We Are the Road
Contemporary archival art practices utilise their artefacts in a variety of ways. My approach foregrounds certain artefact’s own internal and pre-existing complexities, separate from the complexities of an archive. This is distinct from archival art practices that focus on specific histories and their misrepresentation or absence; and practices that critique the archival construct itself.
I undertake the research through the production of moving image and sound artworks that seek to adopt and critically reformulate the processes of commercial film production and the artefacts it produces (such as the location report and the screenplay). This manoeuvre responds to the notion of instrumentality, criticised in philosophical thinking about technology.
The artefacts located by this project are the material remains of non-technical aspects (communities, ideas, events) that have accumulated around the development of moving image and screen-based technological products since the late 20th century. Their continued existence as digital files and second-hand products is not the result of an organised recognition of their worth, rather, they have accumulated in the wake of technological advancement as so much junk floating around at the margins of the archive. The intention of the project is not to rehabilitate overlooked materials but to explore the idea that these unheroic fragments and their stubborn specificities actualise moments of lived experience entangled with technology.
Centre for Useless Splendour 