Archiphemera: A Critical Topology of Ephemera in the Archive by yinying.kyy

Yin Ying Kong January 2018

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ABSTRACT

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NOTE TO READER

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REAPPRAISING EPHEMERA

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FAILURES OF THE ARCHIVE : SILENCE AND DISTORTION

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ARCHIPHEMERA

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ARCHIPHEMERA : ARCHIVE AS GESTURE

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ARCHIPHEMERA : ARCHIVE AS LITERATURE

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ARCHIPHEMERA : THE ARCHIVE IS ALIVE

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PRACTICAL EVALUATIONS OF ARCHIPHEMERA

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CONCLUSION

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BIBLIOGRAPHY & IMAGES

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APPENDIX

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Abstract This report aims to design a new archival framework that is receptive to ephemera, with new methods and interfaces to communicate the ephemeral. This will be achieved through topological crosscontaminations between archive structures and ephemera, supported by an extensive survey of archive events, related projects, interviews with stakeholders, and practical evaluations through design.

Reappraising Ephemera

During an introduction to archive cataloguing at Goldsmiths Special Collections, archivist Dr. Alexander du Toit told me, “the very word ‘ephemera’ […] means ‘to throw away’” (see appendix). To archivists, things that do not last are not worth preserving as they cannot aid the long-term functions of the archive as a repository or ordered system of records that allows us to accumulate, store, and recover historical knowledge and forms of remembrance. (Merewether 10) Ephemera exists and can be received only for a short period of time, constantly being replaced or disappearing altogether. It classifies as “something completely futile” in appraisal1 , which is a process where archivists determine if a document is worth keeping through calculations against spatial restrictions, ease of classification, and research value (see appendix). In creative practices, there is a sense that an increasing amount of content being produced is intentionally ephemeral, which leads me to believe that this is a mistaken appraisal of ephemera. One may argue that all things are impermanent as they undergo processes of decay. With regards to creative content, critic Julian Spalding has more abstractly expressed that all art is ephemeral art; “[artworks] only live as long as you’re

looking at them and getting something from them”. Such statements ring true, but we may consider that our consciousness of this ephemerality has changed, which has in turn influenced how we treat our practices in a self-conscious way. Numerous reasons have been cited for our increased cognisance of ephemera in recent years, including the advent of new technologies that allow us to capture fleeting occurrences, a dual sense of anxiety and excitement that “if you blink, you’ll miss it” in our fast-paced world, and the allure of authenticity and spontaneity in a regulated information climate2 . Spalding has acknowledged that this consciousness has spawned recent works which we identify to be ephemeral content: “things that are just happenings, and things that don’t last very long, which are part of life.” Practitioners are experimenting with durational and interactive formats, devising projects that are intentionally impermanent - to be created and destroyed within a small space of time. In the 1970s, at the height of explorative Modern Art practices in Singapore, artist Lim Leong Seng borrowed construction site materials to make temporary sculptures and returned the materials after exhibiting them. (Seng) More recently, ceramicists

Archives which value ephemera do exist but are few and far between. The Prelinger Archives and Library is one example of this strange species of archives. Megan and Rick Prelinger exclusively collect what they call “ephemeral” films and print media, including industrial advertising, educational videos, home movies, books, periodicals, zines, and pamphlets. (Voss 2, 10, 14) These were created for specific purposes and contexts which may no longer exist; Rick cites an example of a film by General Motors on war production, for example. (Voss 2) To them, the “ephemera” represents a kind of “provisional knowledge” - ideas that are not vetted, “sometimes incorrect”, or “don’t pan out over time”. (Voss 8) As it stands, their project is a rather novel one, with a unique take on why ephemera is a vital part of our history. The majority of archives still look upon ephemera with disdain. 2

A rather trite but appropriate example would be the mobile application Snapchat, which uses short-form videos that self-destruct after they have been viewed. In a review of the top “10 Breakthrough Technologies”, Snapchat was lauded as a “step toward a more nuanced kind of digital connection”. Posting unedited thoughts bears no long term consequences, as such, users can be candid and spontaneous. Moreover, users have to be constantly engaged as when the images slip away, they are no longer retrievable. Snapchat has gained popularity quickly as its ephemeral format satisfies a desire for a more “natural way to communicate”, free of the stresses of curating a perfect social media presence. (Rosen)

Rebecca Lee, Chua Ching Yi, and Zulkhairi Zulkiflee developed a participatory installation for the 2014 exhibition How Much Does A Polar Bear Weigh? 3 , where they invited visitors to step on sixty pristine clay tiles to “break the ice” on the opening night (see fig. 1-4). Within seven days, the installation was reduced to dust and brought back to a ceramic studio for recycling. Despite belonging to practices more commonly associated with permanence - Lim’s more well-known works are made of lasting materials like bronze and steel, and Lee’s clay creations are more often fixed through firing - these two works were clearly intended for temporary consumption. On a broader scale, we observe entire practices like performance art and participatory design employing such durational and interactive formats. Within these practices, there is a discernible shift in interest towards the deliberate construction of transient experiences. These evolving practices are often built on exploratory methodologies which test the boundaries of disciplines, like art critic Simone Osthoff’s and architect Donald

Kunze’s topological approach. This approach borrows the concept of topology, which “allows for linking near and far, up with down, in with out, in a paradoxical continuous space most easily understood by the classic example of the Möbius strip”. Applied in traditional media, it manifests as cross-contaminations between production and documentation; in discourse, dynamic relations between theory and history; and in participation, a collaborative construction of meaning between practitioner and viewer-reader. (Osthoff 21) In effect, the topological approach assumes the permeability of different disciplines and actively instigates ephemeral interactions between them. In this “participatory paradigm […] completeness is no longer possible [nor] desirable”. (Osthoff 22) Osthoff’s careful explication of her methodology, much like an established science, betrays a contemporary fascination with fluctuant sites of knowledge that resist classification4 . As a defining intellectual preoccupation of our time, it is critical that archives evolve with this shift towards the ephemeral, lest we end up with a void in our future history5.

