Dragging The Archives Virtual Tour
An online/onsite exhibition by artist Elly Clarke of materials from the early cyber years of Franklin Furnace, 1996-2002. Installed in heavy museum-like vitrines across all levels of the Pratt Library, the show is to be encountered in any order, (pro)posing a starting point rather than an end. This ex:position is an invitation: to discuss. To encounter. To reflect. And to be involved: by writing, by posting, by augmenting the text/s by zooming in via the QR codes that will give greater clarity to the fade of the fax, the detail of the slides, the YES / NO / YES notes scribbled on the edge of a rejected proposal dug out from deep storage, and grants a voice to the person who encounters it. In physics, drag is a force that pulls in two directions at once: forwards, and back; up, and down. It is also both a performance – with the possibility of transformation – and a burden, or resistance. Within the context of this archive, how to hold this tension? How to re:present evidence of a time, an event, a happening, a performance – as well as the major institutional shift taken by Franklin Furnace at this time – out of the physical and digital matter that remains?