Basecamp with Kelly Large, V22, London 2017
Basecamp was a workshop and project space, the idea was to set up a place of anticipation, a sense of something yet to happen. It takes the literal, geographical basecamp and draws parallels with other kinds of holding spaces such as archives and collections, the group dynamics and behaviours of the real and imagined expedition, and the encounters these explorations produce.
If you enter an archive with no real sense of purpose, more just an instinct that there is something you need in there, how do you begin to search? How do items buried deep in storage call to you or make themselves legible to your search? Which keywords do you use? How do you decipher the list of finds? How do you maintain a sense of purpose?
Whether objects, papers, code, ideas or sounds the items held in physical and online archives, collections and libraries emerge as significant through user interactions. In the close relations between thing and observer – in time spent studying, handling and simply being with a thing, it comes into presence, transmitting its being intimately to the user and more widely across the field of culture. This process of inter-relational transmission alters the thing that is engaged with and transforms the user too.
Over the course of the 3 days we prepared and organised material in the space. The work will was an interlinking of loops of thought. The reference material and workings will be on display in the workspace.