User:Eleanorg/Journal 1.2

Fri 13 Jan

Just read fascinating Derrida extract, from Archive Fever. I knew all that Freud I was reading over the holidays must not have been totally irrelevant! Love the way it links archives to Freudian theory of memory. Also the clear descriptions of the archive's essential features: that it must A. be situated in place, B. be guarded, and C. be curated - all features which tie it inherently to institutional power.

This definition makes much clearer why it's so radical to refer to, eg, The Pirate Bay as an archive. It is not guarded by those in power - in fact, it openly defies power. But, as Hakim Bey said, "the problem of land refuses to go away". And we come nicely back to my research from last trimester, into territory and place, and the way the digital seems to deny or at least forget its ultimate reliance - which it shares with all archives - on a physical home.

Been thinking over the hols about how archives could link to Radical X and other things. "Forbidden Archives" is a nice phrase that Derrida cites. TPB is one. Thinking of the talk by [insert name], the obscenity lawyer, at Sex on Trial - the guy who specializes in defending people who are threatened with jail for posessing (ie archiving) banned obscene content.

So what about encryption? If you've got an encrypted drive full of dodgy stuff to which you don't know the password, are you breaking the law? Had the idea of 'encrypted jewellery'; USB keys with god knows what on them, made into desirable *objects*.

And over the hols too I've been using PENCILS. Like, for DRAWING. yes. I thought it was a guilty pleasure but actually no; the question is - what is the relationship of the digital/virtual to all this ACTUAL STUFF? paper and metal, etc.

So I'm making beautiful watercolour portraits out of screenshots of Skype conversations. Don't analyse too much. Just do it.