The exhibition How Much Does A Polar Bear Weigh? was curated and featured works by students from School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA). From 21 May until 4 June 2014, visitors could interact with and disrupt materials like rubber bands, stackable chairs, and ceramic tiles within the SOTA Gallery. Prior to the exhibition, on 25 January, a workshop was conducted by the student curators to immerse participants in the project’s curatorial concept, via presentations, re-enactments of artworks, discussions, and various participatory activities that investigate the question: with what weight and gravity do we treat a gallery space, and how much of that weight is determined by the artworks and our perceptions of them? (Lee, et al.) 4

There are numerous creative methodologies that disregard boundaries of classification, much like the topological approach. Designer Kenya Hara and writer Tor Nørretrandes are advocates for exformative thinking, an approach which radically seeks to “make the known unknown [as] an act of creation” (Hara 22) or reinvention, thereby constantly liberating even the most ordinary objects from their perceived classifications. Professor of Art and Art History Ann Reynolds and artist Robert Smithson employ a “morphological methodology” to connect eclectic material (Osthoff 28), focusing on “categories of thought and images that remain invisible to established hierarchies of interpretation” (Reynolds xv). Similarly, Situationist International’s Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman posit that linking unlike things is productive practice. Their first law of détournement states that “it is the most distant détourned element which contributes most sharply to the overall impression”, as with unrelated fragments of text and image being composed into a collage. (Debord 35) Notably, each practitioner has tailored their interdisciplinary approach to their fields of operation, developing ways to cross-contaminate and rediscover various materials. 5

In a panel discussion on “The Rise of Ephemeral Art” at the Crunch 2009 conference, art critic and former curator Julian Spalding theorised that this void in our history on ephemeral content already exists: “Some might think [the old masters] were aiming to create permanent works… They weren’t at all, they were just producing stuff […] We think we’ve got ephemeral art and it’s new. In fact, we [just] don’t know about [the ephemeral art of the past]. We only have […] the bits of the art that survived. So all the ephemeral art of the past is gone, [and] we think ‘our’s is new’, which is a deception.” (Spalding, et al.)

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As such, I propose that the archive should be reformed to accommodate ephemera. To hasten this process, I will appropriate a methodology that routinely produces ephemera: the topological approach. By drawing from contemporary sources within and outside the archive, including art, literature, and curation, I will evaluate archives and documentation as a process to produce a record - which fail to incorporate and engage with ephemera, and explore possibilities for new archives or new forms of remembrance that can. As a point of clarification, I will not delve deeply into the world of digital archives. The owners of the Prelinger Archives and Library have expressed that “physical objects

and digital objects have different jobs to do”. (Voss 4) Each media type has distinct analogue and digital affordances which enable specific forms of research: “you can’t do art history research with a keyword search, for instance - that’s just one point. You can’t do dialogic research if you can’t see what materials face each other on different papers.” (Voss 6) Likewise, analogue affordances are fundamentally dissimilar to participatory and performative affordances. In the same way that the Prelingers discuss the limitations of online archives in relation to analogue ones, I hope to do a targeted examination of physical archives in relation to performative and participatory forms of ephemeral content.

Failures of the Archive: Silence and Distortion

“… the artists have taken a position that is critical of the institutional and discursive limitations that have not been able to incorporate and engage with their practices.” Simone Osthoff, Performing the Archive, p36

The archive originated as a unified and singular entity used by the Greeks to manage the law. As a regulating body, the archive maintains its power through the principle of consignation - or “gathering together”. In terms of authority, the archive adhered to a strict “hermeneutic tradition” where archons, political leaders, were accorded the right to generate, maintain, and interpret official documents. This consignation also manifested in location: the “gathering together” of documents in a magistrate’s dwelling. (Derrida 2-3) In both form and intent, the archive sought to “coordinate a single corpus, in a system or synchrony in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration”. (Derrida 3) To communicate a uniform standard of behaviour, the archive had to achieve homogeneity. Current archives still operate with these principles in mind. Dr Alexander du Toit explains that there is a standard metric of archival, based on details like administrative history, which is universally applied and rarely updated; the International Standard Archival Description (General) has remained

unchanged since 2000. Privilege is accorded to provenance; archivists must follow the collector or creator’s organisational logic regardless of whether they understand it or not. Further, several distinct “corpora” have been constituted to maintain sites of homogeneity: the museum for three-dimensional objects, the library for books, and the archive for rare and unique documents (see appendix). Comparatively, contemporary practices often produce content that is inherently heterogenous. This content does not reside neatly within conventional disciplines, media, or institutions, and often operate in opposition to the governing philosophy of archives. For instance, the topological approach employs “a multidimensional network and dialogical thinking that cannot be fully analysed by linear histories concerned primarily with issues of influence” (Osthoff 14). This approach essentially abandons the archive’s principles of provenance, chronology, and homogeneity, and denies the concept of a single “ideal configuration” in favour of perpetual “incompleteness”, as discussed above6 .

6 Philosopher, writer, and journalist Vilém Flusser explains why contemporary practices are doing away with the concept of “a single corpus” by discussing its merits. Flusser purports that by employing this new category of thought, we can expect expansions in the roles of different areas of knowledge, as well as a sort of seamless transmutability between them. “If we abandon the idea of possessing some identifiable hard core, and if we assume we are embedded within a relational network, then the classical distinction between ‘objective knowledge’ and ‘subjective experience’ will become meaningless. If intersubjectivity becomes the fundamental category of thinking and action, then science will be seen as a kind of art (as an intersubjective fiction), and art will be seen as a kind of science (as an intersubjective source of knowledge).” (399)

The incongruence between archive structures and contemporary practices manifests clearly in the silencing and distortion of ephemera, as observed in performance and participation. These practices are often documented using “default” methods like photography, a tendency which curator Okwui Enwezor attributes to how the photograph, in scholarship, is considered an archival record in its own right as a unique “analogue of a substantiated real or putative fact present in nature.”7 (11) However, the photograph is necessarily homogenous and limited in form and content, capturing only an instant of light and excluding all else beyond its frame. Qualitatively, it would be an incompatible archival technology for performance and participation, which are dynamic, generative, and durational. In a survey of fifty websites for participatory works, including that of innovation labs, art events, and design projects, I discovered a clear visual rhetoric to their photographic documentation. Everything falls under one of three categories: a group of people seated around a table; a wall or sheets of paper marked with diagrams or post-its; or crude objects made with arts and crafts materials. I quickly generated photographic collages

using these categories, scaling and aligning them based on their constants - the table, post-its, and primitive objects. These tables seem like mystical hotspots for discussion. In photos, however, these discussions are silenced; we cannot hear the participants’ insights or visualise their networked ecologies. As such, I subtracted this “mystical space” to express the photographs’ uniform effect of silencing forms of sharing across the table (see fig. 5). Similarly, the post-its appear as fragmentary squares of information; it is difficult to extract useful data from them via photographs. Realistically, they are encountered more as abstract configurations, as the collage demonstrates (see fig. 6). Likewise, the primitive workshop creations in the photographs express neither concept nor purpose without further explanation. In their visual meaninglessness, they are indistinguishable from each other, performing the role of one universally unidentifiable object (see fig. 7). These compositions make evident that, when processed through photography, the participatory workshop is reduced into a tableaux that features specific visual elements regardless of multitudinous topics, approaches, or outcomes - and silences the relational aesthetic that enables these workshops to function.

