Deep storage: archives, collections, memory

Storage: the putting and keeping of things in a special place for use in the future, or the place where you put things

• bedroom/house – physical storage of items that are important to us for a variety of reasons: more useful items will be out and easily accessible to be used, but are items that are “stored” generally more sentimental? are they generally otherwise useless? what do they contribute to our lives: how often do we physically look at them? do we need them?
• mind/memories – probably the most undefined/ephemeral/impermanent form of storage – we don’t tend to make conscious decisions to remember or forget particular events, and maybe won’t even know we have a particular memory until it is triggered by something else (a link to the physical sentimental items we like to keep?)
• photo albums/scrapbooks – another example of physical sentimental items, but now becoming replaced by the digital?
• digitally – phone, laptop, social media (e.g. snapchat and facebook memories – interesting digitalisation of memories, almost forcing someone to remember a certain event on its anniversary) – endless ability to store photos so we have to be less selective? but do we look back at them less? does this affect how we remember?
• industrial storage – large warehouses, quite cold and impersonal

Archives: a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution or group of people

• museums
• libraries
• websites/online archives

Collections: a group of objects of one type that have been collected by one person or in one place

• art
• stamps
• photos
• buttons
• books/magazines – editions
• objects from a place – e.g. pebbles/shells from beaches
• model cars/trains/planes etc
• antiques

Memory: information, experiences or people remembered from the past

• good/bad memory – triggers (maybe involving different senses) that jolt forgotten events – equally there are so many experiences that are entirely forgotten forever creating an odd discrepancy between the days we remember living and the days we have actually lived
• can we create fake memories? e.g. from information parents have told us about a childhood event, or from a photograph
• earliest memories
• computer memory – how does the digital world affect how we remember?

deep storage, dust, archives, museums, forgotten, files, filing cabinets, ordered, categorised, scientific, data, numbers, minimalistic, boring?, collecting, stamps, repetition, order, chaos, systematic, labels, typed, typewriter, old, new, modern, sleek, steel, grey, drawers, desk, work, pen, paper, ruler, neat, measurement, increments

Artists to research: Susan Hiller From the Freud Museum, Joseph Cornell, Christian Boltanski, Renee Green, Jane and Louise Wilson, William Pope. L, The Atlas Group