside as archive?
Bringing together theoretical perspectives and methods from anthropology and art practice, the Lab examines these questions through open-ended investigations of a public, accessible area outside the conference buildings (SOAS, London). This area, likely to be a street or park, will be confirmed with Lab participants prior to the conference.
Archives are often associated with institutions, buildings and (interior) repositories or collections - but do they extend or emerge beyond these, in different ways? How do traces of life (and death) build up (and decay) outside over time, and might such traces amount to accidental archives? Does the outside accumulate and organise 'documents', and if so how might these residues be deciphered? Does archive-like apparatus such as cataloguing, filing, storage, retrieval etc come into being, persist or disintegrate outside? What kinds of curating (as in taking care) are called for when approaching outsides as archives?
Anthropologists have devoted attention to archives as material, paper or digital records, but might archives take radically different, alternative forms in outside environments? The Lab's first part will explore the outside as archive through documentation in different media (writing, drawing, and digital photography/video); and the Lab's second part will consider the epistemological and methodological implications of outside archives for future research and archival practices.