Okwui Enwezor’s “Archive Fever: Photography between History and the Monument” outlines the history of photography and how its operations are essentially that of archival: “From its inception, the photographic record has manifested ‘the appearance of a statement as a unique event.’ (Foucault 129) Every photographic image has been endowed with this principle of uniqueness. Within that principle lies the kernel of the idea of the photograph as an archival record, as an analogue of a substantiated real or putative fact present in nature.” (11) Further, “Because the camera is literally an archiving machine, every photograph, every film is a priori an archival object.” (12)

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Similarly, performance artworks often become defined by key photographs after their enactment. Ai Weiwei’s ‘Study of Perspective’ is a performance of protest where he travels to national monuments around the world and gives them the middle finger. Today, it is more widely referred to as a photographic series spanning 1995-2003 (Ho) and thus read very differently. A hierarchy in sites based on visual dominance emerged when ‘Study of Perspective’ started circulating as photographs, with the Eiffel Tower (see fig. 8) and Tiananmen Square images as the most proliferated ones, despite there being over twenty in total. If read purely as a performance, the gesture would be foregrounded above the sites instead. The focus would be on Ai’s ongoing campaign, expressing a sustained disdain for authority, seen most recently in his repeat of the gesture before Trump tower in New York City, USA in 2017. (“Ai Weiwei Flips Off Whole World”) Again, we observe the phenomena of documentation superseding performance. It is a worrying prospect that, despite silencing key ephemeral elements of performance and participation, photography is still a prevailing form of archival technology in both. Interdisciplinary designer Tristan Schultz speaks it thus: “technology as a bridging tool is seductive” but is also “a site of struggle”.

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Other forms of documentation also have the ability to distort our perception of time, problematising how time-based practices are received. Tehching Hsieh famously set himself the task of punching a time clock every hour on the hour for an entire year (see fig. 9) and meticulously documenting the entire process in ‘One Year Performance 1980-1 (Time Piece)’. At Tate Exchange’s ‘Art Time, Life Time: Tehching Hsieh’ talk, an audience member posed the question, “How do you see the past?” Hsieh immediately corrected her, saying that his work “[does] not talk about the past [but] about now, present time”. He also repeatedly insisted that he does not want people to see his document as his art (see appendix). However, as his audience is usually secondary8 , these traces to bygone events are the only way they can engage with the performance today. In fact, his documents

are a dominating force in his work, albeit unintentionally. With 8760 photographs, 365 punch cards, contracts, a uniform, and related apparatus all preserved to perfection (see fig.1015), ‘One Year Performance 1980-1’ may be the most thoroughly documented performance of our time - when presented, these documents control entire rooms (see fig. 16-17). Hsieh acknowledges that “without this document, today we [wouldn’t be] here” (see appendix), betraying an awareness that the work’s intent has to be negotiated against its dependence on the document as evidence of the performance’s existence. His performance about the present is thus perpetually at odds with these documents acting as markers of the past. Hsieh’s practice can be identified as one that is temporally misaligned with the archive; it resists documentation, if not in form then in philosophy.

“[Chris] Burden refers to ‘primary’ audiences as the people who were there, and ‘secondary’ audiences as the people who would read about it later.” (Ward 12)

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In other instances, documentary evidence is incredibly passive; it does not assert any value or meaning on its own besides the fact of its subject’s existence. Conversely, it is the users of the archive that “ventriloquise”9 the documents and objects within, giving it their own voice. This became evident in a disagreement over appraisal at the Live Art Development Agency’s (LADA) and Queen Mary Archive’s joint event Afterlives: Performance Art in the Archive. At Afterlives, the Ian Hinchliffe Archive’s custodian Dominic Johnson was speaking of “things [that] did not find their way into the archive”, including Hinchliffe’s fishing rod, and was rudely interrupted. A friend of the deceased Hinchliffe interjected and proceeded to share a memory about the object, suggesting that he thought it was imperative for this fishing rod to be foregrounded in the narrative of Hinchliffe’s life (see appendix). In effect, this action was a critique of Johnson’s appraisal

based on personal knowledge. Johnson was not privy to the personal life of Hinchcliffe and would naturally have different estimations for the value of his possessions. Here, we see the object as a site of knowledge without focus or intent, where myriad narratives can be derived and accorded different levels of importance. The silence and distortion rendered by archival and the varied influence of objects as documentation make the archive a deeply imperfect representation of history and substitute for memory. Historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi aptly emphasises that “the documents in an archive are not part of memory, if they were, we should have no need to retrieve them, once retrieved, they are often at odds with memory.” (21) We must design archival technologies or approaches that can activate the archive for ephemeral content and shift the focus away from memory.

W.J.T. Mitchell discusses our projection of the self through the object as a kind of heterogeneous ventriloquism. Objects speak with their own register and move towards their own autonomy via the influence of an external force: “The voice must not simply be ‘thrown’ into the inanimate object; it must seem to make the object speak with its own voice.” (140)

Archiphemera

Ruptures in the archive appear due to our unavoidably autobiographical treatment of archivisation. Jorge Luis Borges famously created an alternative taxonomy of animals, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge (Borges, Selected Non-Fictions 231), to critique John Wilkins’ proposal for a universal classification system. Allegedly, Borges appropriated ancient Chinese encyclopaedias to create curious categories such as “belonging to the emperor” or “embalmed” to illustrate how taxonomies vary between cultural contexts and eras (Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”). In this, we observe our inextricability from contemporaneity and locality, exemplifying Osthoff’s statement that “the past […] is always written from the present”. (38) Johnson and Hinchliffe’s friend had misaligned appraisals because they were born in different times and had different relationships with Hinchliffe. Likewise, LADA’s thematic archival system was challenged by Dr Eva Bentcheva during her presentation at MAP3: Archiving ‘Asia’ for not accounting for nationality. This disagreement likely arose due to LADA’s and Bentcheva’s varied exposure to Southeast Asian performance art. From our individual positions, there are things which are inevitably invisible to us. Freud observes in Moses

and Monotheism that there are unknowable intervals of time between the historical account and ourselves, and between the account and its inscription (51). As explored above, these intervals are not limited to time; they can be physical, intellectual, and cultural gulfs. In acknowledging our limitations, we come to an awareness of the arbitrariness of classification10. (Derrida 5) Hermeneutic and administrative rights to the archive are effectively rights to conjecture - to make the archive “useful” at our own discretion. This positions the archive not as a site of memory but of synthesis. Writer and curator Gareth Evans speaks about the etymology of ‘remember’ as “put[ting] the body back together again” (re-member), proposing an alternative form of remembrance based on configuration (see appendix). The arbitrariness of classification necessarily means that the archive can be configured and reconfigured into endless visions of the ideal, aligning with the topological approach addressed earlier. Like “a montage [which] can always be assembled differently, it ‘renounces all eternity value’ […] and is therefore constantly waiting for something like an infinite reworking.” (Evans 32)

