a new year’s day sited archive

I still had a full set of the Hahnemuehle etching paper that I have been using for the Am Walde cyanotypes and wanted to print the woods again, this time with a view of making the prints available for sale. I couldn’t quite decide on the time, initially it was supposed to happen during Spring 21, then it didn’t. Then I liked the idea of reprinting in similar environmental conditions, i.e. around Winter solstice a year later.

I took New Year’s Day as the day to site paper, having treated it with chemistry shortly before midnight on the Eve. I went to a couple of familiar sites: one knobbly branch junction in a conifer, larches, blueberries and tree stumps. But by and large let myself to be guided by what objects held my attention.

I placed all sheets in the morning and collection most of them in the afternoon.

I also placed a number of them on the meadow, flat, facing upwards, nothing obstructing the direction of sunlight. I left these four outside, they got fixed by heavy rain during the night so the recording duration was rather short. I went to coat them again, placed them again to repeat, and repeated for some a third iteration to explore what is in repeat coating/exposure but also how time records work in the medium. There is likely another post on this to be written.

I also double-exposed the blueberry ones with damson and wild peach.

So heres: a rogue rhododendron, a low fence gate, peach and damson, blueberries, a dead conifer, broom, larches, a birdbox, a leftover field of grain, stumps and debris, the open meadow, the site of a drawing machine (conifer and ground). I cropped some of them too, so they are at a maximum 27.9×38.1 cm.:

NYD: a sited archive 1-25

I had a couple of iterations of editing and grouping these:

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SYP 2.3: Thinking about documentation

Pretty much all that I call archiving falls under this activity’s ‘documentation’. Similar as with the submission of BoW, the documentation presents the work, in the case of For Cover as the event documentation of that half-day installation on site.

For SYP then, documentation is recording of what is to come as engagement/exhibition but since it draws on what was/is, it is the recording of an archive in some sense.

Thinking of the forms of engagement for SYP, as per the revised project plan (event series; analogue engagement via shared objects (send out/return); web platform and possibly on site/surrounding engagement; these are then a series of records:

• a/v recording of digital events; possibly with transcripts too;
• a folder/record of objects in circulation along with notes on reflection (written, a/v, audio, photographic, otherwise);
• web platform as accessible at any point; and
• a similar record to any on site engagement (depending on the nature of this: as event some a/v recording plus notes; if a letterbox drop or similar, the recording will be akin to the one for the analogue objects).

Risk assessments are unlikely to be needed; perhaps if a site-based live event these come into play; otherwise these are postal engagement at a distance. An assistant for digital events and/or live events would be helpful but given my experience also not necessary.

Here, documentation is considerable more logistically and conceptually narrow than how I have so far approached the concept of ‘archiving the site and the work’; the latter poses a number of questions concerning the nature of the work, the time/duration of the work and various access/contact points. These will be explored throughout the remainder of SYP (and likely filter into the events.