Archives and Records Management Conference

Glasgow, August 2018

An interactive performative installation that had been influenced by the cataloguing of the Adrian Howells archive. The purpose was to provide a replication of the archivist workplace environment in which normally the profession manages rather than visiting. The performance was archivist led, their questions, their behaviours, produced the performance.

The artist archivist archive was opened within a makeshift reading room for the archivist community to browse, search, question, view art records evidencing interactions with Scottish based archive collections. Archivists were welcomed to construct large compositions using a variety of small collage pieces. The collection evidences the artist archivist studio practice, a large collection of visualised thoughts, research, diaries in which further context can only be discovered with a conversational cross examination of the artist memories.

Reflecting upon the performance; archivists replicated the same behaviours as researchers do when visiting archive institutions. The audience hesitated, they were nervous, intimidated by not knowing clearly how to function and what to do. Intimidated by a room which openly questioned if what they were seeing, or participating in, was actually art?