In Archive Fever, Derrida articulates his concerns with the arbitrariness of classification by questioning, “what comes under theory or under private correspondence […] biography or autobiography? […] personal or intellectual anamnesis? In works said to be theoretical, what is worthy of this name and what is not? Should one rely on what Freud says about this to classify his works? Should one for example take him at his word when he presents his Moses as a ‘historical novel’? In each of these cases, the limits, the borders, and the distinctions have been shaken by an earthquake from which no classificational concept and no implementation of the archive can be sheltered. Order is no longer assured.” (5)

Given this, we can argue for an archival impulse fuelled by Joel Fisher’s concept of perfectibility in growth (116), in which failure or imperfection inform process and progress. This breakdown of norms and values in the archive - manifesting as the misalignments discussed prior - is “a condition not only to represent but to work through”. (Foster 21) With this in mind, the following strategic interventions attempt to address the failures of the archive and redesign them as generative tools. Firstly, as engagement with the archive is deeply subjective and personal, I will focus on the affective means through which we can connect with the ephemeral. Secondly, since the archive is built on conjecture, I will explore its literary potential. Thirdly, given that the archive is largely unsuccessful at exhibiting activity and dynamism, I will seek ways to animate it. Together, these explorations hope to mobilise the “failures” of the archive towards ephemera.

Archiphemera: Archive as Gesture

I believe our experience of the archive can be more intuitive; we encounter archive material both intellectually and instinctually, and the latter can be the targeted mode of engagement. In Osthoff’s exploration of performance in archives, she often cites philosopher Vilém Flusser, who regards languages and technology as “gestures” - as apparatuses, devices. (Osthoff 17) Flusser’s choice of the term “gesture”, denoting actions performed and received as feelings or intentions, underscores the affective potential of interfaces11 . I hope to appropriate this concept of “gestures” into a thought experiment that the archive can be used as a “gestural interface”. Perhaps these gestures will be received as piercing details that are inexplicably resonant on a personal level, as per Roland Barthes’ “punctum” (26-7), or more general intuitions of what Hsieh qualifies as a “life quality” - an intimation of a person who played a role in the work, be it as a character or a creator (see appendix). Regardless, in Barthes’ estimation, what we can intuit is more primary to understanding a work than its physical form: “is this not the sole proof of its art? To annihilate itself as medium, to be

no longer a sign but the thing itself?” (45) If the archive works as a gesture, it could open up new orders of looking that are instinctual, visceral, and, moreover, universal. Towards a more concrete implementation of the archive as gesture, I reference Kenya Hara’s psychology of ‘[coming] to a general idea of what [something feels like] without actual experience” (Hara 102). He claims that “there shouldn’t be much difference between the actual result and your speculation” (Hara 102) and, in so doing, validates personal assumptions as a way of knowing. These assumptions operate on sensory experiences which accumulate, gain value, and evolve into forms of awareness (Hara 101). The sensory stimuli builds further interrelations with experiences and memories that have associated meanings (Hara 102), as such they sustain to our intellectual and emotional faculties as well, functioning in a network as Flusser has implied. In practice, this means that the forms of one thing can be evoked by another and can be intuited by a viewer as a gesture of the actual experience, provided the viewer has had analogous experiences.

In parallel to this concept of the “gesture”, Martin Heidegger writes of an “essence” that evokes similarities but remains fundamentally different to the thing in question: “Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection upon art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning.” (340)

Realistically, material cannot be an entirely background operation in the creation of a gesture. At Tate Exchange, Hsieh offered a proposal to install a series of rooms proportional in scale to the length of his performances (“Art Time”) and the “Life Time” that elapsed between them (see appendix) (see fig. 18). He wished to create a present experience of time via space - to be experienced more acutely than the documents on display - in order to shift the focus on his work away from the past. In his words, “time is the main actor, space is [the] supporting actor” as time is invisible (see appendix). However, his endeavour seems to be futile. How can the ephemeral “background” experience of space be more dominant than physical documents, with their gravity and visual command? The document is a focal point for multiple senses, while space is largely understood proprioceptively. Moreover, while we may sometimes refer to time using space (“a distant past” for example), we do not attribute them to each other on a sensory level; it is difficult to intuit their relationship. Hsieh’s plan is optimistic at best.

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Objects or sites can be used as gestural devices through careful reframing. Curator Alfons Hug astutely identified the affective potential of Paulo Bruscky’s studio-archive in its messy state - distinctly unlike the erudite and pristine space of a typical archive - and “proposed to exhibit the whole studio exactly as it was” at the 26th Sao Paulo Bienal. (Osthoff 24) The space was packed to the ceiling with Mail Art, Fluxus, and the artist’s own works, intermingled with personal objects like kitchen utensils, books, newspapers, and films (see fig. 19). It was a striking visual representation of how Bruscky’s “art and life have always been inseparable”. (Osthoff 24) Hug effectively leveraged on the studio-archive’s image as something “transparently and immediately linked to what it represents” and which “possesses a kind of vital, living character”. (Mitchell 127) The “life quality” which inhabits his work would have been silenced if his collections had been organised into uniform boxes according to standard archival procedures. The artlessness of disorganisation was crucial in making the archive approachable, authentic, and imperfectly human. Presenting Bruscky’s studio-archive in totality as an artwork thus allowed the immediate and visceral perception of his integrated life and practice.

