The Intangible Archive St Ives

 

 

The Intangible Archive is the project that I’ve been working on, with sound artist/composer Philip Reeder. I presented on it last week at the Association of Art Historians conference, and I’m on my way to San Diego to present at Museums and the Web 2012. Rather than a linear, temporal sound walk, it’s a spatial way of engaging with memory. It’s an extension of the archive, where I’ve re-archived memories according to their links with place. People can search the archive by walking around St Ives, looking for memories to listen to. It comes out of my practice, which asks people to articulate their memories and finds creative ways of sharing those memories with others. Sharing memories with others is a form of re-archiving; augmenting the memories others through encounter. This creates a multiple, distributed archive, where there are many different forms of remembered encounter, each one unique, connected to place, and archived in the memory of each person that searches for fragments of the archive to make their own story of place. Voices that don’t often get heard getting their say in history. Making archival silence into archival noise.

 

The Intangible Archive is an archive without walls. It’s a way of encountering memories from the archive, outside of the archive itself. Using mobile technology and headphones, participants can create their own history of place by walking around St Ives. A soundtrack composed by Philip Reeder, from field recordings of St Ives, plays while participants walk, and at certain points, voices from the Memory Bay oral history archive will speak. Instead of being told a particular history from a particular point of view, the direction of walking determines the narrative.

 

There are more video snippets at http://theintangiblearchive.wordpress.com

 

NOTES: The Practice of (My) Everyday Life

It’s surprisingly busy in St Ives at the moment. The Seafood Cafe on Fore Street was full on Tuesday night. The taxi driver at the station (the one who took pity on me and gave me a lift from St Erth in the cold rain after the last branch line train had gone and her booking didn’t turn up) said she thinks there are a few coach trips. The two holiday flats in the square have been empty since I moved in, but the one across the way in Fore Street has had guests since last week.

There seem to be a lot of holiday lets around the Square. I couldn’t see anybody elses’s rubbish out when I put mine out to be collected last week. In some ways, this is a bit sad. It’s very quiet at night, and I can feel the emptiness. Sometimes it’s reassuring to know that there’s somebody, just though the wall. There are people who live over the arch into the square, as I’ve seen lights sometimes, but I haven’t seen them. I haven’t seen any lights on in the buildings that back on to my house. Although, I thought I heard a baby crying faintly through the wall in the early hours once.  The emptiness is also a joyful thing; when I want to listen to my records loudly, I’m glad that I’m not bothering anyone. At least, I don’t think so. I’m sure someone will let me know.

It’s been a really busy week, with not much sleep owing to my apparently unfortunate luck with airbeds. After breaking the valve in the first one, and failing to fix it, I wearily bought a replacement airbed. Luckily, Colenso’s Hardware, run by the deputy Mayor, sells pretty much everything I can think of needing that isn’t edible or wearable. The new one was blissfully comfortable for almost a week. Then it also started to slowly go down in the night, eventually lowering me to the floor before six o’clock in the morning.

I only moved in two weeks and one day ago, but living here has had a surprisingly immediate effect on my research. As I’d been in to Colenso’s every day last week with my tales of airbed woe, requiring vegetable peelers, gaffer tape and tape measures, picture hooks and wire, I got chatting to Colin, the Deputy Mayor of St Ives. As well as running the shop for the last forty five years, and being Deputy Mayor, he also sits on the board of trade and commerce, of which his wife is chair, and he has a great deal of interesting things to say about the town. He also agreed to be interviewed, which I look forward to once I’ve pinned him down.

I went to Lanhams to drop off the spare keys that I’d borrowed to get a sofa delivered last Friday (a relief to have something other than the floor to sit on, which is a story in itself. The second-hand furniture shop in St Ives is run by extremely nice people) and lovely Bev, (Special Constable and lettings agent) had a long list of people that she suggested I interview. There followed much discussion on stories and gossip in St Ives, which was fascinating. I’m intrigued by the goings-on in Piazza-Barnaloft, and one-eyed Tony, and things I’m not going to repeat here. I imagine I may not be able to use some of these interviews for ethical reasons, but I’ll certainly enjoy the process of interviewing. It’s interesting to build up a picture, or diagram, of the connections (and disconnections) between people and places, the way that community works (and doesn’t work) here.

 

NOTES: Define Community

com·mu·ni·ty

noun /kəˈmyo͞onitē/

communities, plural

A group of people living together in one place, esp. one practicing common ownership - a community of nuns

All the people living in a particular area or place - local communities

A particular area or place considered together with its inhabitants - a rural community

The people of a district or country considered collectively, esp. in the context of social values and responsibilities; society - preparing prisoners for life back in the community

Denoting a worker or resource designed to serve the people of a particular area - community health services

A group of people having a religion, race, profession, or other particular characteristic in common - Rhode Island’s Japanese community

- the scientific community

A body of nations or states unified by common interests - the European Community

A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals - the sense of community that organized religion can provide

A similarity or identity - writers who shared a community of interests

Joint ownership or liability - a commitment to the community of goods

A group of interdependent organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified habitat - communities of insectivorous birds

A set of species found in the same habitat or ecosystem at the same time

Web definitions

a group of people living in a particular local area; “the team is drawn from all parts of the community” common ownership; “they shared a community of possessions”

a group of nations having common interests; “they hoped to join the NATO community”

agreement as to goals; “the preachers and the bootleggers found they had a community of interests”

residential district: a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences

(ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms (or different species) sharing an environment. …

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

In ecology, a community is an assemblage of two or more populations of different species occupying the same geographical area.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_(ecology)

The term Communion is derived from Latin communio (sharing in common). The corresponding term in Greek is κοινωνία, which is often translated as “fellowship”. …

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_(Christian)

NOTES: The Art Museum and its Future

From Tate Research.

Art museums, however, also need to engage with the increasingly diverse practices of contemporary artists, constructing new narratives from the complex and unresolved histories of contemporary culture. Their functions of collecting, conserving, displaying and interpreting art are now being reframed in the light of new art practices and a rapidly evolving vision of the relationship of art museums and their publics.

There has been a wealth of research into the nature, experience and expectations of museum audiences in recent decades, with attention focusing particularly on the complex relationships between culture, community, learning and identity, and on issues of enfranchisement and social inclusion. Tate Learning has a long and distinguished record in the field of gallery education. However, there remains a strong sense within museums that much more remains to be understood about the changing nature of visitor experience, learning and expectations, and about how to view the place and future of the art museum in relation to non-visitors. At the same time, visitors are increasingly seen to interpret material and construct meaning in their own way, and to hold conversations among themselves using social media, leaving museums with the challenge of finding new ways of connecting with a broad public.

More information here: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/researchcentres/art-museum.htm