Jon Sherman 1238602643|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
I am very excited by this idea. What strikes me about this project is the potential for what might be called an "anti-archive," or perhaps a "phenomenological archive." Through a recognition of accepted archival practice, we have the opportunity to work "against" it, to construct a project whose aim is not the centralization and accreditation of knowledge, but its dispersal and destabilization. Whereas "the" archive now is positioned to establish authority and knowledge and to save time and effort, we might use Documents to make an archive that does the contrary: an archive that pushes people back out into the world they've left in order to encounter the archive. An archive that does not save time, but generates it, that does not reduce effort but increases it. I understand this working most effectively with the dictionary entries, where we have the chance to produce productively false definitions, to wrong-foot readers in ways that lead to some place as fruitful as the supposed official definition. In other words, I understand this as a creative project, a resource providing questions instead of answers.
If, however, the consensus hope is for something less nettlesome, I have nothing against traditional dictionaries and would still be happy to participate!
- Jon