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Archiphemera: Archive as Literature

Bruscky’s studio-archive demonstrated “art’s potential to open up a world beyond an empirical or manifest order of knowledge”. (Merewether 14) Hal Foster names these “new orders of affective association”. (21) His term calls attention to the plural manifestations (“orders”) of the affective, which suggests that there are many mechanisms with which we could position archives as gestural interfaces. I have recently discovered several practitioners who determine the value of their works based on poetry and narrative; these encounters directed me towards a study of the archive in relation to literature. When photojournalist Paul Halliday excavated his archive for an exhibition, he selected images

for their poiesis, a quality which he deems more convincing than visual tropes. (Halliday “Excavating An Archive”) His practice is autoethnographical and “evoke[s] a subjective rendering of that which [he feels] compelled to respond to visually”12 (Halliday “London Project”) - these are typically unexpected coincidences. In contrast, Steven Spielberg designs his stories to compel, taking deliberate actions to infuse his narratives with poiesis and mystery. In an earlier draft of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), he comments that “I’d feel safer if the riddle wasn’t so literal but much more evocative of a poem [and] more esoteric” (see fig. 20). Both identify literary mechanisms as affective tools to ensure audience engagement.

On Halliday’s website for his twenty year ‘London Project’, he writes: “These images do not ‘represent’ the city – an utterly pointless and impossible task – rather, they evoke a subjective rendering of that which I have felt compelled to respond to visually. The work is a kind of autoethnography of my day-to-day life harnessing the power of photography to speak a language that resonates with a part of my on-going experience of being a Londoner”. In effect, Halliday acknowledges the futility of a complete and “accurate” representation of the city through photography, choosing instead to focus on photographic representation as a form of personal truth.

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What the archive has in abundance is an “avowed distance” (Hudek 15) and unknowable frames of time, as outlined by Freud. Dr Alexander du Toit reflects that artefacts like old photographs are remarkably hard to describe as records; you can only guess at their origin and content (see appendix). During her residency at Marx Memorial Library, Amy Feneck notably mobilises this gap in her knowledge about the archive’s photographs as lacunae, a narrative gap that she has to fill with fiction and speculation. Without much information on the history of the images, she began her excavation through familiar modes - the visual and literary - and with a receptiveness to externalities. Using a method Feneck calls “re-photography” (7), she captured photographs through their protective film, including reflections of overhead lights. She calls these reflections her “way of linking to the history of that time”; the light which she captures in the present is her “layer[…] upon all layers” of retroactive light that existed when the photographs were first taken13 (see appendix). Light thus highlights both the surface of the image and historical depth, operating as a metonym for both the past and present. Feneck extended this metonym into the narrativising of photographs in her book A Gentle Visual Fire. In response to an image of a doctor and nurse operating an x-ray machine, Feneck writes from the perspective of a fictional archivist ruminating over an x-ray

image and scientific imagination: “This light, travelling through machines, escaping into and out from objects, is going through time - layers of light over time that let you see an image, that let you see inside the body of a now dead man; inside the dead body of a man, now.” (13) (see fig. 21) Essentially, Feneck subverted the “mistake” of light obscurations into a literary medium, to discuss her inextricability from the present when she examines the past, and to synthesise the archive as “a compilation of displaced items” through fiction. (17) By designing distance into her process, Feneck configured the archive towards her own unique sensitivities and concerns. As an articulation of personal encounters, A Gentle Visual Fire communicates Feneck’s intent to de-privilege the archive. Feneck’s process for the book demonstrated that it is not disadvantageous to have no prior knowledge. She references Zizek’s “unknown knowns” as a way of thinking about the archive - that there are things we already know about it that we have yet to uncover. (Feneck 37, 56) Her literary exploration of the archive is her means of validating the layman’s perspective, to undermine previous conceptions of an erudite and esoteric archive. It thus also works towards Derrida’s conception of the “effective democratisation” of the archive, which “is measured by participation, access, constitution and interpretation.” (Derrida 4)

Notably, Paul Halliday’s process is quite similar to Feneck’s in that it demonstrates that our ability to process an image extends beyond the time at which the photograph is taken. He propounds the merits of second readings, reflecting that prolonged examination in a darkroom allows new wounding details or serendipitous narratives to emerge. (Halliday “Excavating An Archive”)

fig. 21

Feneck curates twenty-five photographs out of thousands to create a fiction; likewise, for the 2017 Venice Biennale satellite show ‘The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.’, Udo Kittelmann curates multiple perspectives to illustrate a lie. The show is built on the concept of “cross-pollination and mutual inspiration” between artworks, movies, and theatre sceneries, where works by various artists attend to each other. (Kittelmann 4) It features Thomas Demand’s ‘Folders’ (2017), a photograph of archival folders full of paper, set against a backdrop resembling the American flag (see fig. 22). It is an uncanny image, clearly a meticulous card construction of an actual scene. This work is encountered again from a separate source: a video installation by Alexander Kluge, ‘Conversation with Ben Lerner on May 10th, 2017’ (see fig. 23). Lerner explains that Donald Trump presented these folders at a press conference as evidence that he would avoid conflicts of interest during his presidency by relinquishing his businesses to his sons. These folders were revealed to be full of blank paper. The imitation documents Demand made highlight the farcical nature of

Trump’s actions, perhaps more than the actual folders could. Our discovery of its backstory through Lerner compounds the effect of a nasty revelation. Further, ’Folders’ is a work situated in a larger experience relating theatre and object, providing context for considering the construction and performativity of a lie (see fig. 24). Kittelmann’s curatorial decisions demonstrate the power imitation objects can have in narrativising the original objects as well as the ability for several mediums to elucidate one narrative when working together. Archive projects and exhibitions can be redesigned with the above elements in mind to create affective experiences and, in turn, accommodate ephemera. Firstly, curate content using the criteria of poiesis, mystery, and lacuna, to maximise the literary potential of the archive. Secondly, encourage the narrativisation and fictionalisation of archive content as a mode of synthesising personal truths and alternative histories. Thirdly, include multiple types of data and media that speak to each other, like interacting characters, so as to evoke the dialogic.

