The drag of the archive

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Clarke, Elly. 2023. The drag of the archive. Art & the Public Sphere, 12(2), pp. 229-258. ISSN 2042-793X [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1386/aps_00098_7

Abstract or Description

Dragging the Archive: A Personal Re:encounter with Franklin Furnace’s Cyber Beginnings was an exhibition I curated in the Victorian Library at Pratt Institute in New York that showed a range of materials relating to the ‘cyber turn’ the organization took in the mid-1990s and the first few years of Franklin Furnace’s decade-long performance series of work presented online entitled The Future of the Present.1 Keen to highlight the labour involved with maintaining such an archive, my curatorial approach included weaving in my own personal diary entries from that time to provide a 22-year-old’s perspective of New York at that time; my own photographs of both the archive and the people involved in it; a video I made of never before shown slides of the first two years of the Netcasts,2 and e-mails revealing the pushback founding director Martha Wilson and her team encountered in this decision to move from being a physical arts organization with a space3 in downtown Tribeca, to an online organization. A fax from Laurie Anderson expresses dismay at this new mode of presenting work, whilst negotiations with Pseudo Studios revealed how much money was being charged for this pixilated vision of the present moving into the future. This article is a poetic reflection on the personal approach I took to putting this show together a year on, incorporating where I am (was) now (then) as I wrote/write, not very well with lingering COVID-19, feeling myself to be archived, as the digital version of the show lives on. My own labour (for the time being) exhausted.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1386/aps_00098_7

Additional Information:

Dragging the Archive was part of the Franklin Furnace/Pratt Libraries exhibition series Live at the Library. It was curated by Elly Clarke with exhibition identity by Yunjia Yuan. Live at the Library VIII was 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 Libraries; The Silicon Valley Community Foundation; CHASE Doctoral Training Programme; and the Board of Directors, members, and friends of Franklin Furnace Archive.

Keywords:

drag, dragging, curation, Franklin Furnace, illness, artist as curator, online/onsite, exhibition, COVID-19

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