Description
Stanley Kubrick Archive is approximately 800 linear metres of shelving in size and consists of hundreds of boxes and thousands of pieces of paper.User statistics show that researchers favour material that is directly concerned with the life and work of Kubrick: correspondence, scripts, costumes, props, and so on. But the Stanley Kubrick Archive is filled with material that could be considered waste – ephemera or transient items that were never meant to be retained or preserved, but which have ended up in storage in the archive strong room at the University of the Arts London. As such, this kind of material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive—which makes up a large bulk of its structure—is out of place, out of time, and potentially out of use.
In this keynote, Fenwick will focus on material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive that has no obvious immediate use to researchers—the ephemera—to consider how it is contained in the archive, its status as 'rubbish' or 'waste', and in what ways it can be recycled by researchers, including through the act of writing, to give it new meaning and purpose.
The case studies in the talk will include a discussion of the archive's graveyard of unused stationery and storage items, such as rows and rows of empty boxes, to think through the purpose and sustainability of preserving such material. By undertaking such an analysis, Fenwick moves beyond the mythic status of the archive being Kubrick's archive and instead foregrounds the wider cultural value and significance of the collection by using the archive to excavate histories, stories, and ideas beyond a focus on Stanley Kubrick, proving that the Stanley Kubrick Archive doesn't just have to be about Stanley.
| Period | 26 Jan 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Experimental Archives Symposium |
| Event type | Conference |