fig. 22

fig. 23

fig. 24

Archiphemera: The Archive is Alive

In response to the previous chapter, I propose a form of participation where archive administrators14 actively orchestrate changes in the treatment of archives. We have seen archives being appropriated as artistic mediums by third parties, as with Hug and Feneck, but we may also consider: what if the librarians at the Marx Memorial Library actively invited artists like Feneck for residencies? What if archivists invited curators like Kittelmann to reframe their collections through exhibitions? Creating a culture of engagement through opportunity can constantly give the archive new leases of life. LADA has spearheaded this through events, including collaborations with curator collective Something Human and Queen Mary Archives on MAP3: Archiving ‘Asia’ and Afterlives respectively. These comprised discussions, workshops, and performances, many of which provided meaningful insights on the nature of archivisation and how we play into it. Loo Zihan and Ray Lagenbach’s sorting exercise at MAP3 systematically unveiled the organic taxonomy of archival practices through a series of prompts (see

fig.25-26). Participants brought objects they associated with Southeast Asia, laid them on a series of conjoined tables, and were instructed to organise them (see fig. 27). Through various phases, Loo and Lagenbach drew attention to our “positionality” (how some of us actively sort and others simply observe; how we situate ourselves next to specific objects), our “general methodology [for] sorting” (in the first task, everything was grouped by function and material), how methodologies dissolve over time (as a participant remarked, “They’ve become less ordered [with each revision]”) and become more about figurative relations (on the table, a spiritual figure was placed in front of another, as if in conversation) (see fig. 28). The tables were then separated to create distinct islands of objects (see fig. 29). In this next phase, Loo and Lagenbach stressed more cognitive operations with tasks like “identify an object that doesn’t belong and think of where you should move it to”, emphasising that some objects are more “potent” or “unstable” than others. The workshop was a comprehensive and effective live demonstration of how we perform archival processes, consciously and subconsciously. Here, taste classifies the classifier. We are the ephemera in the archive15.

Take note: I use the term “archive administrators” as a broad classification here. Be aware that ownership, custodianship, and administrative structures vary greatly from archive to archive. The Victoria and Albert Museum has Keepers for departments dealing with different mediums; the Marx Memorial Library has an overall Library Manager and Project Archivists for specific collections; and the Stanley Kubrick Archives at the London College of Communications is administered by archivists at the college but owned by Warner Brothers. This creates challenges around how members of the public can use archives. Often, photography is not allowed, guidelines for borrowing material are stringent, and the number of photocopies or scans a researcher can request is also limited. To work with archives, one inevitably has to negotiate with these structures and identify which parties make the executive decisions. 15

In a panel discussion at MAP3, chaired by Dr Eva Bentcheva and with Raju Rage, Loo Zihan acknowledges the “self as media. [Information] when filtered through the body, necessarily contains a misreading. The self is a custodian of information at this point in time, preparing information to be passed on.” Essentially, the human is an interface that edits data using their idiosyncratic stores of knowledge. Information, when processed through an individual, is retransmitted to others in an edited form.

fig. 25

fig. 26

fig. 27

fig. 28

fig. 29

On the thread of performativity, reenaction is also considered essential for the animation, dissemination, and development of performance artworks. In a panel discussion at MAP3, Loo discussed ‘Brother Cane’ (1994) - a performance by Josef Ng that resulted in a ten-year proscription of performance art in Singapore - as an “imperative pedagogical resource”. Loo’s project ‘Archiving Cane’ (2012), which featured a reenaction of ‘Brother Cane’, was his non-institutional gesture towards making the performance available and, moreover, to rewrite a history so poorly portrayed by the media. The discussion-critperformance workshop ‘Receiving, Reenacting, Rescripting’ (2017) carried this gesture forward. Artists who had no prior knowledge of ‘Archiving Cane’ selected it from the LADA archive and gave it their personal voice through several modified reenactions (see fig. 30), rather like acts in a play. Here, reenaction allowed a single work to diffract into multiple narrative threads, contributing to both its development and circulation. As the performances were further adapted into participatory form via the workshop’s discussions (see fig. 31), they also entered a broader discourse on “context, authorship, [and] spectatorship in relation to archives, documentation and performativity”. (LADA 2)

Events like MAP3 can be imagined on a larger scale as biennales or festivals. Documenta, a large-scale temporary exhibition organised every five years in Kassel, notably uses a curatorial framework built on four key paradigms, all of which have been explored above: the Archive (research and knowledge storage), Game (staging and narration), Performance (event-like nature, action, movement, process), and Conversation (encounter and communication). (Siebenhaar 70-1) Seet Yun Teng, an assistant curator for Something Human, highlights this paradigm of conversation, citing Singapore’s Future of Imagination and Seiji Shimoda’s Nippon International Performance Art Festival as festivals that “sought to unite the region” and influence the Southeast Asian performance art scene (see appendix). Even a small project like MAP3 was able to connect people and material from various nationalities and institutions. For ‘Receiving, Reenacting, Rescripting’, the artists referenced documents that Singapore’s Independent Archive had recently given to LADA (see fig. 32), as part of their ongoing project to launch an online archive (see appendix). The event or festival is clearly a powerful mechanism that can generate links between sites of knowledge and infuse the archive with creative activity.

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fig. 31

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A second species of archives that are “alive” are located in education. The Stanley Kubrick Archives is known for its collection of unfinished projects (see fig. 33) - A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Aryan Papers among them as well as their finished iterations (see fig. 34) - Spielberg’s completion of A.I. following Kubrick’s death - demonstrating both perpetual incompleteness and multiple ideal configurations. Moreover, the archive serves as an educational resource in the London College of Communications (LCC). Its longevity is assured through generations of students who imbue it with “life” through new readings and creations, such as ‘The Joy of Sets x The Kubrick Archive’ (2016), a project based on scientific and design-oriented re-imaginings of A Space Odyssey (2001). The custodians of Queen Mary Archives and LADA “outsource” their student engagement from Queen Mary University’s Drama programme, which incorporates a ‘London / Archives / Documentation” module where students are brought to archives to conduct research. These archive administrators counteract the potential dormancy and death of the archive by borrowing active cultures that already exist in education.

fig. 33

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Practical Evaluations of Archiphemera

