Jennie Guy
Opening a Fissure / Filling a Void
You have given yourself the task of writing a philosophical fiction that addresses the role of the archive in a contemporary art context by staging an imagined roundtable conversation between characters that loosely resemble Andy Warhol, Gilles Deleuze, Gregory Sholette, and Jane Bennett. You quickly realise that you do not have the ability to come up with a selection of finite observations addressing this subject in a conversational form. In an attempt to grapple with such an impolite and unwieldy subject matter, you decide to pen a narrative about a couple whose character traits establish a metaphor for wrestling with an archive. The setting of this narrative is an old, decrepit – possibly haunted – family home, with a collection of objects stored in the attic. The characters are a couple called Frieda and Malcolm, Frieda favouring thorough preservation at all costs and Malcolm being a “let’s start with a clean slate” type of guy. On discovering the archive in the attic, the couple develops contrary ethical stances towards its maintenance, leading to a violent physical confrontation. (Who hits who first?)
Excerpt from Opening a Fissure / Filling a Void (Or What We Talk About When We Talk About Archives), a short philosophical fiction commissioned by Firestation Artists Studios. This text was published in News Views 2012.