Project report planning #1

In considering how the identified aims and objectives relate to a methodology, and to a theoretical framework, I've gone back to the proposal and made some clarifications, in order to edit and refine for KARST and beyond, as well as beginning to think about shaping the report.

Project proposal aims
- To practically and conceptually develop a chapter of the Ghost Box project to the point of readiness for exhibition
- To research and develop a set of thinking, making, showing and documentation strategies and skills that can represent the layered complexity of the Ghost Box as a point of departure, prompt or impetus for art making
- To contextualise this chapter in a larger context of art works and writings that draw on: 
the archive and memory, narrative, dissemination and expansion 

Key objectives and theoretical approaches/theorists/artists identified for research
- Obtain an overview of contemporary artists’ use of archive and found objects/memories/moments/materials (including Christian Boltanski, Louisa Fairclough, Christina Mackie, Katrina Palmer, Sophie Calle, Tricia Donnelly, Laura Reeves and Andrea Buckland)
(Mark's advice: "Think of the differences among these as much as the overlaps")
- To obtain an overview of the current thinking on the role of the archive in theoretical terms (initially using the essays in the Whitechapel publication The Archive (2006), Ghosting (2006) published by Picture This in Bristol and Van Alphen’s Staging the Archive (2014). However, I need to remain conscious that what theory may call the archive may be significantly different from someone's saved memories or souvenirs, or the act of hoarding or hiding something so as not to preserve it.
- To understand in more depth what is meant by archaeology of knowledge (Foucault) and archaeology of media (Parikka, Huhtamo), and to think about who the archaeologist is in the context of the Ghost Box.
- To begin looking at feminist theory and l’ecriture feminine, after reading Huhtamo's statement that female artists have been particularly active in the field of media archaeology, perhaps due to “the parallels between media archaeology, feminist theory, and women's history”. I will start with Laughing with Medusa (2008) for an overview. The archaeologist is not a neutral or non-person, they are embodied, they have a story and desires.
- To find a vocabulary around the role of narrative in the work, initially using Barthes’ Image Music Text (1977), Yorke’s Into the Woods (2013) and Bal’s Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (1997). Recent feedback for the work Tin Reflection mentioned materiality vs immateriality and the narratives within it, and I will need a wider vocabulary for thinking about narrative in order to make use of this comment. In addition, I will need to specify who the storyteller is - myself, or the viewer, whoever assembled the box, whoever put the box in the place where I found it...
- To continue to seek out, encounter, collect, intervene, interpose, juxtapose and edit found objects and images which might be used in the making and showing of the work, employing a similar strategy to that which led me to the box (or it to me)
- To frame or limit this chapter so that it has a level of coherence on its own and within the larger ongoing project

The methodologies these aims & objectives call for include:

• Formal/procedural (how can these found objects and memories be employed, represented or referenced?)- undertaken for the most part by making, as well as viewing/reading about relevant art works
• Parallels & precedents (who else uses this type of impetus and what work do they make?) – undertaken by reading / viewing
• Theoretical (how does this work address current thinking on narrative, the archive and found objects?) – undertaken by reading / listening to recorded interviews and talks

 
Possible discourse styles or modes:
When writing the project proposal, it seemed impossible to talk about the objectives separately from the theoretical framework that surrounds them, so I combined them under the title Objectives, and how they might inform the defining of a critical framework for Ghost Box. I’ve done the same above, and I think the report needs to be approached in the same way, using theory as part of the vocabulary that describes the work. As a result, I expect the writing to make extensive use of embedded citations that weave theory among my own words. This will echo the temporal and spatial incongruity of the Box itself, the anachronism of the objects I’m currently using to explore it, and act as an additional witness to the scavenging and treasure-hunting approach the work entails.
To further highlight the narrative strands within the project, it might be interesting to use 'chapters' in the writing as well as the making, or to use a layout that is more reminiscent of fiction than of academic writing (below). Additionally, I will look into including passages of relevant found writing, and/or some of my own image poems.

Also, I am considering making an essay film which would be an effective way of communicating the tangential nature of the project, though I doubt there’ll be time to do it for the course deadlines, so I’m thinking of it as a strategically disseminatable thing to work on after the course finishes. I imagine this as a looped film, with no identifiable beginning or ending, as “the exact parameters of the period in time that Ghost Box can be said to refer to is impossible to be sure of, but the dates on some of the contents place certain documents in a span of a few months in 1972, an evident loop of a moment which defies chronological continuation” (from my proposal)