As I clarified a topology of ephemera in the archive, I also consolidated my findings in various design experiments. In accordance with the photographic compositions I produced as forms of analysis, I used my own visual and material sensitivities to conduct exercises that evaluate archival and documentation processes. I questioned if there were materials that could capture the ephemerality of an action, focusing on a gestureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s temporality. No Carbon Required (NCR) and carbon paper are duplication tools which produce near exact copies of the marks made on their transfer sheets. As manual receipts, these imprints are as valid as the original - irreproachable transmissions of information (see fig. 35). With carbon paper, I recorded everyday activities like typing and writing (see fig. 36-37). The visual clues in these recordings amounted to different levels of usefulness. One can estimate how long it takes to copy twenty lines against their own habitual speeds, but vaguely imprinted keyboard keys say little except for which letters are used more than others. We do not imagine typing as markings like we do writing, as such we cannot intuit its temporality in carbon paper imprints. In effect, the nature of our encounter with an action qualifies our sensitivity towards its record, as Hara has outlined. Tangentially, I also appropriated carbon paper to explore the arbitrariness of classification in a book cataloguing exercise. Playing with shifts in metric, such as points of alignment or book dimensions (book face,

profile, etc.), I produced a series of indexes (see fig. 38). This simple exercise involving measurable quantities derived many iterations. Conceivably, actual archive documents, with all their subjective and immeasurable qualities, would derive infinite configurations. I quickly found permutation to be incredibly tedious and grew more interested in the physical destructiveness of my documentation method. On one hand, there was the tangible interference of the carbon paper, resisting my typing action and artificially dictating an area in which I could write or arrange books. On the other, my mark-making action was consuming the carbon paper, irreversibly changing its form (see fig. 39). To me, this evoked ideas of palimpsestic erasure. The carbon paper is, in theory, ephemeral media. If I impress upon its surface sufficiently, all its carbon could be transferred onto other surfaces and it would no longer be carbon paper (see fig. 40). The negative that remains, however, would be a marker of its previous state and all the actions exerted upon it. I pondered the value of this takeaway: could it be an analogy for different media? Is it that if you reenact a performance enough, the original will completely erode and disappear? Can you see its manifestations elsewhere, like â&#x20AC;&#x153;negativesâ&#x20AC;? in the reenactions? Perhaps this is a consequence of working with ephemera: all actions or performances simultaneously destroy and create, and alternative methods of looking at the original have to be found in the new creations.

fig. 35

59 fig. 36

fig. 37

fig. 38 (left) fig. 39 (right)

Concurrently, I explored possibilities for three-dimensional objects, attempting to consolidate ideas of the gesture and Feneck’s validation of the laymen perspective on an artifactual scale. To structure this exercise, I referenced Tate Exchange’s ‘FACTORY: The Seen and The Unseen’ programme, in which three-dimensional embroiderer Fleur Oakes was invited to view a surgery and design a simulative object (see fig. 41). Oakes created a textile body to evoke the feelings of surgery at depth. Users had to sift through layers of “fat” made of coarsely woven yarn, soft “tissue” comprising elastic fabrics, and delicate “organs” constructed from breakable material (see fig. 42). In accordance with Oakes’ task, I assumed the position of an “untrained professional” and quickly iterated a few devices that replicate the psychological and sensory experiences of certain specialised activities. Among these objects is a phlebotomy kit comprising a cardboard tube covered with clingfilm (skin) and elastic bands (muscle), under which a plastic tube containing red wire (vein) is hidden (see fig. 43). The kit should produce the following psychological experience: tentative searching for the “vein” through layers of “muscle”; uncomfortable resistance against the reflexive “muscle” when holding it in place; and finally, a deliberate puncturing of the “skin” during “extraction”, creating an irreversible “wound” (see fig. 44). This exercise is a working thought experiment on how practices can be translated into experiential tools, which in turn explores the possibility of a new breed of affective archives that collects analogous objects.

fig. 41

fig. 42

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It is important to me that my research and making processes are reflexive, to maintain symmetry between the form and content of my project. For my studio exercises, most of this reflexivity was serendipitous. When I explored the materiality of carbon paper, I encountered a semblance of the erasure and violence present in archivisation. The typing and writing exercises also allowed me to realise Haraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept of sensory approximation. In research, however, I was more deliberate in building reflexivity into my process. I tried as much as possible to collect data in a participatory manner, gravitating towards live events, lectures, panel discussions, and conferences in lieu of articles and other static media. In a way, this was to allow the research to â&#x20AC;&#x153;happenâ&#x20AC;? to me the way that a performance would reveal things as it unfolds. I also imagine that appendices could be considered miniature archives on their own. As I was compiling my transcripts, I gained an experiential sense of the challenges of archives, being faced with the tasks of synthesising raw data as well as making the data interesting to someone else. As a physical culmination of my processes, I have designed this report to be a micro-archive of sorts - a small, idiosyncratic repository of material about ephemera and

archives. Towards this, I have borrowed elements from the Kubrick archive and adapted them, paying close attention to their materiality. This includes a cover letter, in the manner of private correspondences between Kubrick and his colleagues (see fig. 45); request slips, which demand targeted exploration of archive material (see fig. 46); sketches and reproductions, in the spirit of experimentation and analysis (and as a nod to my own preferred method of documentation); and a reference system, to signpost distinct articles of information. To complete the document, I have even annotated the transcripts with my own thought processes to indicate that I have synthesised the information in a very personal manner. Compositely, this report is an articulation of an experimental framework for encountering and contributing to the archive, and an artefact which should be read as a gesture in itself. My studio exploration is still in its very beginnings, exploring a very wide context from an individual standpoint. There are many speculations that need to be evaluated via means that are non-artifactual. This project must evolve to include participation, performance, education, curation, or even policy building, so as to truly exemplify a topological methodology and, moreover, to infect people beyond me.

fig. 45

fig. 46

Conclusion During my exploration, I came to the inconvenient realisation that I had set myself the contradictory goal of instilling permanence in transience. However, I began to realise that ephemeral things have their own version of longevity: resonant emotions or images that work as compelling traces; a language of gestures more universal than speech; relationships between thoughts and people that flourish independently; and evolving cultures which exist beyond the individual. Change is constant. Loo and Lagenbach’s sorting exercise further positions the human as the ephemeral element, creating disorder in the archive even in processes of ordering. The archive could benefit from taking on more ephemeral qualities, to constitute a space that is closer to a likeness of ourselves - how we think, experience, and create - which would be easier to intuit on a basic level. Accumulations of ephemera in the archive can occur as growing cultures or diverging threads of reenaction. Likewise, to “store” or recover ephemera, we can reforge traces - to performances, events and other brief occurrences that we did not have the privilege to be a part of - through mechanisms like the gesture, literature, participation, performance, and education. These will not be executed with perfect accuracy, but with the intention to communicate the “essence” of a work in a way which would be compelling and relevant to us now. Taking a topological approach towards the archive and ephemera has brought fascinating new orders of looking and new forms of remembrance, even if we have not arrived at conclusive answers or solutions. Reproducing an exact likeness of ephemera in the archive may be futile, but the search for a method is anything but. We must keep envisioning an archive of the future which ephemera can freely inhabit.

