The Archives-Project
A new interdisciplinary art and research project by A.G.
The Novel Called The Archives-Project
As I have repeated countless times, The Archives-Project is the second novel in a series of novels beginning with a novel called The History-Project circa 2001–2004. However the Archives-Project is more than just a novel. It consists of images, sounds, and text, and is part research enterprise.
The project started when I was actually going through my own archives. I had recently moved and was subsequently exposed to my old archives, and spent several years working in and through my archives, organizing them and so on.
The title is meant to be suggestive of Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, “an unfinished project of German literary critic Walter Benjamin, written between 1927 and 1940.”
As I was working “in” my personal archives, I began to think of archival science as a practice and so began doing a form of Reflective Practice or Practice-Research. That is, I was studying archival science from the perspective of one engaging in the art. The History-Project that came before was also a similar kind of interdisciplinary art/research project. In that case I was putting on the shoes of the historian and reflecting on that practice.
The actual story involves a group of researchers coming together to try to figure out why The History-Project was an abject failure. In the first novel, The History-Project, the team of experts engage in a project of the same name, The History-Project, and the project is doomed to failure. Deadlines aren’t met, everything that could possibly go wrong with the project does.
The actual novel itself, The History-Project, remains unfinished. So in that regard the novel itself was a failure, but not the greater interdisciplinary art/research project, also called The History-Project.
If I go over the etiology of my projects it is because of the level of abstraction that these art/research projects involve. There are a lot of “meta-” aspects to the endeavor, and in that regard it can be considered a work of postmodernism, though I don’t like that term. Ironic self-awareness, though, is an integral part of the process, as well as aspects of postcolonial historiographic metafiction.
The History-Project originally was just an attempt at understanding the history of the Greater Montreal Region. I was studying art history and took an interest in Montreal & environs, and since I was living in the city I tried a hand at writing historical texts, or combing through historical texts and trying to wax historiographical on them. It was a lesser or greater success. Mild at best.
In The Name of Beauty & Truth: What is Field Art?
I have come to call my interdisciplinary art/research practice “field art”, because I tend to work out “in the field”, gathering observations and other materials to work on projects “in the studio” (My studio is called The Historiotheque, roughly meaning “witness-box”, a kind of tabernacle).
Truth be told, I am always working on a “novel” at any given time. I am actually currently working on a dozen or so “novels”. What I am trying to get at is more of what I would call a “phenomenology of the novel”. The idea is about the act of writing novels itself, understood critically and philosophically. The actual story of the novel is secondary to this analysis.
Both novels in the series, The History-Project and The Archives-Project are part of a larger literary work I am tentatively calling The Revolt of Fiction. It is basically a philosophical diatribe about fiction-writing itself. The main idea is that true fiction-writing is impossible. The author always includes parts of him or herself in the actual fiction writing, so in that sense it is always semi-autobiographical. I have tried my hardest at coming up with authentic fiction, but every time I am just spoofing some aspect of myself or my life, and making it out to look as “fiction” when really it is just a reflection of myself or my life.
After The Archives-Project, we enter into a realm I am calling Movement/Integration. Here we actually come to the bottom of things. We discover who the author really is, in all honesty. It is honest writing, just writing about the art of writing.. an author being honest with himself, speculating on his writing practice, a form of self-aware writing. But it is not post-modern, though you might think it is.
A.G. © 2017. All Rights Reserved.
