An in-person interactive workshop led by Pratt Institute Archivist Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez on finding meaning in the archive. Working with and around objects highlighted through the current Live at the Library exhibition Dragging the Archive, participants are invited to look beyond the content of an archive in order to focus on its structure, context, and significance. Collectively and collaboratively, participants and facilitator reflect on how meaning is constructed through a contextualization and critique of the archive and its processes. Instead of asking: What is this?, we will ask: Who created it? Who kept it? Why? What does this mean to me?
Participants would leave with an understanding of how to gather and interpret information in a variety of formats – including photographs, correspondence, and ephemera, and an appreciation of how seemingly static records can influence our (very alive!) interpretations of events, people, histories, and relationships.
Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez is the Institute Archivist at Pratt, where she also teaches a course on archival theory and practice. This event is open to the public and free to attend, with a maximum of 20 places.
This event was presented as part of Dragging the Archive: A personal (re)encounter with Franklin Furnace’s Cyber Beginnings by Elly Clarke – the 8th Live at the Library collaboration between Franklin Furnace and Pratt Institute.
This workshop was presented January 25, 2023
6:00 pm-8:00 pm ET
Bio
Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez
Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez is the Virginia Thoren and Institute Archivist at Pratt Institute Libraries and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information. Prior to joining Pratt, Cristina was a National Digital Stewardship Resident for Art Information at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library. Cristina’s work is focused on the application of social justice principles to archival practice through participatory and non-hierarchical ways of knowledge-seeking and making. She is a founding member of Archivistas en Espanglish, a collective dedicated to amplifying spaces of memory-building between Latin America and Latinx communities in the US and currently co-runs Barchives, an independent outreach initiative that brings archivists to bars to talk about New York City’s archival collections and local history. She holds a BA in Geography from Universidad de Puerto Rico and an MLS with a certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials from CUNY Queens College.
Dragging the Archive is curated by Elly Clarke. Exhibition identity is designed by Yunjia Yuan. Live at the Library VIII is presented with the support of Michael Asher Foundation; The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Pratt Institute; The Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and the Board of Directors, members, and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
Dragging the Seminar: a collaborative trans-institutional re:interpretion of Dragging the Archive – by students from Pratt Institute and Goldsmiths College, University of London
The aim of the seminar was to further explore and play with some of the ideas of the exhibition as a whole: what is it to encounter things online versus onsite? How can we interpret what we see? How can we communicate this with someone we have never met? And what is an archive anyhow? (This, in addition to all that the show contains and triggers in relation to performance and technology at the turn of the millennium.)
In the end, six archival fragments were selected and written about by the students – results of which are shared below, and indicated by new labels in the vitrines. In this way, these contributions become part of the hi/story and archive of the exhibition itself.
Kim Bobier is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute’s Department of the History of Art and Design. She specializes in modern and contemporary periods while her scholarship and teaching emphasize a social justice lens. She focuses on Black artistic and visual production, critical race studies, intersectional and transnational feminism, archives, and surveillance studies. As Bobier writes her solo book project Monitoring and Modeling Citizenship: Racializing Surveillance in Contemporary Art, for other work, she eagerly explores collaborative learning, research, and expression.
Elly Clarke has a practice that is extremely collaborative, which she applies to her teaching as well. She has been running her ‘Alter Ego Dinner Party Collaborative Script Writing Workshop’ in a variety of online & offline contexts since 2016. In terms of her practice as an educator, Clarke believes that the knowledge in the room should be acknowledged and built on. Collaboration and conversation can be a good way of unlocking this, in unusual and creative forms.
Origins (Martha Wilson’s Rolodex)
2023, 5 Rolodex from Deep Storage
Elly Clarke
Readymade sculpture
virtrine_1_1_rolodex
DS
Aimee Cho & Nancy Nan
An awkward performance of two introverts by the name of Aimee Cho [left] and Nancy Nan [right] responding to Origins (Martha Wilson’s Rolodex.)
#Sergina T Shirt (I want your data)
2022, t shirt printed on both sides
Elly Clarke
Scan the QR code to hear a love song by #Sergina – and to share your data
vitrine_2_2_tshirt
AO
Michael Johnson & Sydney Kalt
#Sergina’s T Shirt
Missed Calls (Telephone Logs from Deep Storage, 1984-1988)
2023, 29 Telephone Log books from Deep Storage, 16″ x 12.5″ x 10.75″
Elly Clarke
Records of missed calls from 1984-1988 found by Elly Clarke in Deep Storage and presented as a sculpture.
vitrine_2_4_missedcalls
DS
Lydia Rubin & Lily Herring
You were in Vitrine 2.4 on Floor 2 of the Dragging the Archive exhibit, the subject of cross-continental discussion. Unknown context. Only one book visible out fo 29. No name attached to the telephone logs. Only you. Lots of imagination in terms of who “YOU” refers to. [new paragraph] Who are you? Waht’s in what we cannot see? Absence means something as well.
Breakfast Invitation from Pseudo Studios – by email
1998, email printed on US Paper, marked up in Martha Wilson’s handwriting
Franklin Furnace Archive
Handwritten note to Galinsky expresses concerns about the $30,000 due to Pseudo. See Letter of Intent in vitrine_2_1
vitrine_2_4_invitation
HQ
David Liu & Li Li, inspired by a conversation with Grace Park
David acutely observed that the email lacked the interpersonal warmth that was otherwise naturally rendered in Martha’s handwritten material. In terms of Li Li’s personal associations, she immediately connected with this fragment through its poignancy, because she too had many times drafted emails on paper before transcribing them digitally. Since David was familiar with
the backdrop of this invitation, he felt it captured the ambivalent dynamics between a cheerful and excited Galinsky and nerve-wracked Martha.
Also see here for more writing
The Future of the Present 2000: Final Review of the year 2000
2000, CD Rom
Franklin Furnace
vitrine_3_1_cd
HQ
Blue Ruthen & Gina Somma
Coming soon to a D-V-D and Home Video for last time ever
Helmet (Mir is Here)
1998
Irina Danilova
Helmet made for Franklin Furnace Netcast MIR IS HERE on 15th January 1999 and stored in various places since. This Helmet also made an appearance in the 2019 Live Netcast.
vitrine_3_3_helmet
AO
A location history of this object by Irina Danilova: This helmet was made for the Mir is Here performance at 2059 Colonial Ave. basement apartment in the Bronx in 1997/1998. It was flooded in the basement storage space in the nearby building in the Bronx and then stored at the extra space storage unit in the Bronx from the end of 1998 till 2000. In 2000-2003 is was placed in the Bronx River Art Center studio/storage space, then moved to new Hope, Pennsylvania, first to garage, then into storage/studio 2003-2023.
Elizabeth Feirstein, Youngin Seo, Ysabell I Wain
2023
As can be seen in the exhibition’s photographs, this helmet has been all over NYC, from out on the streeet, to public audiences, and of course to Franklin Furnace netcast perforramnces. In the specific perfornance linked below, the helmet was used to tell a story about a Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut becoming entangled. As tehy struggle to type on the keyboards, they eventually type “HERE IS MIRE”, which translates to “here is peace.”
Dragging the Archive is curated by Elly Clarke. Exhibition identity is designed by Yunjia Yuan. Live at the Library VIII is presented with the support of Michael Asher Foundation; The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The New York State Council on the Arts, from the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Pratt Institute; The Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and the Board of Directors, members, and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.
