(Time) Travels in the Archive

The Artist @ Distance program premiered with a collaborative project (Time) Travels in the Archive, involving the Hardwick Gallery artist in residence Louise K Wilson and myself as the University of Gloucestershire Archivist. Proposed as an armchair travel portal concept, inspired by the writings of by the writings of Xavier de Maistre’s Voyages around my Room, where the imprisoned soldier was confined under house arrest in 1790. Xavier has a relationship with his own unique creativity, a singular experience. Contemporary navigation of temporary COVID imprisonment has given provenance to our relationship with information accessibility. Xavier’s imagination doesn’t physically exist just as our millions of online dialogical interactions.

Through creative activities and digital multimedias, the project aimed to repair the temporary physical disconnect caused by COVID restrictions. Yet evolved into an archive advocacy model enabling the access equality and opportunity for multiple learning styles (ie: social, visual, aural etc…) and diverse cultural perspectives.

As the archivist, my challenge was to enable access to the archive materials through digital means only. This action transformed what could be considered a visitor? Normally a space is available for a researcher to sit, to order records they wish to view, to lay records upon a table and carefully study the information. Louise was prevented by COVID lockdown laws to physically visit however in a way her non-presence was felt within the physical space.

The majority of the University records have not received item level cataloguing. A volume containing over 100 pages of written text, drawings and photographic prints are summarized by one sentence. Archivists’ are walking finding aids, our profession has an enriched knowledge as to where to locate relevant information for research purposes. My knowledge of the collections was far superior to written descriptions of the archive, thus Louise sent creative briefs as to what type of genres or materials she wanted to use.

Louise was at first ‘seeking out quiet images: photographs that suggest aspects of touch and tactility, sounds, smells, empty rooms’. A still moment in time, a photograph is anything but still. Shutter speeds were significantly slower, those sitting for a captured image held poses for longer durations, the lighting had to be factored by the photographer unlike todays technology.

Since c1880s, student associations have collated and collected student experiences within the Chelt volumes. Massed writings, drawings, theatre programs, later photographic prints added. The Chelt evidences the student educational journey within Gloucestershire (UK). These still moments in time documented a personal journey, from my perspective an ideal record sets to make available as the University is the custodian as well as copyright holder.

I took over 3500 photographic images capturing multiple Chelt volume pages, amassing over 12GB of data all of which was organized & transmitted to Louise. Over seven working days I managed to collate this data, simultaneously inspecting each record for potential copyright & data protection restrictions. The nature of creativity is unknown outcomes, my priority was to enable creative flexibility through mass data. Louise could still interact with data, replicate the experience of flicking through volumes or taking time to study specific elements.

Yet as the project proceeded, increasingly I started to respond to Louise’s creativity. Using a camera set with a slow shutter speed, I started to use the camera to draw the archive environment. Deliberately allowing the camera to create multiple lines and perspectives, my work wanted to understand the idea of time. How a still photographic image from say c1920 is anything but still.

The final print may be split second moment in time - visual information preserved for longevity. The formation of a composition, setting up equipment & deconstruction, choices of fashion, knowing how the image is to be curated and in what format, the scale of time devoted to this singular image grows even more when factoring in the dark room process that develops the image using chemical reactions. We are merely witnessing the traces of an activity.