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Images Fig. 1. Chua, Ching Yi. “Setting up Installation on 20 May 2014.” Instagram, 20 May 2014, www.instagram.com/p/oXGVwMegbGnQhBCrxMPjLJE28qmLmqNT7Lg0/?taken-by=1angkukueh. Digital Image. Fig. 2. Chua, Ching Yi. “Audience interaction on 21 May 2014.” Instagram, 21 May 2014, https:// www.instagram.com/p/oOQjNWMeu5No IeFdzSze8pZM_4bzMhAbgNlJ80/?takenby=1angkukueh. Digital Image. Fig. 3. Chua, Ching Yi. “Audience interaction on 21 May 2014 (close-up).” Instagram, 21 May 2014, https://www.instagram.com/p/ oOQIapMeuVT_e9oYFdcbhElmjxalDtaM UMKvM0/?taken-by=1angkukueh. Digital Image. Fig. 4. Chua, Ching Yi. “Installation on 27 May 2014.” Instagram, 21 May 2014, https:// www.instagram.com/p/ogOdhHMettCC6 MSv1c4wGqtsnKtgy6FUwdERE0/?takenby=1angkukueh. Digital Image. Fig. 5. Kong, Yin Ying. Photographic Collage: Table. 29 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 6. Kong, Yin Ying. Photographic Collage: Post-its. 29 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 7. Kong, Yin Ying. Photographic Collage: Crude Object. 29 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 8. Ai, Weiwei. “Study of Perspective - Eiffel Tower.” MOMA, MOMA, New York, 1995-2003, www.moma.org/collection/ works/117095. Photograph. Fig. 9 Kong, Yin Ying. Tate Modern: Photo of Hsieh Punching Card in 1980. 2 Dec. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 16 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Exhibition Space 1. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 32 Kong, Yin Ying. ‘Receiving, Reenacting, Rescripting’: Discussion. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 17 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Exhibition Space 2. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 33 Stanley Kubrick Archives. Christopher Moore (Concept Art). 1990. SK/18/3/2/3/1. Stanley Kubrick Archives, University Archives and Special Collections Centre, London College of Communications, London.

Fig. 18 Kong, Yin Ying. Tehching Hsieh’s Proposal (Reproduction). 12 Jan. 2018. Digital Image. Fig. 19 Kong, Yin Ying. Re-photograph of Paulo Bruscky’s Studio-archive from Simone Osthoff’s ‘Performing the Archive’. 31 Dec. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 20 Stanley Kubrick Archives. ‘AI back from SS’ (p58). 1996. SK/18/3/1/4/15. Stanley Kubrick Archives, University Archives and Special Collections Centre, London College of Communications, London. Fig. 21 Feneck, Amy. Taking an X-ray. 2017. Print. A Gentle Visual Fire. By Amy Feneck, 2017, pp. 12. Print. Fig. 22 Kong, Yin Ying. Thomas Demand’s ‘Folders’. 6 Nov. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 23 Kong, Yin Ying. Alexander Kluge’s ‘Conversation with Ben Lerner on May 10th, 2017’. 6 Nov. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 24 Kong, Yin Ying. Thomas Demand’s ‘Folders’ in context. 6 Nov. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 25 Kong, Yin Ying. Notes from Sorting Exercise p1. 4 Nov. 2017. Digital Image.

Fig. 34 Stanley Kubrick Archives. AI Film Stills. n.d. SK/18/3/3/2/1/6. Stanley Kubrick Archives, University Archives and Special Collections Centre, London College of Communications, London. Fig. 35 Kong, Yin Ying. NCR Receipt. 31 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 36 Kong, Yin Ying. Carbon Paper Typing Exercise. 27 Nov. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 37 Kong, Yin Ying. Carbon Paper Writing Exercise. 27 Nov. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 38 Kong, Yin Ying. Carbon Paper Book Cataloguing Exercise. 2 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 39 Kong, Yin Ying. Used Carbon Paper. 2 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 40 Kong, Yin Ying. Exhausting a Piece of Carbon Paper. 4 Dec. 2017. Digital Image. Fig. 41 Kong, Yin Ying. Fleur Oakes’ Textile Body for Surgery at Depth. 7 Oct. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 26 Kong, Yin Ying. Notes from Sorting Exercise p2. 4 Nov. 2017. Digital Image.

Fig. 42 Kong, Yin Ying. Fleur Oakes’ Textile Body for Surgery at Depth (Exploded Diagram). 11 Jan. 2018. Digital Image.

Fig. 27 Kong, Yin Ying. Sorting Exercise: Items on Table. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 43 Kong, Yin Ying. Phlebotomy Kit. 14 Jan. 2018. Photograph.

Fig. 28 Kong, Yin Ying. Sorting Exercise: Idol before Idol. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 44 Kong, Yin Ying. Phlebotomy Kit (Exploded Diagram). 12 Jan. 2018.

Fig. 12 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Contract. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 29 Kong, Yin Ying. Sorting Exercise: Islands of Objects. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 13 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Uniform. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 30 Kong, Yin Ying. ‘Receiving, Reenacting, Rescripting’: Reference Material. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 45 Stanley Kubrick Archives. Christopher Moore (Cover Letter). 1990. SK/18/3/2/3/1. Stanley Kubrick Archives, London College of Communications Archives and Special Collections Centre, London.

Fig. 10 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Film Strips. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 11 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Punch Cards. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 14 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Chad. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph. Fig. 15 Kong, Yin Ying. Venice Biennale Taiwanese Pavilion: Time Clock. 7 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 31 Kong, Yin Ying. ‘Receiving, Reenacting, Rescripting’: Performance. 4 Nov. 2017. Photograph.

Fig. 46 Kong, Yin Ying. Request Slips. 12 Dec. 2017. Photograph.

YYK/9/1 YIN YING KONG pp 85

19/01/18

INTRODUCTION TO ARCHIVE CATALOGUING WITH DR ALEXANDER DU TOIT

YYK/9/2 YIN YING KONG pp 91

19/01/18

TEHCHING HSIEH’S PRESENTATION AND Q&A SESSION AT TATE EXCHANGE

YYK/9/3 YIN YING KONG pp 95

19/01/18

INTRODUCTION BY DOMINIC JOHNSON AT ‘AFTERLIVES’

YYK/9/4 YIN YING KONG pp 97

CONVERSATION BETWEEN AMY FENECK AND GARETH EVANS ON A ‘GENTLE VISUAL FIRE’

19/01/18

YYK/9/5 YIN YING KONG pp 103

IN CONVERSATION WITH SEET YUN TENG

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Yin Ying Kong January 2018