I have a confession: I’ve been wrong, and I’m sorry, and I want to make things better. Attempting to create a perfect order has proven impossible, and was probably always doomed to failure. The investigative impetus of the project now shifts from “what does a perfect order look like?” to “how can we understand the difficulties of this attempt?”
The pursuit of perfection is always an exercise in productive frustration.
After a failed effort to drown myself in a sea of articles, I’ve been resuscitated with a number of new directions and approaches. Here is an abstract list of oppositions meant to stand in for a proper summary of my reading of a contemporary consensus:
THEMES:
1) Functionality over indexicality
2) Intention over result
3) Process over resolution
4) Context over content
5) Dynamic over static
ENTRY POINTS:
I’ve been working through a number of recurring concerns to open up new ways of engaging with this particular set of images. Here are some of my thoughts on ways into this archive, by topic and corresponding point of inquiry:
AUTHOR: The archive is created by a web of individual human agents.
Question: Who is the author? How can the author be characterized?
USER: The archive is created for an imagined or mythic user.
Question: Who is this user? How are they implicitly defined by the archive?
CREATION: The archive is generated by a series of often elided actions and events.
Question: What kind of performance can demonstrate or visualize these actions?
CONTEXT: The context from which an image is derived and comes to reside is integral to the informative value of that document.
Question: How can the affect of context on an image be foregrounded or altered?
LOCATION: The physical presence and nature of the archive determines meaning.
Question: How can the archive take up alternative physical forms or recontextualize documents through location?
USE: The history of use of a document informs the value and nature of that document
Question: How can the effects of use on a document be rendered obvious?
INTENTION: The generation of all archives and documents can be traced to human intention.
Question: How can the relationship between intention and effect be addressed?
NARRATIVE: Archival documents work together to tell historical and cultural stories.
Question: What stories can these 100 images be made to tell?
PARODY: The logic and power of an archive rests upon a fragile rationality.
Question: How can alternative rationalities be employed to disrupt the logic and presumed authority of the archive?
OMISSION: Archives actively collect as well as actively omit documents.
Question: How can the invisibility and inaccessibility of what has been omitted be made evident?
DEMOCRACY: Archives are intended to both assist and reflect democratic values.
Question: How can these images be fully “democratized”? And, the opposite?
HISTORICAL VALUE: the value of archived documents changes based on historical developments; they have “deferred value” understood only in retrospect.
Question: How can hypothetical (or actual) future events alter the relative value and meaning of these documents?
Interesting shift in your process and quite a layered analysis! There seems to be a tension between ideals of objectivity and recognition of subjective interpretation.
“The pursuit of perfection is always an exercise in productive frustration.”
Reminds me of a short paper I wrote three years ago, titled ‘On Perfection’, which opens with the following:
“Perfection is a tyrant*. It is that which reminds us how we fail to measure up, how we never can measure up. Perfection is whatever set of socially constructed ideals that fulfill this function. Perfection as an absolute is unattainable because in life there is no stoppage. In all existence as we know it there is no complete stasis, only different rates of change, perceivable (or not) depending on the observer and frame of reference. So why do we place such fixed demands on phenomena in a context where total fixity is unlikely in the extreme?”
From the notes at the end of the paper:
“(*) I use this word specifically for its connotation of an arrogant assumption of authority that is undeserved, as well as for the arbitrariness of rule characteristic of a tyrant. See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tyrant and http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tyrant“
When treated as an actual destination, perfection is surely a tyrant. I see it more as a siren which may assist navigation if you can resist its song, but will wreck you upon the rocks if you let it seduce you. If treated as a journey it can be helpful.
I am still struggling with ideas of subjective interpretation. Where do the universal and the personal collide? Can they ever? Are they always in communication?
I agree with your ‘guiding principle’ vs. ‘ultimate destination’ approach to ‘perfection’. I actually conclude that paper with an example from Japanese culture, the idea of ‘wabi-sabi’, which is a kind of perfection that includes a degree of ‘flawedness’ insofar as the passing of time is evident (it’s more subtle and complex than that but I’m finalizing my presentation right now and shouldn’t let myself get too distracted, though I’ve been following your ‘100 Images’ blogging with interest).
I decided to categorize on the simple details obvious to me, letting the gaps be, knowing that even these attempts at objectivity (referencing the externally visible) are also reflections of my subjective selection, and to focus on devising a flexible means of perusing the 100 Images.
I look forward to your presentation – I’d better go get mine together.