The Mad Spin/Organising our Things

My last post was about ‘why’ we create, now this one muses on how we ‘archive’ what we create…

Today I am thinking about archiving again.

Where in the past – and it’s something I remember noting in my diaries – I have felt a sense of certain phases of my life closing and others beginning, now I can’t help this feeling of the ‘mad spin of ongoing days,’ things just keep rolling on. Is this something about getting older?

And then with archiving, both physical things as well as the mental, how to go about that process of putting things in a box and saying that’s done, it’s there in a neat ‘sense-full’ package that I can look back on and access at my leisure, now move on. The increase of digital data in our lives adds another dimension, including the great advancements in digital record keeping and archiving.

The idea of archiving was something I was interested in as part of my recent exhibition about books and reading, looking at paper and digital worlds. This included thinking around letters and the dominance of emails and online documents these days- how will these things be stored, collected, and understood in the future?

Serendipitously, Ballarat local Rhizome Digital specialises in the area of archiving and is running monthly info sessions so it couldn’t be better timing! Info here.

So with all this: personal, cultural, and creative (for artists archiving of creative projects themselves) how do we choose what to keep and what to discard? And what are the best ways of doing this?

That is where I am at now, trying to make some order in my life, or still working out how to accept that this dream of perfect organisation will only ever be a work in progress.

Part of this is also the fascinating relationship we have, personally and creatively, with our past lives/works. This morning I took a stroll down Finch St, and peeked in at the place where I was involved with staging an interactive installation adventure in a run-down but magical old vacant house owned at the time by my mother-in-law. The house looked pretty much the same, except for the addition of a marmalade cat and a satelite dish. Life is funny, and as with my Masters research into sites and their multiple meanings through time, traces of the past exist in both tangible and more intangible ways… perhaps this is what is called memory? ; )

Well there it is, I’m sure I will ponder more on this topic as I begin my work again for next year’s Heritage Weekend event in Ballarat. More soon, and as always- thoughts and advice welcome!