The Hidden Archive: an investigation into the properties of the unseen

Abstract

Abstract

“You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat. You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green; The sun of plants speaks in your voice...” [1] (Rukeyser)

How does one recount the events of the past? What does the process of remembering look like? Are the moments of the past chosen and isolated in one's mind, or is it something nostalgic, even primordial in which our answer lies?

The archive will serve as the central theme for our investigation into the past. Though the archive as an object of looking back must be strictly defined. The collecting of archival records is not entirely our goal, because we will see that the records themselves cannot always be accurate accounts of what transpired. We must not only collect those manuscripts, maps, diaries, logs, and histories of yesterday; but this collection must be acutely observed if we are to illuminate this question of remembering. There exists two levels in the process of recounting: one is the collection of archival information described above; and the other, the more intimate, describes everything else which remains. It is the description of that which is nearly impossible to hold onto, an insight into the actual experience pertaining to any given event or memory. Muriel Rukeyser's poetry accesses this in two levels, where she solidifies the image of the present and the image of the unspoken memory. It is within the unspoken that awaits a clarification and illumination previously unseen. And this memory, the one that is not characterized solely by those formal constraints is where the key to an investigation lies. We will have to be observant in our reading, attuned to our original texts, and question the authority of the archive in order to make sense of the holes in between interpretation. Because in order to face the past in all its complexity- in all of it’s violence, one must understand the present condition of the catalogue. We are dealing with a collection of documents in order to intimately search for an alternative answer. We hope to slowly use the mainstream archive as a beginning structure to look into.

The goal in this process is not only to acknowledge that things have been forgotten: which we will see is a distinct phenomena through history, but to illuminate the process of misinformation, of information altered or lost in time. It seems a nearly impossible task to establish a foundation to something that was “never there” to begin with, but the unseen archive tends to establish notable symbols and examples which dialectically establish a reseeing of events. We will see that this foundation is a vital source in recounting the unseen critically and honestly; to hopefully provide a minor insight into the story of things forgotten.