08 workshop archive

When I was young, I started to collect shells and pebbles. In my younger self's eye, those items are part of a faerie world, and I went as far as to bury them in random spots in playgrounds when they were still covered with sand. With each burial, I made a promise to myself and/or the faerie world. These promises can be as grave as to forgive my family or to only speak truth for the rest of my life, to as light as I'd eat vegetable rice for dinner that day. It became a practice of deciding what promises I want to keep and share with the faerie world, an exchange of desires; accountability to a spectral world, perhaps real. This is the world I want to archive, to make concrete beyond my own imagination. A secret I'm making known to another person only now.

I will bring a shell, the only shell that remains from that collection, to the workshop. Recently, I threw away a lot of things, and that includes most of my collection. I kept this singular orange conch shell because I remember holding it as The Gateway to the faerie queen, my friend.

I'm curious how an intentional act to archive might look like, in a collective setting. Our entire bodies are biochemical archives, down to individual cells. Extrapolating that to stories, histories beyond our bodies, what might that entail, comprise? What other things might others believe precious enough to retain?

I am interested in archiving the queer communities of Singapore. What does it mean to create an archive of a community so heavily subject to erasure and hiding? How can we look beyond traditional sources and to look to ephemera to provide us with a glimpse of this other world? How much can a physical archive of queer lives help to bear witness to the existence of the community throughout history and today? I am interested to explore how queer lives challenge the ways we use archives, and how we can animate histories through speculation and imagination.

The world that I wish to archive is rather personal as it is a world that my late grandma still live in. It is a place where I can see myself talking to her, remembering details of her tired face and hearing her raspy yet distinct loud voice from afar, as if she is still alive. It is a world which stored memories and moments with her which I failed to cherish when she is still alive.

The object that I will be bringing is a piece of poem I wrote myself, during the time when she fell really ill and was few months away from her passing. During that period, I was feeling really lost and upset that I didn’t spend more time with her. Aside from being a poem to remember her, I feel that the poem also shows how much I wanted to find an excuse to clear my guilt of not treasuring the time with her. Hence, the poem made me wanting to cherish the memory with her more.

I'm trying to build a comic artwork archive in which can be a resource and community space for comic creators and readers in Singapore.

The history of comic arts/books in Singapore is not well-documented at the moment, and it's largely left out of discussions about literature/art/visual culture in Singapore. I would like to get some practical advice on how writers/researchers/editors, including myself, can start to build the body of research and documentation that comic creators are lacking.

I hope to archive the visual arts community, especially our local one. The art we make today is a reflection of the world around us; artists depict everyday scenes around them, and their work can also reveal the ideas of their own generation. I think that it is important to archive artworks (or even unfinished works, like sketchbooks, artist journals, etc) made in our time, because decades from now, people looking back at them might be able to get a glimpse into what life was like many years ago based on what artists chose to depict in their work.

I have often imagined what people decades or even centuries in the future would think of our current society based on documents or relics that had been preserved from our time. And I often wonder if their image of society would be truly accurate. It's why I've thought about how we can properly archive objects of today such that people in the future would be able to properly understand our society. This event aligns with that interest of mine, and will allow me to think deeper about archival means and why we choose to archive what we do.

I hope to archive the presences of friends and other people who I have crossed paths with in brief but meaningful ways. In the past few years, while being in transitional spaces (travel, summer school programmes..) I've formed close bonds with many individuals who without these spaces I would never have otherwise known. They have shown me immense kindness and generosity, and I have grown through them in so many ways. I hope that through finding a way to archive these people I will be able to remember them and keep them close.

I am thinking of a small figurine from a French tart called galette des rois. I ate this tart with Pauline and a few of our friends last year during New Year's. How it works is that there's one small figurine in the entire tart and whoever gets the slice with the figurine gets to be king for a day. Pauline got the slice with the king figurine; but the figurine is still with me because she left it here when she returned to France and I haven't been able to pass it to her since.

I hope to archive People's Park Chinatown. My parents own a textile shop there, and they met because of this shop, and supported themselves and their children with this shop. Without People's Park I would cease to exist, and it is like home to me. The textile business is taking a dip with the rise of fast fashion, and I would very much like to archive the People's park textile community in the event it ever fades away from existence in the future, and acknowledge it as a important component in Singapore's heritage and cultural landscape.

This object would be a handkerchief that is made up of half cloth and half 2ply tissue paper. I've physically sewn the two together to discuss the notion of oneness in the coming together of separate beings in class , and in doing so, inheriting a completely new identity that was different from when it was exclusively independent. It is representational of family and celebrates the connectedness we have in meeting new individuals, especially considering that the cloth component of this handkerchief comes from the family business as well.

A world where an ordinary citizen has conviction for a better world. Where my father believed - "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". I'm not trying to assign blame, I just want to remember him and his desire for knowledge, his conviction during that time...

A French-chinese book where my dad learns French.He fled to France when Singapore was capturing communists. but he has refused to speak about the time.

Subjectivity in the process of archiving is something I am drawn to, and hence I would be intrigued by a focus on recalling greater than that on the storing of information, and emotions. I would be interested in archives of memories, for the specific individuals to whom the memories belong. Being deeply personal, I would hope for them to evoke a conversation with the self, which, engaged in acts of remembering, could result in each individual taking ownership of their own stories, and hence, developing an empowered voice.

I would find a yarn/string to be a compelling object, specifically in dropping it to form “chance” scribbles, which could then be perceived by an individual as different images, as an attempt to trigger memories. This is with reference to “The Scribble” which is an art therapy technique used to reveal subconscious thoughts that could be of essence in bringing up topics of conversation to enhance the process of reflection. Additionally, it could also be symbolic of meditative practices such as knitting or embroidery.

The community involved is personal, historical and political. It centres on my relationship with former political prisoner (1963-1966) Tan Jing Quee (1939-2011) . I got to know him by chance in 2007, when he wanted to contact a historian to discuss the books on his generation of people who were politically conscious he was writing after retiring from his law practice. Jing Quee was no ready-made hero. He signed a statement and appeared on television to disavow his past, as did the majority of the political prisoners, facing life-long incarceration. He saw writing history as his exoneration.

a space for. a space within, and for. to preserve the fibres within and yet, have an impression upon. to still be more than a call out long. yes, the historian calls on the space, seeking to imprint. but, there lay a fine line between them and it. a layer, we call a beyond, for beyond is vast but some how, it is a space of truth. a space, so vast, we never can see truth. truth, that bears no form. we think, we frame, we impress but we can never truly imprint. but still, a try worth all, i guess.

i figured it would contribute to my learning of history – during and beyond. i am trying to sort out representations of truth but it is tough. maybe, i need a change of space for thought. so, we will see!

A kind of digital folklore—abandoned deviantart accounts, forgotten friendster pages, the urban sprawl of ghost geocities, obsolete online game forums, erogenous tumblr pages left wanting, flash game websites that will cease to function.

A three-terabyte hard drive. Accumulations of digital waste running deep, residuum of past projects stored in mini-monolith.

Afflicted with archive fever. it hurts

Every archive and every collection evokes a particular community of exchange, a practice of heritage, a world. What specific community, heritage, or world do you hope to archive? (This might be as personal, or as historical, or as speculative, as you wish)?

Please bring an object to the workshop that evokes a part of this world you described in (1.). The object will be handled with care, and you will be able to take this object back with you at the end of the workshop. What might this object be?