From the talk by Susan Breakell, I was drawn to the idea of the archive as both a product and raw material. While archives are a resource for information to be drawn from, it is important to acknowledge that they were created and processed. Mattern describes how the “anti-aesthetic” of the stacks, informs our conception of the archive’s epistemological object” which is enforced through the use of gray, dull boxes and housing (Mattern, 2015). Working in an archive, I have become increasingly aware of how processing materials and writing finding aids is about presenting material in a way that performs objectivity, the intention being to present facts without opinion. I think the material and intellectual objectivity of the archive is what allows for one to have an affective experience. The bland, monotonous aesthetic of the archive enhances the feelings one can have when discovering something seemingly alive and charged in the dusty archive.
The use of archival material and archival (anti-)aesthetics in art brings out not only the content of the material but often illuminates the fact that archival material is not dead or dormant. Despite archival material already having been processed, it is through another layer or method of processing and display that the material gains a new meaning and context. As seen with the various ways artists reveal or uncover previously unseen material, it seems that archival material always requires mediation or recontextualisation. Is it through the different ways of utilising archival material or through different models of the archive itself that the ways we can and are allowed to engage with archival material be changed?
Thank you, Lena! I like your proposal that the subdued aesthetic of the archival apparatus is perhaps what allows its users to conjure up their own aesthetic, affective experiences with the archival material.