In my July 1 post I wrote about archives-based publishing practice as a form of study. At the time I was immersed in the archives at Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) in anticipation of an exhibition I have there this fall. Today I wish to explore: what if publishing from archives is closer to shopping than to studying?
I owe this analogy to documentary filmmaker (or in his words, “television journalist”) Adam Curtis. He likens his own process of scouring the BBC footage archives as “shopping” for the best material, which he then organizes by theme/feeling/affect and rates by excellence. You can read more about his fascinating process here in a New Yorker profile: “Curtis watches most of what he finds on fast forward, whizzing through QuickTime files. He allows himself to be distracted. ‘It’s like shopping,’ he said. ‘You just go through it.’”
But I recall elsewhere, in another interview, and I regret I did not make note of where I encountered it (clearly I am a big Adam Curtis fan): Curtis elaborates on how his process is actually a very discerning form of shopping. He said, and I paraphrase here, that you only take the very best and put it in your cart. Only what truly grabs you. If something is just OK, put it back. Do not buy it.
A few thoughts on this:
1. Is the process of creating from found material, which comprises curatorial surveying and critical analysis but also a more primal and immediate “I want this, and this, and this” --- is this process of creation not also a form of consumption? Is this a contributing factor to the popularity of work from archives these days: we are so well trained as consumers we turn this way in our artistic practices as well? (Would all forms of artistic creation, indebted in some way to work that has been done before, also be forms of consumption? If not quite as blatantly?)
2. Popular culture often asserts that shopping releases dopamine, a rush of pleasure. But Psychology Today reports “dopamine is also critical in causing seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information.” So work in archives prompts further work in archives…
3. And does this suggest that some forms of studying—when it is research, search—is also a form of shopping? Is all seeking a type of shopping? Or is this a category mistake: is shopping only shopping when money is exchanged?
4. I’m currently in the process of moving house (of 15 years) and studio (of 19 years) and am all too aware that in my scouring of thrift stores and second-hand markets I buy way too much of not always the very best things. The excess of the mediocre is heavy and burdensome. Similarly, at WSW: I photographed 120 items from their archives. That is more than I need. In going through them now, there’s so much wonder, but also overwhelm at the magnitude. How to choose only the very best?
Emily Larned has been publishing as an artistic practice since 1993. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut. For the past five years she has been working on a book with feminist activist and radical police educator K.D. Codish. Her exhibition The Work Around the Work opens this October at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY.
