Laura Oriol, the archive we live in
autonome vormgeving
Heike Langsdorf
Frederik Leroy
– the archive we live in – is a participatory work questioning the permeability of our identities: our subjectivities in relationship to others and the contexts we find ourselves in.
I believe that we are made of others, that the people, the culture, the politics, the history that surround us compose an archive as such, that we draw on to build ourselves.
This archive is a very active space: traces never cease to transform as we, archival bodies, come into contact with them.
This project is born out of a desire to create a practice of encounter, both of oneself and of others, in an attempt to understand the processes we call learning. It proposes an experience in which visitors are invited to speak and record their thoughts. Speaking, telling our story to someone who is present or absent becomes hearing, knowing ourselves through the other’s ear, the other’s mind. We have access to ourselves in relation to others. It is our intersubjectivity that I would like to reveal here.
Once the thoughts are recorded they will transform in the space and over time through other’s writing, carving and translating.
– the archive we live in – is a participatory performance which I envision taking place in a large room that can be in an art center, a space in a neighborhood that is not in use or in a gallery space.
The duration of the work is of at least a month.
The audience will partake in an activity of recording their thoughts by speaking them into a their phones, prompted by a sentence they will be given.
They will go to a website which will allow them to record themselves and upload their recordings. They will also be able to access the archive of recordings from this website and listen to other people’s thoughts.
This archive will be held by a server in the space by using a raspberry pi.
Visitors will also be invited to transcribe and translate pieces of the recordings so that traces can begin to fill the space and so that a multiplicity of languages can be present. These practices are the dialogue between various archives that is identity.
Wood will also be present on the scenography, available to be carved and will serve as another practice of leaving a trace in the space.
A text on the wall will inform them that the audio recordings will be erased at the end of the duration of the work but what will remain is the written traces which will become a publication presented at the finissage.
