I've been reading about a Surrealist interest in 're-filing' ideas and objects according to the logic of the unconscious e.g The Office for Surrealist Research proposing creating a card file index of all the 'ideas that occurred to us concerning every question which will be raised by our entire group'.
It's an interesting idea that a collection of items could be called an archive while not being ordered in a rational manner.
I'm interested in developing a previous work - Kept Objects - which sought responses and chance connections with others, when I gave away some of the many belongings I collect around me without making active use of them.
I am interested in links made by early Surrealists like Andre Breton and Max Ernst between chance encounters and the unconscious. Breton described a 'found object' as an external answer to a question in your mind that you did not know you had asked.
I want to explore what my kept belongings mean to me, and what connections they could spark in others.
References:
Sven Spieker, The Big Archive (2008) MIT Press.
Previous work 'Kept Objects' shown at Arnolfini Live Art Weekender
1 comment:
Interesting work. I am intrigued by your interest in the Surrealists. You say that its interesting how 'a collection of items could be called an archive while not being ordered in a rational manner' because most archives (especially those of artists) are not in a rational manner at all to start with, and in fact dont necessarily end up in a rational order but are placed within the order that the archivist places upon them. All very interesting, we should talk about this, I would be interested to hear how you have reapproached your previous 'kept objects' work.
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