Museum of Memory

Note: Paper to be marked in conjunction with a wooden box, submitted to the subject tutor, Mr. Edward Bottoms (the archivist) Recommendation: View work in full screen slide show and open box when prompt. Thank you.

Tracing the Archive History & Theory Studies

by Ed Bottoms

MoME

Museum of MEmory

by Minn Le Pham

I live in my own archive

I. Archive Where?

Home Archive (2021)

I archive everything

II. Archive... What?

Hoarding... Disorder?

Hoarding... Disorder?

‘A hoarding disorder is where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter.

The items can be of little or no monetary value.’

- The NHS -

As negative as it is conceived, I am a proud hoarder, if not a collector.

Although, there doesn’t seem to be a clear dichotomy between the two, perhaps one could see them both as a sort of archival practice. And while perhaps not all of us see ourselves as archivists, archiving is a fundamental element of being human, or potentially what makes us human. According to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, the psyche is structured in such a way that there are many places, in which there are traces we keep. As a result, within the psyche, there is an inside and an outside. By having a division of the two realm, we are already playing the role of an archivist, of deciding whether to keep a memory or to dispose of it. However, the archive does not only consist of remembering, but in consigning and inscribing a trace in some exterior location. There is no archive without a certain location, ‘some space outside… archive is not the living memory, it’s location, that’s why the political power is so essential in the archive. (Derrida, 1998) As a respond, it is my space, my extension of the self, my exteriority that I will aim to archive through the methodology laid out in ‘Archive How’. And ultimately find a way to materialise it into one single objects, a portable archive. Perhaps one, that in many ways, serves the purpose as those of Victorian army campaign chest, but certainly one that is more suitable for modern life and does not require slave labour to move.

In an attempt to be as objective as possible with the archive, I intend to archive every thing that I am in possession of now, through different systems and categorisations. Moving on, doesn’t matter whether I part way with an object or keep it, it shall remain documented within this archive. Because according to Derrida (1998), it is due to the sense of exteriority that everything kept inside, can be erased or ‘lost’, giving power to the one who archive. But it is this power that I try to resist and stay away, all I ever wanted is to archive, archive, archive, collect, archive, keep it save and to forget about it.

Colonial campaign chest on chest Photograph: www.justinvanbreda.com

I am my own archive

III. AArchivee ? Why .??

While being a proud hoarder, I must confess that my belongings do tend to burden my daily life. Not simply because they stand in my way spatially, I am a fairly organised individual, but more due to those that are hidden away, those can’t really be seen, but are always in the back of the head. Those that are kept inside an envelope protected by a ziplock bag, clipped between a notebook from 2013 stored in a box, within a drawer of a not-so-easily-accessible area. It certainly feels like the ‘archive fever’ that Steedman described in her book ‘Dust’ (2001), whose symptoms arise when one least expect it, ‘at night, long after the archive has shut for the day,’ and from the least noticeable aspect, the ‘dust of others’ and from the most random detail ‘PT S2/1/1.’ I have many times thought of getting rid of such clutter, since I seem to carry on fine with life without them, but then the fear of one day needing them hits me. And it is not only the fear, but also the hope of one day having a moment to revisit them. Another contradicting feeling came to mind if I kick them out of my archive, they would simply be moved to another one, the world’s fastest expanding archive, the ‘landfill’, where it may find its ‘kind’ but hardly a ‘destiny.’

What a feeling of a complex conflict going on inside my memory palace about what is happening on the exterior. It seems something must be done, but surely after getting rid of them, I will immediately be in remorse, and then it would be too late, based on experience believe it or not.

So it comes down to the one final decision, and that I am keeping these extension of my self, I am going to archive them, seriously, until the end of my time, until my ‘destruction.’ However this time, there shall be a system, and with no doubt, one in a ‘chaotic manner’ (to be explained in the ‘Archive How?’)

So why do I archive?!?

In short: 1. For ease of moving house and getting settled at a new space quickly, alike the portable campaign archive mentioned earlier.

2. An attempt to archive my identity, the true ‘fabric of my life’ ‘I feel that it is precisely the garbage, that very dirt… that comprises the genuine and only real fabric of my life, no matter how ridiculous and absurd this may seen from the outside.’ (Kabakov, 1977)

3. To project a transparent awareness of my whole belonging, which might make exchanging belongings more effectively instead of wasting them, a respond to the ‘Hours’ (Self, Bose, Williams 2016) 4. To keep my belongings safe and ‘organised’, but to also forget about them.

‘The work of an archivist is not simply memory, but also mourning, and to mourn is to memorise, but also to forget. When you put things in a safe, it is so that you can forget it.’ (Derrida, 1998, 1:12:48)

5. Last but not least… to live.

I’m not an archivist by profession, but I archive for a living.

‘Hours’ room, Home Economics at the British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 Photograph: Cristiano Corte, courtesy British Council

I archive

IV. but but How?

Time to explore the box!

V. Archive WHEN?

Immediately after the end

‘The desire to archive is a burning one and to not archive is to simply cease our existence.’

- Jacques Derrida -

The End Archive this paper?

IN

EX

Bibliography Derrida, J. and Prenowitz, E., 1995. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), p.9.

Derrida, J., 1998. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4ewDoorXTM&t=2821s> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

Kabakov, I., 1996. The man who never throw anything away. nhs.uk. 2021. Hoarding disorder. [online] Available at: <https:// www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/hoarding-disorder/> [Accessed 5 December 2021].

Self, J., Bose, S. and Williams, F., 2016. Home Economics ‘Hours’ Room. [1:1 Model].

Steedman, C., 2001. Dust. Machester, UK: Manchester University Press.