The Archive, the Event and Its Architecture

“The Archive, the Event and Its Architecture” is both a documentation and a component of an interrelated body of work that seeks to provide a point of triangulation between the archive, a live event, and its architecture or site; in particular exploring whether any of these terms can exist as the other; e.g., can an event be a building, a building an archive.

Based on the extraordinary literary archive housed by the Trust which provided a rich context for investigating the notion of archiving, the ambition of this project addressed theoretical concerns surrounding the archive, its relevance in contemporary art practice as a private system and in the public domain. Our key concern was how to accommodate discrepancy between the private and public within the archive, without excluding the personal. Research was undertaken over six months in Grasmere where, by invitation, I was a Wordsworth Trust Artist in Residence between November 2006 - May 2007.

The outcome, evidenced by the book, comprised three interconnected events, together with the book itself. In the first, 'The Village Hall', a range of activities typically undertaken within the hall, occurred simultaneously alongside archival material associated with them, e.g., photographs from Grasmere’s Millenium Exhibition, originally sited in the hall.

On the following day, 1st April 2007, passers-by joined three finite groups which, with mirrors strapped to members’ backs, walked to a different peak in Grasmere. Both events were documented.

The final event, a symposium (26.5.07) comprised three papers each addressing the triad of archive, live event and architecture from a different viewpoint, i.e, event (Schwabsky), architecture (Gough) and archive (Melvin). Individually, and in relation to each other, the separate events offer new understanding of each and the relations between them.