The Shrinking Green (On Eccentric Archives).

This theoretical text was designed to articulate the questions around archive that developed from my involvement in the 'Academy' project. This was a series of publications, conferences (Antwerp, Eindhoven) and exhibitions (Hamburg, Eindhoven, Antwerp) funded by the Siemens Art Fund, and organised by Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths College) with whom I worked closely, in the conceptualisation and execution of the project.
Through braided research initiatives involving online and printed publications, performances, conferences and exhibitions to which I contributed, the project explored the history and future the role of education in the art museum. My concerns were with the overlooked spaces of the museum (workshops, security offices, unnamed vestibules, smoking shelters) and the forms of sociable knowledge generated by them. The text's structure is analogical with a syncopated approach to the problems of articulating the sociabilities and holdings of archives when viewed from competing vantages. The piece connects with the exhibition 'I Like That' at the Van Abbe Museum that I curated with John Paul Martinon in 2006, which produced aural provcations of the museum's collection.
The piece represents a furtherance in my theorisation of the unlikely role of aurality in modern architectural culture, and its mode of address is in keeping with the large number of essays I have written in similar circumstances Eg. ‘Just Give Me One Thing That I Can Hold On To', in Lok, S. (ed.), Golden (Notes), (2007); ‘Salted Pleasures', Walsh, R. (ed.), Infallible, (2005); ‘The Design of Sighs', Crowe., N. & Rawlinson, I., At 25 Metres, (2007); ‘Eyes With Hope Gleaming', Voeglin, S. (ed.), Clickanywhere, (2006); ‘The Windows' Leave: Ligatures for the Lovesick', de Philo, J. (ed.), Issues, No. 4, (2005).