Signal Lost: Archive Unzipped - Soundboard

(Page for the soundboard for the Signal Lost radio shows)

Snippets from the interview with Ari

Oh I often feel like poeple see archiving as this process of gathering and keeping safe, I guess. But, I mean, if you take archiving out of this institutional and Western context, archiving has been a way of creating and building community and art for, like, years, within thousands of indiginous cultures. I mean, oral history is a form of archival practise, and that in itself is like, as we've seen, an artistic way of providing information.

So I really like the idea of an archive being anything but the structure we've already got. So, like, there's so much space for the process to become the end goal.

Euhm... Oh f***.

And then allow the public to come and like, ruffle through everything

So I think this also adds to this living archive, breathing archive... it's its own organism. That's really nice to see, I think, for me.

This media being shared is in itself a payment.

Oh it's awful, yeah, sorry, yeah, it's awful.

I think I've gone too far down the hole of being an archivist, where no piece of anything is just a thing. Like this book: no, it has feelings, it must be seen. It can't just sit here gathering dirt.

Oh my god, I was digging through the archive a while ago.

I think responsibility is there. I definetely feel like... if this isn't seen, it's on me.

It's not for us, its for the sake of, you know, the archive. So that it can be seen like by not just me and not just the people who work here, but by, like, the broader public.

Someone came to an event at WORM and broke into the room at Pirate Bay and slept there.

So obviously there is this fear that something is destroyed or lost.

... of taking on these damages or losses, but not taking it as a way that demoralizes you, but like gives you more fire to tell this new story of the work Like, it just went through another thing. That's awesome.

Where it is doesn't really matter, you know. It's just that it's there.

I think I have a lot more fun with it, knowing that I can share it.

Wanting to protect your property, rather than sharing this resource.

I think it creates a whole new set of people that come into WORM, and a whole new set of curiosities of WORMies of people who havve been coming here for years, and they're like... WOW.

So, no, I don't know if that answered your question at all...

It engages people who would never for any other reason engage within a formal archive in that way, and allows them to involved and tactile with it, and like, actually, like, interest in what they're doin. And I think that's what an archive is meant to do... engage.

As soon as this archive stops being a community archive, it loses it's value.

Like no actually, this is as much mine as yours as this person's.

F*** this get this out of the archive!

I wanna store this thing for years later. And maybe it's not interacted with in the same way, but its still present... because it should be?

No, my answer is no, I will not.

There are always things that are lost and things that get added. So I mean it's a natural cycle of information or independence or whatever you're gaining, there's some loss that comes with that.

I feel like that's exactly the same as setting them on fire.

I mean those found objects aren't just gonna be objects forever.

OH MY GOD THIS PERSON IS A GENIUS THIS IS CRAZY!!!

I'm SO glad our tap water is up to par.